“been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time…” led zeppelin

it’s been a long long time since my last post. i know. i’d be surprised if anyone reads this one. if anyone hasn’t completely given up on me. love you guys if you haven’t, understand if you did. that being said, i have something to say…

hillsong united is in town and had a concert in alpharetta this evening. i hadn’t been planning to go, but got a great text from a great friend asking if i wanted tickets for tonight. since i rarely get to sit in a congregation and hide out to personally and privately worship, i revel in these opportunities. so i accepted them, called a friend to come with, and ended up with maybe the best seats in the house. i saw a lot of my friends. a lot. people i hadn’t seen in a long time. and i was happy to see them. but i wasn’t there for them. 

there’s something slightly awkward about being in the front during worship. i love it and i hate it. it sounds completely ridiculous, i know. i can be on stage just fine, but there are moments when i want to truly hide out in worship and in those moments i don’t want to think about anyone around me at all. i always feel a bit exposed in the front. once i got myself past that, i stood and sang and danced and worshipped and engaged my heart with God’s, and felt the freedom and release that comes with giving in to what i was created to do. 

there’s something about singing truth. i’ve said that before and i’ll say it again… when you sing or speak truth out loud, something happens to your spirit. no matter what you intended to do with those words, they move your heart. i hold firmly to that. the more i sang truth, tonight about who God is and what He has done and what He has called us for and promised to us… the more truth about myself kept coming to light. the revelations that i’m so often scared to have. i’ve caught myself not engaging lately. with the people around me, with myself, with God even. keeping things under control because i don’t have the time for life changing revelations right now. how sad is that? 

so sad. so sad that, when i allow those revelations to come in, it’s like a flood washing over me. tonight i had a huge one. we talked about God love for us tonight. i’ve found myself not accepting or believing God’s love for me lately. (go ahead, gasp. worship leader chick missing key points, i know) my life is riddled with storms. i can’t explain why there are so many, but there are. i’ve accepted that mine is just “one of those stories”. rescue seems to be the theme. and for rescue to be a theme in a story, there must be peril. and there typically is. peril. in some form or another. but i decided a long time ago, that no matter what, i would love and worship and serve the Lord. and that is precisely what i am doing and will continue to do. and even if He decided not to love me for whatever reason, i would worship just as strongly as ever. and somewhere along the way, sadly, i started to believe that’s possible. that it’s even probably the case. that i’m in yet another one sided relationship, but i would choose to love anyway. 

it’s just not true. i’m a hypocrite. i proclaim the love of Christ to anyone who will listen to me. i want to shower dejected people with the knowledge that they are loved by the greatest love there ever could be. but i don’t claim it for myself. and what’s worse is i’m starting to believe that’s ok. 

and i think that’s why i break down almost completely when i sing about His love for me. because i long for it. i look for it. and it’s always there, but i don’t receive it often enough. i don’t sit in it’s lap when i’m invited. i try not to ask it too many questions or repeat myself too many times, so as not to annoy it. i need to spend a lot of time curled up in it over this next course of time. i cleared my day tomorrow to help out with something that turns out i’m not needed for. but i initially got these tickets for doing this thing tomorrow. i think there’s something to that. i think i needed to revel in worship that much tonight. and i think i needed to have tomorrow completely free to revel in His love all the more. 

sorry this is so long… though i’m sure i don’t have any readers left anyway! especially since i seem to take over a month to post anymore. it’s high time i let God do some work in my life. and i know that to do that, there will be many many tears as He heals a lot of broken heartedness within me. but i also trust that joy comes with that too. that a new confidence will rise within me. one i haven’t seen in a very long time. and that truth will actually set me free. 

oh… why do we keep learning the same lessons in life over and over again? i’m glad He doesn’t tire of teaching them to us.