INCANDESCENT

     Sometimes I feel like I’m walking through a city full of landmines. A city where every corner has a memory and every street has a person I’d rather avoid, waiting for me to walk smack into it and blow up all resolve that I have or at least thought I had. Austin has become a place where a lot of amazing experiences have turned into tortuous memories. A place of hollow words and broken promises. A place of being so close to a dream and at the same time being so far away. It’s like looking out at your Promised Land through the path of a graveyard.

     This makes me want to run and run quick. Move away, to a different state on the opposite side of the world, perhaps even a different country, and shut down all but necessary communication i.e have a good and basic international phone plan where I can stay in minimal contact with close friends and family. This actually isn’t far from my normal process of retreating or running. I don’t think I really realized that until my mom pointed it out. I tend to completely cut people out of my life when I’ve been hurt. I shut down all communication, contact, get rid of everything that holds any form of memory and I head in the opposite direction as if the people never existed and I make a point to vanish just the same. I know I was headed in that direction the day I talked to my mom and she pretty much told me I better not do that, lol. Gotta love your mama! And it is taking all I have in me not to disappear from the world. Not to “chunk deuce…chuck deuce…??” and do the same thing all over again…or actually finish the process of that which I’d started a couple of years back.

     Now, do I actually want to move? Yes! Lol…but not for the right reasons. Ok…wait…no, no, I don’t want to move, I just don’t want to live here. I don’t want to be in this current “state” of being or feel as if I have to face a constant, daily reminder of so many of my disappointments in life. The truth is some of those that I love the most and are the closest to are also connected to some of the people that have hurt me the most and that is a hard pill to swallow. I know, cry me a river, right?! Well, it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to! Lol…but seriously, it’s just something I realize I will have to continue to fight to get over because I’m just not willing to give up my friendships regardless of how difficult it can be. I guess that means I’m not moving…sigh. Well, at least not out of Texas just yet but that doesn’t mean I have to stop moving forward.

     God is allowing me the opportunity to truly bury the “skeletons” in my closet…the zombies that continue to follow me around and gnaw on my thoughts and try to kill the future that they know do not include them. Maybe that’s why I feel like I’m standing in the midst of a graveyard. I need to stop lollygagging around dead things, things that are not life giving. I need to stop dwelling on the past and using it as an excuse to not walk into my future, my promised land. I need to stop playing over conversations and decisions that continuously cause me to regress into what I do not want to be…doing what I do not want to do. Now I think I better understand Romans 7:15:

”I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. ~NLT”

    Trust me when I say I do not wake up every morning wanting to live in the past and respond to my future through the hurts and disappointments of what has happened to me. I do not want to treat my friends and family like they’re all trying to basically murder me. I do not want to categorize everyone into the “don’t trust” pile. I do not want to snap at those that love me because they’re getting too close. I do not want to shy away from great opportunities because I’m afraid that I will invest too much and it will in turn fall apart or be taken away. I do not want to live this gift of life that God has given to me scared to take risks and love and stand out and trust and be different and be vulnerable and yet I so often do the very thing I do not want to do.

"Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. ~NLT”

      When I find myself sulking on the shoulda-coulda-woulda’s, I will have to make the effort to re-focus on all of the blessings God has given me and the love he continues to show me. Thank God for his promises and provision even BEFORE I see any of it come to pass. Eventually, it will become easier to believe what the Lord says as opposed to what your fears and past say. It will be easier to hope in the midst of trial and just processing life. It will be easier to fully depend on the Lord and your flesh will become trained to lean towards the Lord more often and produce the responses you want to actually have.

     All of this is not easy and I'm sure in my attempt to live this out, I will cry and make mistakes and even forget what God has said and find myself sulking again but as long as God continues to remind me to re-focus, which thankfully he has been so faithful to do, I will continue to wipe my tears and wash my face and try again. And through the strength of our Lord, this process will become a healthy habit that produces amazing fruit and amazing joy in my life. ; )