A Love Song

I'm free and freedom is allowing me to live
I can breath and my lungs aren't aching from breathless sobs
And throbs from losing you
I have found the lover that I have always known to exist
But I always rejected
You are my sun rise in the desert and the line where earth meets sky
There is none like you
I have searched and I have found nothing
I have loved and I have found nothing
I have laughed and I have found nothing
Nothing but You
Nothing but You

Nothing like you who breaks beneath this concrete heart and finds the soft earth resting there
Pouring fresh water like rain molding this mud into me
Me, who cannot be perfect
Because then, I would have to be the complete image of you Abba and I am not

I am but dust
Fist full of lust
The wisdom of men
Paves my way to hell
And I can't tell
Why I haven't been drinking from that holy well.

Father of the Fatherless

I was listening to Jason Upton’s Father of the Fatherless today and it just sent me on a whirlwind of memories and wonderings about my life and others’ lives. I grew up fatherless till I was about eleven. My mom married my stepdad and I thank God that I was blessed with a great family. However, in saying that, I do wonder what I lack now as a woman from the absence of my father in those early years of my life. Did that have an effect on me? Could that be why from about middle school to late high school, I suffered with severe self-esteem issues? I’m not sure but I do believe it played a part. I look around at so many people that I know that have grown up without a father or have grown up in divided households and I see what a huge effect that has had on their lives. Now, I’m not putting pressure on just fathers. I know mothers, brothers, sisters play a part, but I think there’s a significant break when Adam deserts Eve and she is left to fend for her children on her own. There is a gigantic shift in the garden when the man God has appointed to have dominion over the animals and be the spiritual head over his household decides to say “No, God. I don’t want that responsibility.” Everything falls. I thank God that I had a mother who held my life together as a child and a family who later took me in and loved me as their own. I, however, had to learn from what I could pick up from life. When I got saved at eleven, I approached God with such fear. Not the healthy fear of God, the unhealthy fear because I used to think he would run. That I would disappoint him. It took me a long time to grasp the fact that God loves you just because He loves you. No strings attached. And that He will never forsake you. On the other side of the coin is the fact that when I grasped this fact, I started to relate to God as my father more than anything else. I’ve learned slowly by slowly how to be vulnerable with him. To let him love me. To receive his love.

I’ve also seen the remnants of the absence of a father in my early years on how I relate to men now. It’s hard to be vulnerable. And there are times when I catch myself trying to leave before someone leaves me. It’s only by the grace of God that He shines light on these issues in my life and I allow Him to mold me every day. I share my story so as to show the importance of fathers. What significant role they play in their children’s lives. A father could be the difference between a confident, beautiful woman and a woman who gives herself away just to be accepted by a man. The difference between a man who is strong and adventurous and a man who is weak and lives in fear of failing. We need our fathers. We need Adam to be strong, to come through, to love his children.


As Jason Upton prays, Father of the fatherless, come down and rescue us……

Here’s the song…
I don’t know how, to say what I’m feeling
I don’t have words, to write you a song
But I have this hope and I have this prayer
and I am believing your words are true
you never leave us alone

Father of the fatherless, come down and rescue us
we need you, we need you again
friend of the friendless, come down and visit us
we need you, we need you again

How many sons, have cried for their fathers
and how many fathers, have cried like a son
now every tear saved through the years in memory’s bottle
becomes the fine wine, You serve to the children of god

Father of the fatherless, come down and rescue us
we need you, we need you again
friend of the friendless, come down and visit us
we need you, we need you again

Thelonius Sphere Monk "A marvelous sense of withdrawal"

Thelonius Sphere Monk- Excellent Jazz musician and mind-blowing pianist. I’ve been listening to Mr. Monk lately and I am thoroughly impressed by his off beat arrangements and ability to keep you guessing every time. So as I was driving the other day, I popped Mr. Monk in my CD player and gave myself to him as he took me on a journey with no known destination. Now I don’t usually listen to jazz in my car because………well, I don’t know why. I just usually don’t. However, when I was driving to work today with a concoction of a saxophone, piano, bass guitar and various melodious instruments swimming around my car, I had a thought. My mouth was silent. I was not singing along to somebody’s lyrics and I was not humming because I could not detect the path that the piano would take or where the saxophone would meet it. No one was coaching me with their lyrics telling my how I should feel at the moment, how I should act or what I should do. I was there. Just there in the silence listening to my thoughts and sinking myself into this flood of pure unadulterated harmony. And then I wondered about how many times God wants us to listen to Him like that. Silently and with nothing veiling us from His whispers and sometimes, loud bangs. How He yearns for our honest hearts instead of lyrics of memorized prayers. I wonder if He snaps his fingers to our prayers while smiling thinking “I’m not quite sure where this is going but I’m excited to find out.” Does He ache for new words and a new song? Or do we give the lover of our soul the same predictable words and the same complacent spirit?


I also thought about how we always complain about how we don’t know what God is doing at the moment. I would be lying if I said that I have not been haunted by this thought many times. However, as I was listening to Monk and his musicians, I discovered, “I don’t want to know what God is doing.” Despite of my impatience and my sin nature, I love that God always surprises me. I do not want a predictable God. I would never want the same answer to the same question. The same format to everything. I’d be bored. But Oh how we take our Savior for granted. We gripe and we moan that He is not answering us or He is silent. We run around wondering why He is not speaking to us the way we want. Why not just be still, smile, and snap to the unpredictable direction God is taking us? I refuse to ask God to be predictable. I want His silent whispers just as much as His loud bangs. His Thelonius Monk. His jazz.

One is loved because one is loved.

A while ago a friend suggested a novel called The Alchemist. I must say, after I “Amazoned” it for a little bit (yes, I used Amazon as a verb), I was a little hesitant to read it. However, I found it not too long ago under dusty romance novels when I was visiting a thrift store with my mom. It was only fifty cents which I took as a sign that I was supposed to read it. So, the verdict……….incredible! One of the most soul opening novels I’ve read lately and though it uses straightforward diction and an easy to digest style, Paulo Coelho tells a refined story of a boy in search of his Personal Legend.

This excerpt I posted below comes from the section when Santiago, the protagonist, meets Fatima, his soul mate, for the first time.

“She smiled, and that was certainly an omen—the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert. It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”

I read this passage with tears in my eyes and wondered if that's how experiencing love should be or are these just the words of a dreamer? Is it possible to for a human being to encounter another human being and realize in that moment that this person is whom he or she has been created to love? Are we all stumbling around this earth in search of our “twin soul?” My first instinct is to be a skeptic. It astounds me how a person can glimpse at another human being and inherently know that they can love that person for the rest of their life. This concept scares me because our modern day culture has turn love into an empty and fickle thing. However, for those that find it and leap, I admire your courage. Oh to be so bold and know that, as Coelho writes it, “there is no reason needed for love.”

As for me, I’ve realized that I only trust the love that has become a habit. I trust God’s love, my parents’ love, my friends’ love and so on. As far as romantic love, I must admit that fear creeps like a ghost in my heart when I think about it. Will I ever find that love that keeps you clinging to another person for fifty or sixty years? I question if there is a man out there that will see me and choose to wake up to me for the rest of his life. I don’t speak from insecurity, I speak from uncertainty. I have observed the world around me and the idea of love that is projected from our culture and media and my goodness, at times I say that if that is what love is, I don’t want it. I refuse an inconsistent love that feeds on moments of infatuation and surrenders when the love spell is over. My heart aches for a love that yearns to please more than the self and hungers to unlock the potential of its recipient. I have only found that love in one place, and that is in my Abba Father. As far as romantic love, I hope to find it among we fallen humans soon. I hope to find a love that I can cling on to that nurtures and gives me a glimpse of Eden.

Five, Seven, Five

Just a few haikus....but not about nature...

I love you lover
I speak, then you uncover
Me and see yourself.


Speak so I can hear
You whisper in my ear, love
Then I breathe again.


We were lovely doves
my dear.You fled silently
I stayed, astounded

Your love is my drug....

A friend of mine posted on her facebook status today with lyrics of Ke$ha’s song “your love is my drug.” And underneath those lyrics she writes, “preach it Ke$ha, preach it!” I thought about that and felt sad because our generation has no clue what love it these days. I have only seen a portion of the video of this song and that portion made me decide that I was not interested.
Love is a drug now. When did love become a drug? When did we lose sight of beautiful breathtaking love? The love that gives and continues giving not caring what it receives. Jesus’ love. That is love.

I picture my generation these days like a stubborn teenage child. God, our father, is constantly wooing us, begging us to come back to him. But no, we refuse His love because we have accepted the counterfeit. We listen to Lil’ Wayne, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga and they tell us love is always about self. Self satisfaction. Love is never about self. Love is selfless. Truly loving someone is giving of your time, your affection, and sharing your joy even when it is not appreciated. Love does not demand.
And so, we turn the dial on the radio, turn the volume up and scream our favorite songs thinking this is they type of love we want. This is the type of love we are looking for.

All the while I see God shaking His head saying “I can offer you real love. I can love you like you have never experienced. True love that always gives. It never takes advantage and it never demands anything love. Pure love that is selfless. That is beautiful. I can love you like that! Extravagantly.”
But, we shake our head and say, “No.I would rather the love that breaks me, that always demands, and is always selfish. I would rather have the bare minimum that this world has to offer.”

And He, because He loves us, lets us go. He does not force His love on us even though He knows it can make us whole. He waits, He woos us, and He asks again. And as many times as we say “No, we don’t choose you.” He asks us again because we are His bride and He is passionately in love with us. That is love.