2015; Take My Life and Let it Be.

A few days ago, I coincidentally (or not) read my blog again, after around a few years.

It struck me how much has changed.  Obviously, older and hopefully wiser.  Not just that, but how human relationships are different: what you once thought will never change, has.  It struck me, too, how I have changed, not in a desirable way (I think) but that is another story for another day.

Through it all, though, God is the same.  He is the same today, yesterday and forevermore.  Too often, this truth has not hit home as much as I'd like, but looking back, that indeed rings true.

So in the year 2015, amidst the suffering, the pain, and the many seemingly inconceivable events that had plagued us in the year past, I want to dedicate this song and this year to the Lord.  My Lord, my Saviour, my All.  Lord, forgive me that so often I have wandered away, but You have never let me go.  When others have walked away, for one reason or another or none at all, Your everlasting arms are always there.  May You open my eyes to see You more, my heart to trust You more.  Lord, won't You show me, won't You take my life and let it be: consecrated to Thee.

***
Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise.
 

Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
 

Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
 

Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
 

Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
 

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.

***

Choices

So I am faced with a decision I must make in the week ahead or whatever is left of it. And which could or rather most certainly will affect my life in the next couple of years. For obvious reasons this shall at this moment remain a mystery but suffice to say a large portion of my life will change depending on what I choose.

I am at once placed in a position of fear and tremendous blessing. Oxymoron, you say. Not at all. God, I realise, loves to put us in places like these. It is in these moments that we find ourselves completely lost without Him, that each step of the way we find ourselves having to turn to Him constantly asking for guidance asking for help asking for His Holy Spirit to sustain us because we do not know what to do or how to choose. Sadly but this is the truth we human beings and certainly myself do not turn to God out of pure love and obedience that arise from the goodness of our hearts, but from pain and helplessness at which point we truly understand how a Christian means "Christ" without whom "i.am.nothing" (C.h.r.i.s.t.i.a.n. for the benefit of the sometimes slow in brain like yours truly).

It is 1.19am and I ought to be in bed. The past one and half weeks had brought about such immense and intense pain in my life, which I may finally bring myself to write about one day, but I give thanks. I thank Him that He has brought me through relatively unscathed and with a heart yearning and longing and seeking after Him. He has shown me that despite my deliberate disobedience and sinning against Him He has never once left. Not once. Not for a moment and it is this very thought and truth that sustains me each moment each day.

xx
In His beautiful, wonderful and perfect love
Claire

So you would come

Before the world began
You were on His mind
And every tear you cry
Is precious in His eyes
Because of His great love
He gave His only Son
Everything was done
So you would come

Nothing you can do
Could make Him love you more
And nothing that you've done
Could make Him close the door
Because of His great love
He gave His only Son
Everything was done
So you would come

Come to the Father
Though your gift is small
Broken hearts, broken lives
He will take them all
The power of the Word
The power of His blood
Everything was done
So you would come

Powerful song, which words shot through my heart. That there is nothing I can do to make Him love me more. And nothing I have done that could make Him close the door. For too long, I have chased after human affection, or at least some anyway. It gets tiring. Here is my Father saying "Come to Me. I have always loved you this much. And I will always love you this much." The enormity of that blows me away, again and again. May it blow your mind, too.

xx
claire

Mustering the mustard seed

I started on an entirely different note, using entirely different words. Then I thought I am not writing to put up a front. So here you go, what you see is what you get.

I have been very preoccupied with him lately. Make that very very preoccupied. And it struck me how scary it is, when you subconsciously make someone the priority in your life (or at least one of them) it is so easy to be disappointed. You impose on them (again subconsciously or not) the ideals that you always imagined or expected of a perfect person. Except you forget there is no such thing.

Only God is perfect. What would it take to make me realise that? I mean, truly realise that.

How high you place that something or someone on the pedestal is how disappointed you will be. And I am terribly disappointed at the moment.

Serves me right.

I don't envy myself. And sometimes I wish I have the guts to call it quits. Or at least the simple respect for myself. Or even not that, at least the mustard seed of faith that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of. I don't, I'm afraid, have even a millionth of that mustard seed in me right now. I feel lost and so far away from God it is not funny.

Yet the Lord has a strange way of reaching out - a very close friend told me today that no matter what state we are in we have to remember that God loves us all the same. Indeed, His love for me does not grow with what I do nor diminish with what I do or do not do. Although clearly this is no excuse for sinning, for continuing to push Him away and say Lord please stay out of my life. It was a fresh reminder that overwhelmed once again, much like a blast of cold air that shouted of His perfect love.

Only God is perfect. Would it be too late when I truly, if ever, realise that?

claire

Life; fragility

It was a piece of news I dread but always knew would happen at some point.

Apparently my dad had had some mild heart attacks in the past. I don't know if he knew and simply pretended, or if he was truly not aware. All this arose out of a health check up where the doctor refused to give him a clean bill of health, saying his ECG was abnormal. So now the situation is I think rather serious and he needs to see a heart specialist.

At which news my mum admitted that apparently recently my dad had been sprouting odd words re dying. I know he's been experiencing pain in the heart area for years but simply refuses to see the doctor. What's with the older generation and the absolutely illogical belief that ignorance is bliss? No! It's unfair that you subject yourself to this when you may well be cured if anything should be found at the early stages. At home, we are all so exasperated at the degree of his stubbornness. It is rather unfathomable.

I had never wanted to deal with the (obviously very real) possibility of any of my parents' passing on. It is a thought too painful to bear that the mere idea of it could send me into tears. I love my dad and my mum with a love that is sometimes so selfish I am ashamed - perhaps it could hardly be called 'love' in light of their selfless and amazingly sacrificial love for me. But I love them, to the best I can anyway. And the idea that they could be taken away from me just kills me.

My parents are unsaved. And much as I always liked to believe that for the past 10 years of my Christian life, that I truly (for many years really) believed and served and trusted in God with all my heart, my life and my soul, somewhere beneath, I doubted that as I know if my parents were to die unsaved, I would in all likelihood renounce God immediately. It was a thought I could not bear thinking and so one I had put off till today.

I am unable, I conclude, to accept death without salvation, not when you are talking about my loved ones. I know I am silly and my faith is weak. But in all my "humanness" and my inability to comprehend His ways, I refuse and I reject that. I cannot believe that God, being love personified, could do something so cruel. I know, His ways are higher than my ways. I don't deny that. But like I said, in all my humanness, I could not, and would not, accept that.

Things like these make you think of life and how fragile it really is. How the small things that we obsess about are so minute, really, in the final analysis. I sometimes wonder why He puts up with us, in all our pathetic wretchedness.

claire

Weariness

I think this will be one of my most (painfully) honest posts yet.

I am tired of being a Christian, and of knowing Christians who don't follow Christ. No finger pointing here, because I am heading in that direction. It makes me ill to the core when people who proclaim to be Christians behave in a way that shame the cross. I digress.

It hit me today as I was having this conversation with my mum, that I have subconsciously or otherwise been so disillusioned with Christians that that is no longer a prerequisite when striking a friendship, when building a trusted relationship or finding a life partner for that matter. So very not biblical, eh? I'd admit, maybe I have been brainwashed recently by this guy I'm seeing who isn't a Christian. That aside, I could tell you stories. What about that guy before this who had a girlfriend all along, who is - check it out- Christian? And who conveniently forgot to tell me that he was attached all this time? I would just say he goes to church, much like I would go to a mall. What about that guy who broke my heart into pieces, that I thought my heart would die (or maybe it did), who effectively was the cause of my anorexia? He is a Christian through and through. Would you call a girl every night for a few months for hours each time, go out with her often and make her call you everyday no matter where you are so she could share her QT with you so you could discuss deep things of God together, because hey you love her as a sister-in-Christ? I don't need that really. Save it for the suckers who would.

I don't know why I blurted all of that out. But for way too long, that resentment and anger at being treated ridiculously by Christian men has made me very angry with them and with God. It's as if the Lord is creating a huge joke out of this. And now this guy who is not Christian, who seems so wrong but yet I cannot help but hang onto him even though I know I should probably let go before I get plunged back to the depths of depression. It's insane, really. And much as I hate, or perhaps subconsciously refuse, to admit it, I blame God.

I know, matters of the heart - such a silly reason to be angry with God, no? I agree. Could not agree more. But in my very rebellious state, I don't care really. I resent being alone for the rest of my life, with all these Job-like "friends" in the background telling me that His ways work higher than my ways and that I must have sinned and I should not blame God.

Sorry for the rant. It's bedtime now, and I can't help but feel that I need to get right with God. But somewhere, deep down within, those years of hurt, of simple pure faith and of being let down time and again, that kind of disappointment, it's hard to ignore.

claire.

Consumed, blogging and fresh perspectives

I sometimes feel so frivolous, to be consumed by the small things in life that somehow manage to clutter up my sight. And in the process, looming larger than life. What is this problem, really, when you think about the city ruins, the looters, the rubble and the aid workers' agony that is Haiti? This pigeon hole is so small, it's stifling.

In other news, I read in one of my favourite blogs today about blogging. She said that the problem with a blog is that you can only write about the small stuff, those that affect your life in a relatively insignificant way. The big stuff, you must leave out, because of professional ethics and general conduct of propriety (yes, she's a lawyer too). That pretty much aptly sums up the problem I face. I do write about the bigger stuff - otherwise defined as stuff that affects me in a relatively rather significant way, but I can only do so in cryptic terms. Such is the problem with privacy or lack thereof, or that which you give up in being a professional member of a society deemed too honourable to be found otherwise.

In other other news, being on secondment to an investment bank brings a fresh perspective: They pay twice what I earn! Materialistic observations aside, it is refreshing to realise that the law isn't all that matters. Lawyers are but a cost centre in a bank - i.e. you spend money (think salary, appointing external counsel for advice because you can't, and don't, know everything). Unlike a law firm, where you are the money making machine. Here, you realise the world does not revolve around you. You must know even if you don't know. You find out, somehow. These are things I always knew but to see it unfold everyday is a different matter altogether.

Darn, I am going to get found out.

xx
claire