You are cornered. The crowd surrounds you hurling insults at you like rocks. Like rock, each one strikes and bruises as your imperfections and failures are called out publically.
"You're not pretty enough."
"You're messed up."
"You're not good enough."
"You're sick, selfish, insecure, greedy, impatient, lonely, hostile, unforgiving..."
The list goes on but you stop listening. You're broken. Each rock hurts. You believe each rock to be true. You cower in your corner and cry.
Suddenly, everything stops. You slowly open your moist eyes and see a hand reaching to you. Hesitantly you take it and He compassionately pulls you to your feet. He holds you to His chest and comforts you as you cry. When your weeping slows to whimpering, your Savior reaches down and wipes your tears. He touches each one of your bruises as He turns to the crowd.
"How dare you!" He shouts.
God is angry for you.
"These rocks have already been thrown. These insults hurled. This price paid and this punishment fulfilled."
You let go of Him so He can show them the holes in His hands. In His feet. The ripped flesh on His back. This scars on His head. His pierced side.
"How dare you tell her she's not good enough," He continues. "I paid for her. Yes, she can be selfish and insecure. We're working on that. But she's mine. Nothing is going to change that. Ever."
Slowly the crowd slinks backwards and away from you. But He's not done.
"By telling her she's not beautiful, you are insulting My craftsmanship. She is My creation; I formed her to be exactly who I want her to be. I put that place on her head where hair doesn't grow. I put that mole in an awkward spot. I made her ears crooked on purpose. I made her beautiful."
The crowd has vanished now. You look up at Him and whisper, "Is that all true?"
He nods and smiles. "Yes!"
Showing posts with label bruise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bruise. Show all posts
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Baptist Easter
I was nervous about my first Easter in Baptist Country. Come to find out, it was just me being a pessimist. Big surprise. I was wrong. My Easter was very good! Even if no one responded when I called, "He is risen!"
Sometimes when you live in a dorm room you forget what it's like to live in a house. You forget what it's like to not be able to swipe your card and get a (maybe) hot meal but instead have a fully stocked pantry.
Lunch on Friday was a challenge. I can't really call it "lunch." A more accurate term may be: the massive amounts of bizarre food consumed around mid-day. It was Good Friday, so I couldn't eat meat and I don't eat Ramen (so many college students live on Ramen noodles that it's my goal to graduate without eating them), Elizabeth can't cook anything except mac & cheese and there wasn't any, Jennifer only wanted cereal, and Emily only likes food that begins with the letter "c" and won't eat food that begins with "p." Thus our lunch dilemma. We ate: Ramen (not me), rice and cinnamon, cereal, cantaloupe, applesauce, pudding, and string cheese. Don't tell Mrs. Mary. :-)
When you live in a house you have to remember that the blurry red lights across the bedroom aren't just there to be annoying but to someone they reveal the time in the middle of the night...
Something you may not know about me: I am a bad bed partner. I talk, I kick, I really hate sleeping on the top bunk without a safety bar because, well, I use the whole bed and sometimes more. When I learned Elizabeth and I were going to be sharing a double bed for five nights I was scared... for her sake. Even if I only kicked her once every night that would still leave five painful bruises on her legs. As it turns out, I never kicked her but instead I took an elbow to the face in the middle of the night. Thanks, friend. She said it's because I stole the covers. I told her if she would have asked nicely I would have given them back but nooooo she had to get violent on me. :-)
In a home, everything has a place and the only thing out of place is Bananagrams, the most frequently played game in the house.
When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see Bananagrams letters. I'm kind of experiencing withdrawals being back on campus. It's a word game kind of like Scrabble but better; we played for hours every day. This is marvelous for word-lovers like me. Not so great for the weird math-lovers like my future roommate Jennifer or friend Chris. No one is still quite sure how Andy was able to play Bananagrams with one hand and look up spellings in the dictionary with the other. Either way his "n comes after m" got really annoying... If you can't use a word in a sentence, define it, or spell it then you can't use it!
When you live on campus sometimes you forget driving can actually be faster than walking...
Since I wasn't home for Easter, some traditions had to be broken... like sitting in a dark closet for three hours on Friday afternoon to commemorate Jesus' time on the cross. One tradition I refused to sacrifice was the Good Friday Service of Darkness. It's an incredibly powerful service for Jesus reflecting on the seven things He said from the cross. I forced Chris, Andy, and Elizabeth into funeral clothes and to the Lutheran church down the road (not to be confused with the funeral home). We were teasing about the five cars outside and all of us leaving wearing black; people were going to start calling asking who died. Jesus did. Well, we walked into church and the first person we saw was wearing bright green scrubs. Another person was wearing an Easter bonnet. And there we were all dressed in black... So maybe this Lutheran church is a bit different than mine. My three Baptist friends were good sports about it, though.
When you live in a house you forget that in some places of the world there are commitments before 8am.
Including Elizabeth and her two sisters, Andy, and me there were five of us fighting for one bathroom. We were really expecting this to be a huge problem Easter morning, but it actually wasn't too bad! For the first time in years we made it to the Sonrise service on time! I'd never been to a Sonrise service, so it was a cool experience to stand in the parking lot and put flowers on the cross. It a beautiful tradition and it works in Baptist Country, but it wouldn't work in place where a white Easter is feasible.
When you live in a house you have real dishes and nice china, too.
This Easter was the first holiday without my family. I handled it a lot better than I anticipated... until Mrs. Mary asked me to set the table and handed me a set of plates. The china pattern was the exact same as my mom's. Our also rarely-used good china was being placed around a rarely used dining room table 900 miles away where, according to an earlier text from my sister, a place had been set for me. I think I'm going to be late...
All in all, my Easter was great!
Care for some quotes for good measure?
Emily: What's the lowest note you can sing?
Andy: Um... I think a seven.
Emily: Will you do it?
Andy walks in carrying a heap of blankets
Elizabeth: What's that?
Andy: My gardening utensils.
Jennifer: Will you hold my Nerds? And don't tell me I am what I eat!
Elizabeth: I feel like a limp noodle!
Andy: Emily, can I put this pig in your speed bump?
<>< Katie
Sometimes when you live in a dorm room you forget what it's like to live in a house. You forget what it's like to not be able to swipe your card and get a (maybe) hot meal but instead have a fully stocked pantry.
Lunch on Friday was a challenge. I can't really call it "lunch." A more accurate term may be: the massive amounts of bizarre food consumed around mid-day. It was Good Friday, so I couldn't eat meat and I don't eat Ramen (so many college students live on Ramen noodles that it's my goal to graduate without eating them), Elizabeth can't cook anything except mac & cheese and there wasn't any, Jennifer only wanted cereal, and Emily only likes food that begins with the letter "c" and won't eat food that begins with "p." Thus our lunch dilemma. We ate: Ramen (not me), rice and cinnamon, cereal, cantaloupe, applesauce, pudding, and string cheese. Don't tell Mrs. Mary. :-)
When you live in a house you have to remember that the blurry red lights across the bedroom aren't just there to be annoying but to someone they reveal the time in the middle of the night...
Something you may not know about me: I am a bad bed partner. I talk, I kick, I really hate sleeping on the top bunk without a safety bar because, well, I use the whole bed and sometimes more. When I learned Elizabeth and I were going to be sharing a double bed for five nights I was scared... for her sake. Even if I only kicked her once every night that would still leave five painful bruises on her legs. As it turns out, I never kicked her but instead I took an elbow to the face in the middle of the night. Thanks, friend. She said it's because I stole the covers. I told her if she would have asked nicely I would have given them back but nooooo she had to get violent on me. :-)
In a home, everything has a place and the only thing out of place is Bananagrams, the most frequently played game in the house.
When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see Bananagrams letters. I'm kind of experiencing withdrawals being back on campus. It's a word game kind of like Scrabble but better; we played for hours every day. This is marvelous for word-lovers like me. Not so great for the weird math-lovers like my future roommate Jennifer or friend Chris. No one is still quite sure how Andy was able to play Bananagrams with one hand and look up spellings in the dictionary with the other. Either way his "n comes after m" got really annoying... If you can't use a word in a sentence, define it, or spell it then you can't use it!
When you live on campus sometimes you forget driving can actually be faster than walking...
Since I wasn't home for Easter, some traditions had to be broken... like sitting in a dark closet for three hours on Friday afternoon to commemorate Jesus' time on the cross. One tradition I refused to sacrifice was the Good Friday Service of Darkness. It's an incredibly powerful service for Jesus reflecting on the seven things He said from the cross. I forced Chris, Andy, and Elizabeth into funeral clothes and to the Lutheran church down the road (not to be confused with the funeral home). We were teasing about the five cars outside and all of us leaving wearing black; people were going to start calling asking who died. Jesus did. Well, we walked into church and the first person we saw was wearing bright green scrubs. Another person was wearing an Easter bonnet. And there we were all dressed in black... So maybe this Lutheran church is a bit different than mine. My three Baptist friends were good sports about it, though.
When you live in a house you forget that in some places of the world there are commitments before 8am.
Including Elizabeth and her two sisters, Andy, and me there were five of us fighting for one bathroom. We were really expecting this to be a huge problem Easter morning, but it actually wasn't too bad! For the first time in years we made it to the Sonrise service on time! I'd never been to a Sonrise service, so it was a cool experience to stand in the parking lot and put flowers on the cross. It a beautiful tradition and it works in Baptist Country, but it wouldn't work in place where a white Easter is feasible.
When you live in a house you have real dishes and nice china, too.
This Easter was the first holiday without my family. I handled it a lot better than I anticipated... until Mrs. Mary asked me to set the table and handed me a set of plates. The china pattern was the exact same as my mom's. Our also rarely-used good china was being placed around a rarely used dining room table 900 miles away where, according to an earlier text from my sister, a place had been set for me. I think I'm going to be late...
All in all, my Easter was great!
Care for some quotes for good measure?
Emily: What's the lowest note you can sing?
Andy: Um... I think a seven.
Emily: Will you do it?
Andy walks in carrying a heap of blankets
Elizabeth: What's that?
Andy: My gardening utensils.
Jennifer: Will you hold my Nerds? And don't tell me I am what I eat!
Elizabeth: I feel like a limp noodle!
Andy: Emily, can I put this pig in your speed bump?
<>< Katie
Thursday, July 3, 2008
War Wounds
Today was more of a winter day than a construction day... The banging has stopped temporarily, but I am wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt. What the crap?
I cut the grass today for the third time since Saturday. I've come to a conclusion: cutting the grass shouldn't be this painful. It is literally painful for all aspects of personal health. Ok, maybe not relational, but then again, I've never tried to have a deep conversation on the tractor. Emotionally it's hard especially when the neighbors are those kinds of people who measure their grass with a rule and use a scissors to cut the grass (just kidding, but only a little). Spiritually it's a challenge because I listen to sermons on my iPod. Mentally it's a strategic battle because I have to make sure I'm going the right direction at the right time in order to avoid grass shavings in the trees... (Whatever you say, Dad.)
Cutting the grass causes physical pain. Our trees, bushes, etc. are taking over and desperately need trimming! Cutting the grass next to them involves scratching, pricking, and (since it just rained) wetness. It's not pleasant. Especially compiled with the fact that my "Lay on the steering wheel, close your eyes, hit the gas, and pray for the best" no longer saves me from scars.
Cutting the grass leaves me with war wounds in the same way being a witness for Christ leaves me with war wounds. Wounds from the trees are a lot more visible on the outside, but wounds for Christ hurt just as much on the inside. God's changing out lives and sometimes we have to get a little dirty in order for Him to do it. To quote Audio Adrenaline, 'Let's get dirty, let's get used..."
<>< Katie
I cut the grass today for the third time since Saturday. I've come to a conclusion: cutting the grass shouldn't be this painful. It is literally painful for all aspects of personal health. Ok, maybe not relational, but then again, I've never tried to have a deep conversation on the tractor. Emotionally it's hard especially when the neighbors are those kinds of people who measure their grass with a rule and use a scissors to cut the grass (just kidding, but only a little). Spiritually it's a challenge because I listen to sermons on my iPod. Mentally it's a strategic battle because I have to make sure I'm going the right direction at the right time in order to avoid grass shavings in the trees... (Whatever you say, Dad.)
Cutting the grass causes physical pain. Our trees, bushes, etc. are taking over and desperately need trimming! Cutting the grass next to them involves scratching, pricking, and (since it just rained) wetness. It's not pleasant. Especially compiled with the fact that my "Lay on the steering wheel, close your eyes, hit the gas, and pray for the best" no longer saves me from scars.
Cutting the grass leaves me with war wounds in the same way being a witness for Christ leaves me with war wounds. Wounds from the trees are a lot more visible on the outside, but wounds for Christ hurt just as much on the inside. God's changing out lives and sometimes we have to get a little dirty in order for Him to do it. To quote Audio Adrenaline, 'Let's get dirty, let's get used..."
<>< Katie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)