Posts Tagged ‘broken’
“When I am gone, you will all have this to ponder and maybe realize why I did what I did. A little push in front of other kids is a very big deal, particularly when you know it’s gonna happen to you every single day, every single day, every single day, you are almost relieved when it actually happens. You are always waiting, waiting for the next attack. They don’t just hurt kids, they make you hurt yourself. I cant take two more years of this, and the more they call me the mad bomber, the more they are scaring themselves. They dont know what am capable of, they dont know what I can do, and then there’s the sanctuary of home sweet home. So, the play, yes Mr. do-gooder, why does he even bother? Doesn’t he know its already too late? Sometimes I see the way things could’ve been, I just wish I could be the person she thinks I am. Kids can be the most ruthless people in the world. They can just be supernaturally cruel. You’ve got to be a man! Be a man! BE A MAN! Sometimes you just wanna cry. Sometimes hate is the only real thing in the world. You can stop loving someone, but hate seems to go on forever. People respect hate. It speaks, it vibrates. Some people don’t even need a gun to hurt you. They use words or laughter. They enjoy watching you bleed to death. They get off watching you fighting back the tears, getting a lump in your throat, blushing, wanting to cry, and they give you a name: Trashcan, pizzaface, loser, faggot, loser, weirdo, spaz, retard. You know the name does something to you. It changes who you are, it alters your molecules and one day you wake up and you look in the mirror and you don’t recognize yourself anymore, because you believe them. They win you lose. You wanna cry, please leave me alone, but nobody listens, because nobody cares, because you don’t have a name anymore because they took it away, and then one day they say that name and you hear something go snap. You realize what you gotta do, you gotta take back your name and you’ve gotta do it in front of the whole school because that’s where they took your name away from you. You gotta do it so every kid will remember. This is about justice and after a while you can only think of one way: Jonesboro, Springfield, Paducah, Columbine, a gun, a bomb, instant justice, Ba-bang! But what a rush when they roll out that yellow tape, miles and miles of yellow tape. They won’t have enough when I’m finished. So when these hallways are flooded with rivers of blood, when these hallways are choked with their corpses in body bags you all say oh what a tragedy, oh what a tragedy, but possibly after viewing my tapes, you wont be so quick to judge. Maybe that’s why I was put in this earth. So consider this my last will and testament.”
from the movie “Bang Bang You’re Dead”
So yes, this is super dark…I’m not feeling dark right now. I just thought of that movie and decided to look up the quotes. Quite scary…
My life goal is to share the solution…the remedy…with those who feel this way…and that solution is Hope…Hope found in a saviour, in a God who loves you beyond your feelings and your hurts and your thoughts…and who can heal you if you let him! Jesus Christ!
The way she feels
Posted on: November 9, 2009
- In: likes | lyrics | thoughts
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In honour of To Write Love On Her Arms Day happening this Friday, November 13th, 2009
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Title: The Way She Feels
Artist: Between the Trees
Album: The Story and the Song
Year: 2006
She’s upset
Bad day
Heads for the dresser drawer
To drive her pain away.
Nothing good can come of this.
She opens it,
There’s nothing there
There is only left over tears.
Mom and dad had no right she screams
The anger runs down both of her cheeks.
Then she closed her eyes
And found relief in a knife
The blood flows as she cries.
All alone the way she feels
Left alone to deal with all the pain-drenched sorrow relief
Bite the lip just forget the bleeding.
Then she closed her eyes
And found relief in a knife
The blood flows as she cries
Wooah oh
Then she closed her eyes
And found relief in a knife
The blood flows as she cries.
Curled up,
She’s on the floor.
The relief left her…
She had hoped for something more
From it (Hoped for something more)
From it
And he leans down to comfort her
She is weeping
And He
Wraps His arms around
And around and around and…
The deeper you cut
The deeper I hurt
The deeper you cut
It only gets worse
The deeper you cut
The deeper I hurt
The deeper you cut
It only gets worse
Gets worse.
Now she’s slowly opening…
Yeah, slowly opening
New eyes…
Then she opened her eyes
And found relief in His life
And put down her knives
Wooah oh
Then she opened her life
And found relief through His eyes
And put down
She put down,
Her knife.
False Freedom
Posted on: November 3, 2009
- In: being Christ-like | my life | thoughts
- 2 Comments
This is one of those “do I push the publish button or not” posts…too real…too fresh…probably too much to put online…but realness beckons!
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I used to go to a church that taught that Christians should never drink…and I believed it too. I didn’t drink, I was a good little girl…and I pretty much judged anyone who claimed to be a Christian and drank…And anyway, I really didn’t get it…”why drink at all…I have fun just like you except I can remember it in the morning…what? you only had one drink, well i’m guessing you probably still blacked out anyway…i mean really how many drinks does it take?”
The problem began when I became dissatisfied with church answers and decided to look to Jesus answers…I went through the bible to try and find that illusive verse that says those who choose to follow Christ should never drink. And I found one…you know the one where Samson is set apart as a Nazarite and never drinks…that proves that God’s people shouldn’t drink right? Ok, never mind that Jesus turned water into wine, and that Paul tells Timothy to drink a little wine – it was only cos the drinking water in that day was so bad for them that they HAD to drink wine…never mind that Jesus offered the disciples wine at the last supper or that the bible says “do not GET DRUNK on wine” not “do not DRINK wine” – same thing really…
Anyway, so here I sit with this conundrum (i really like that word) and feeling like the biggest pharisee in the world for being so judgemental. And then one day I decided to taste this heathen drink…huh, what do you know, actually tastes good. Then one day I decided to buy myself a whole bottle of cider…then another day it was 2…then another…then i got into wine…then i moved to the biggest wine producing region in south africa…spiral!
Why?
I’ve been doing a lot of inward looking lately…trying to work out issues in my life, searching for the root cause and trying to hand ALL the crap to God so he can sort it out. And one thing I realised was that alcohol gives me this sense of false freedom. When you are drunk you can say and do whatever you want…and the next day you can always just blame it on the alcohol…That lie worked for a while, until I realised that “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”, and the same can be said for actions as well. It wasn’t the alcohol making me do those things, it was my brokenness that wanted to do those things…the alcohol just lay down all my inhibitions and brought out the sinfulness that’s already in my heart.
And it really does feel freeing being drunk…really does…but then in the morning you wake up and you are filled with regrets, and that is not freedom! Freedom sets you free…freedom feels free…it feels good…it does not feel like a hangover…or a “oh crap I said/did that last night”…
I recently discovered that freedom is not being able to do or say whatever you want when you want – that more often than not leads to you getting hurt or hurting someone else… Freedom is found in living by the principles that lead to an abundant life. Freedom releases you to love, be loved, be in community, all that good stuff…freedom is not found in hiding, in hurt, in regret. One of my favorite passages in William Young’s “The Shack” is when Papa says to Mack that the Truth shall set you free, and the Truth has a name…Freedom is found in walking with the Truth (i’m paraphrasing).
So I’m learning to walk in the Truth…with The Truth…I’m trying to depend fully on him…trying to lean on him…and find my freedom in him.
Freedom in Love!
Tuesday night saw the return of vision k after a month long hiatus due to school holidays. it was rocking fun. man i miss those students when they are not around…my tuesdays feel so empty without VK.
Anyway, the topic last night was peer pressure…it’s actually two sessions long so this was just the first part. I always enjoy the small groups portion of the sesssion…cos that’s when they get to open up a bit and you really get to know them on a personal level…get inside their heads a bit. So once again here we are talking about the issues they are dealing with and me trying to tell them what the best way to deal with them, which sucks cos i always feel like because I’m not in their shoes, because I haven’t dealt with the stuff they dealt with, I have nothing to bring. I mean, yea, I was pressured into doing stuff by my friends in school, but these kids are so much stronger than I…they have deeper issues than I…where I might have done something to fit in, they might do something as a survival mechanism. So my heart breaks everytime I think of how broken they are…
Especially this one girl who has stolen my heart…there’s a few actually that I’m quite fond of, but she…she’s one of those who could conquer the world…and do great and amazing things and blow everyone away…i just don’t think she realises it. oh, she talks big…to hear her talk you would so disagree with me…but i think life’s dealt her some blows, and she’s been hurt both by people and by God…or who she perceives God to be…and so she’s hardened her heart.
She once said, through streaming tears “I hate God, because He hates me.” How do I tell her – no, show her – that God loves her…cos the thought hate is so ingraned in her mind that me telling her that God loves her is not really gonna change anything…she needs to see that love…needs to feel that love…but as long as she’s closed off to it…I don’t know how that’s gonna happend.
So I try to love her…and I pray that somewhere in that, she sees God…and she returns to him.
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Tomorrow we are going to the movies and then dinner with them…looking forward to it.
God of Justice
Posted on: April 22, 2008
What if Jesus really meant what he said to the rich young man when he told him to “go sell all his posessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me”. That’s the question Shane Clairborn asks in his book “Irresistible Revolution”. It was probably one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Made me think about my walk with Christ. Made me want to be a follower of Christ. Now I’m not saying I’m gonna sell all my posessions (not that I have a lot of them anyway) and be poor, but it means letting the things that break God’s heart break mine. Jesus wasn’t too concerned with the rich and religious people of his day – I mean he did want them to see the light of course, but his main purpose is seen in the people he chose to reside with, the broken, poor, and untouchables. The people society had rejected. As he said, its the sick that need a doctor not those that think they are healthy.
Jesus could have chose to come into this world into a royal family – and maybe more people would have been his followers then (no matter how shallow their following would be) but he chose to come into the world in a manger as the son of a carpenter and become homeless with “no place to rest his head”. Makes you think…
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We live in plenty. There’s more than enough for what the world needs but not for our greed. –quote from Mother Theresa paraphrased by John Ellis in the song Revolution (Sunday, Tree63 – and by the way that is my favorite band if you ever feel like giving me a little prezzie).
What would the world look like if we all unselfishly shared what we had with our neighbor? This is what the early church was all about. This thought kinda follows on my train of thought on living in community – real ubuntu, or at least my understanding of it. It looks really beautiful in my head.
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Matther 25: 34 – 36 and 40 gives us a very practical way to live church and to live all out for Christ. Isaiah 58: 6 – 8 tells us how to let our lights shine before all men that they may see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.
I have fallen in love with 2 songs that talk about this topic – I’ll just give you a little taste.
search my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like you have loved me
break my heart for what breaks yours
everthing i am for your kingdom’s cause
as i walk from earth into eternity
God of Justice (we must go) by Tim Hughes
freely we’ve recieved now freely we will give
we must go live to feed the hungry stand beside the broken
we must go stepping forward keep up from just singing
move us into action, we must go
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I had a revelation the other day – thanks to a friend of mine (Josh Ratiani). For a while my mindset was, live all out for Christ cos if you do then you’ll be covered even if Christianity turns out to be a hoax. Think about it: you’ll be ok with Allah cos you’re a good person, you’ll get to come back as something really good cos you’ll have good karma build up if bhuddism turns out to be true, etc. Here’s the revelation: live so all out for Jesus that if you were to die and find out its all a lie you would want a do over. Paul says we should live our lives so much for Christ that if Christianity is a hoax we should be pitied above all others. In a sense we should live our lives so all out for Christ that even if we are good with Allah, we should look back and say “dude, in that time I was serving JC, I could have [fill in whatever here]“. So that’s my goal: to let my light shine, to do for the least of these, and to recklessly abandon my life to him.
I am gonna need lots of prayer.
The link, by the way, leads you to Josh’s blog. If you have questions on the topic of “God of Justice” I would refer you to him cos that is his passion so i’m sure he’ll have something to say on it. He has unknowingly been instrumental in my spiritual growth in the last year and 4 months that I’ve known him. So yea, even though he’s not gonna read this: thanx Josh.
