Come, Lord Jesus

lord Jesus, i confess that this has been difficult. i just don't know how to be. i want to be able to love this person like i'm supposed to, but instead i'm struggling not to be stuck in my old thought patterns and desires. i confess that i still care deeply, but am sometimes confused because i wonder if it is the real person i care about, or a made-up version in my head? i just want to be able to do things for this person that i would do for others, but everything i do is laced with extra meaning and intent--or at least it is perceived so. i'm always so worried about not appearing to be a certain way to others, the ones who know about the situation. i'm frustrated that they know, but i don't know how else i will heal. lord, forgive me for being frustrated.

lord, instead i just release it. i give it up to you. i want to be different and whole and beautiful and not trapped in this old self. i know that instead of focusing on this problem, i should be focusing on my relationship with you. i believe that is getting better, but it is always a daily struggle. i thank you for what you have done in my heart. i think you have made a lot of progress in me--and i pray that i wouldn't be working to will my way into submission, but rather your grace and mercy would ravish me. come, Lord Jesus, and make my will Your will.

i just read some of Erik's blog from Four Oaks about an awkward situation about someone he ran into that left the church. they never really resolved their differences, but Erik was imagining seeing this person in heaven, at the banquet table. they would most likely be the closest of friends, singing hymns together of praise. when he saw this man, he was reading his Bible. so was Erik. how he wished to run up to his brother and greet him with a holy kiss saying, "all is behind us brother!" and he would reply the same. but Erik just left the same way he came. how difficult it is to know when and how to be reconciled! i thank you that there was grace enough to try for reconciling me to this other person. Erik ended his blog with this scripture, that gives me hope:

"Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart." 1 Peter 1:22

Amen, Lord Jesus, let it be so!

a poem by keith

although this wasn't to me (maybe it wasn't to anyone), but posted on someone's facebook wall, I liked it and wanted to keep it here.

My dear bicycling sister, where are the keys to the kingdom?
In the pumpernickel bread under the hamster cage,
or where the window grows dusty at the end of a chilly,
wool scarfened day? I lost them a few days ago, but here they are!
The snow jaguar has secrets in his shoulder blades
and the kingdom of heaven is within your shoe. And the place
where you felt the sky was split in two by storm and green
and the lighthouse was divided. Was there a manatee in your dancing
when the world was young? A face looking through the slow of the day?
I think peace is a thing to say when a old song is sung again.
When we forget holiday decorations of the communist party
to identify with the old wrinkled woman loving Jesus with her hands
around a dying man who thinks his soul once belonged to Leonard
Cohen or even the lead singer of The national when he sang in
the middle of the crowd; a picture of Jesus? Is it heretical to see
a lover in the faces of strangers walking across Landis Green?
I miss the sense of time measured in potlucks and the spaces between.