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Friday, December 28, 2007

confessions of holiday ugliness

Scrungy.

That's how I feel. I detest myself. As I ruminate about a boy. As I evaluate the end-of-year cds I'm going to buy. As I complain in my head. As I crab at my loved ones.

Somethings not right here. The veil has fallen again. I don't see Him rightly. So everything is out of perspective.

So I'll blame the Christmas season, the rush and bustle and expectations, the to-do lists.

Then I wonder about the uncertainties of the future. About a job. About development work. About graduate school.

I wonder what I have accomplished. I wonder if it matters.

I wonder at the meaning of all of this pain and suffering. The assassinations. The hatred. The fear. The terrorism. The hungry. The poor. The prostitutes. The gluttons. The slothful. The consumers. The materialistic. The drunks. The disabled. The dying. The sick. The hospitalized. The weak. The proud.

I don't know what to say. I am all of these ugly things.

But I felt a little relief when I read a friend's blog, about her work in Asia. She drove over 9 hours, across hundreds of miles of switchbacks, to get to the 10-member mountain village. She got there on Christmas Eve and found that she had no means of communicating on her own through the dialects! But she also found that He had made a way, and had made Himself known! Reading about her situation I felt a some relief from despair; Nothing is impossible with God. Indeed. My current funk, my scrungyiness, above all my SIN is not a barricade to Him. He pierced the impossible dividing wall-- He made a way-- with the Cross... This is the only remedy to my despair.

I am driven to despair, but He doesn't leave me there. I end with praise. Amen.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Rocking on

the beautiful AC Newman comments to the lovely Nic Hardcourt on "Morning Becomes Eclectic" about the New Pornographers evolution. Now on their 4th album, he summed up their progression as "it feels like we've been slowly becoming more of what we are."

I love that. They are making music which expressing more truly, more fully, more completely, what their collaboration as musicians means. They are progressing to a truer form of new pornographers. It strikes me as right on. They are not swaying with the trends, not bent on endlessly reinventing themselves, or making concept albums.

They are making rock. And it is good.

It is true on a personal level, too. I think each of us, everyday, is becoming more of who we are. We are making choices everyday which reinforce or alter our identity. The choices I make today affect who the 80-year-old Christine will be. Will she be a hopeful, loving, wise, godly woman who has persevered through the troubles and suffering? Who still loves Jesus and lives for him? Will she endure to the end?

I can't assume I will. I've felt the temptations of the present age quite heavily the last few days... that darn three letter word... and what guarantees that I will become who I want to be?
Only his promise... "that all things work together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28. Only God's faithfulness. He will bring us to the end. And that is the rock to trust in.