I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading, for allowing me to build the back story as best I could and as the Lord led, and for understanding I have no clue what I am doing. Thank you also for your patience as I settle into a rhythm for writing that is comfortable and not sacrificial to the ever present needs of my little family, particularly as I grow and learn to become a more active rather than passive parent.
I never intended for this to turn into anything but me trying to make sense of what is now my everyday existence -- because trust me -- I could have never come up with this material on my own. I'm not even a writer.
And if you are skeptical, thank you too for visiting and reading the words I never -- listen -- in my wildest dreams ever thought I would write. If you have been judged and mistreated by those who call themselves Christians, I am sorry for that, I truly am. The one thing that has stuck out to me the most is how even as a non Christian, I always knew -- I knew -- just like you might know-- that the people who treat you that way and use God, just know they are trying to fill the same hole you have. No one likes to feel empty. Depeche Mode said it best: People Are People, and people are broken. Some people use people. Some people become self righteous. Some folks use drugs. Become enslaved to online gaming or porn. But in that there's one thing in common: neither camp has ever experienced Grace -- God's riches at Christ's expense-- because if you have, by golly, you can share it.
It is encouraging to see the traffic to this site and to hear the stories of how this blog speaks to you. I would like to encourage comments and feedback. Please, feel free to send me an email with any questions, comments, or suggestions.
It is evident lots of people are reading this blog, and I encourage you also to either become a fan/follower or to sign up via email. Some people have asked how to do this and since I myself am not the best with computers, I am sensitive to your questions -- both of those options are available to you in the column on the right. Also, if you feel led to share this blog, please do. Use your social media, Facebook, Twitter, your email contacts, whomever -- what I have learned in this as the story of the Russian at Wal Mart demonstrates: You never know who this will touch.
If you choose to remain anonymous that's cool too. You can do that by signing up via email. I have no idea who registers. And if there's a way, I haven't figured it out yet.
Again, thank you for following, for reading these sometimes long sentences and even longer entries. Apparently, as someone recently told me, it is worth taking the time to read. She said she gets so caught up in the everyday, these stories somehow bring her back, and in each one she told me there has been something that applies to her own life, either via the story or the links or videos, and she thanked me for doing this.
God's timing is perfect -- perfect -- and today I heard something in my study of Ruth I shall share for those of you who have ears to hear: You may be in church, in your bible study, but perhaps your heart is in Moab. But Naomi went back to Bethlehem, where the famine had ended, bringing with her a Moabite woman. As Driscoll points out, that is like an African American woman in the Jim Crow south finding herself a real nice church filled with white folk. Risky. Scary. People may even fight you, resist you, hurt you -- but all are welcome. I don't know if you are Naomi and left God's blessing or Ruth, who never knew God, but dropped all in blind faith to know Him. In that risk, she met Boaz, and was placed in the lineage of Jesus, as the great grandmother of King David.
For those of you who don't think you deserve a love like this -- let me share this with you.
Today's Godwink? Even before I knew Him, even when I HATED him -- I HATED him -- I probably would have spit on Jesus at some point if ever I saw him in the flesh -- he protected me in ways I am just coming to understand. Why? He had already picked me and get this -- loved me enough to guard my mind and my heart when I was unable.
I also want to thank you for this opportunity because through it God is teaching me so much. I thank Him for the opportunity to grow in humility, first and foremost, because as Cate Blanchett said in my other favorite movie Elizabeth, "This is the Lord's doing."
There's so much more to come. Everyday since July 14th 2011 has been like being on a never ending roller coaster and happily I can barely hold onto my seat. It has been elating, scary, threatening, calm, tender, lonely, dark, risky, so bright I'm blinded, I've cried, exhausting, busy, a whirlwind, circular, did I say scary?numbing, hurtful, beautiful, weighty, and even grave. But most of all -- its been the best ride of my life.
And in the next entry, I will be strapped in, respectfully, right next to the Professor, James. The one after that -- well, you'll see.
It has been a decade since I left your beautiful streets, smoggy air, and the sound of mosquitoes whizzing past my ears JUST as I drift to sleep during a hot summer night. It has been 10 years since I have laid eyes on all things I found most precious and perfect -- your history I breathed, the art that made me sink, swollen with Envy, your people - as they walk nameless in the crowded streets on their way to somewhere else in your beautiful belly.
And I have come back to say Goodbye to you, finally after so long of trying to keep you locked in my heart so that I could never forget you. In my love for you I have crippled the very thing that brought me to your gates -- my creativity. In holding onto you, Ive kept all I learned and have learned nothing more, resulting in the stagnant, ugly waters in which I now stand and have been trying to get out of. Now I know why. You have been my Mistress for too long.
I know that by trying to hold onto you, I tried to keep you close so I would never forget you. Now my dreams -- my very lucid dreams I've had for years and are the only repeating dream I've ever had in my life make sense. In every dream I am close to Florence. Or in it -- at times, I can smell it. But I can see nothing, not even the people I went to see. Cant go where I want to go. I may get very close, but then something or someone whisks me away. Sometimes I yell in Italian -- so loud I wake myself up.
For years I have been plagued with these dreams -- and I thought they were there to remind me of what I love -- but now I see their purpose was to tell me to let go.
These dreams are much like my attempts at painting. I get a taste, an itch, and when I go to scratch it, with a specific purpose or technique in mind -- the end result is nothing more than the same color palette from school -- and the same kind of disappointment in myself and my artwork that I have at the close of these dreams.
Florence, your Golden Age of which I so identified is long past -- your people have moved forward. They found automobiles, electricity, computers and planes, without minding the rules of your Renaissance. Each addition took creativity, new thought, built upon the rules before them. Each modern creation is, in and of itself, a Renaissance.
I am kidding no one -- my memories of you are fading. The truth is I am not a better person than other people because I got to live there -- having lived there is not what makes me special, creative, and it does not define my ability to live with purpose.
You are my longest lover. I have lingered in your light too long, though I dream of the day you will touch me again. I want nothing more.
I've spent a decade saying I left my Soul in your city -- and now I am aghast at how foolish I have been.
My Lover, I let you go, here on this paper from your very land. Perhaps now I can find myself, and one day find my way back to you -- not in shackles -- but in gratitude.
Blessedly Free for my Golden Age, Hollie
After writing that, I simply fell into a puddle, overwhelmed with tears, grief, and a great relief. That was the night I gave up Italy. My two years there ended abruptly, for three reasons: 9/11, we ran out of borrowed money, and my Italian boyfriend and I had to end our year and a half together in twenty minutes, due to a family emergency in Naples, just two days before I left the country for good. I placed him on a pedestal he had no place sitting on. It is sad that quite frankly, I didn't remove him from that pedestal where he sat like an untouchable God until about five years ago. That was the nature of my codependency.
It was wrong of me, and still is wrong of me to exepect him or anyone else to bring to me the happiness and joy that is only found by looking up, to the maker of all things. But as Calvin said, the human heart is a factory of idols.
I hate to say it, but his family emergency may have been a lie. Its possible. Who knows. But there I was, late afternoon, standing in my living room, crying my eyes out feeling as if I had been punched in the gut. Writing this, I recall standing with my hands at my sides, palms up, desperately just sad and empty. The large square window was open to the small courtyard without a view, and the afternoon sun just poured into that room (the sun does not shine anywhere in the world like it does in Italy). I felt as if I had been bathed in it -- yet -- there he went. My tall, strong, and handsome, curly haired and milk skinned Piero disappeared into the dark, meandering hallway I hated, that led to the very door I would exit myself in two days time, on my way "home."
When I wrote this letter, I let go of my most Precious Thing. Whats amazing is I just realized is the night I wrote about in my last post is the night that forged the very artistic style I lament in this letter, the one I am still stuck in. Now that has all come together, I look forward to what healing will bring.
When I realized what I had written in this letter, I made this envelope and cut a section out of my art journal so it could house this letter. The happiest accident of all? Closure came all at once.
That is a picture of the Pazzi Chapel, an early Renaissance chapel built by Brunelleschi. If you've ever seen the movie Hannibal, that is the building of the Opera scene. As it happens, Hannibal Lector is my favorite villain of all time. Another happy accident: I was there when the movie was filmed. The chapel is attached to my favorite structure in all of Florence, the church of Santa Croce, where my favorite artist of all time, Michelangelo is buried.
And,
My last apartment was literally one block to the right on Borgo Santa Croce.
My journey had its many ups and downs, but one thing remained constant. The creativity that literally crafted my identity was gone.Truly, I fought with myself for years over this. Yes, right before I found out I was pregnant with Amelie I stretched a thirteen foot canvas I had intended to be the center piece of a triptych -- but here's the deal -- even by that point I felt my "talent" disappearing. So I secretly blamed motherhood for the loss of my creativity.
Feeling that --that thing-- that one thing that has made you you your entire life-- to feel it simply die is gut wrenching, and for me it happened slowly. Like I said in the previous post, I was born with a crayon. My earliest memory drawing something was guess what? An eye. I think it was about fourth grade, and at that time these gals I drew always had on purple and blue eyeshadow. Truly my last memory of drawing freely --being completely and utterly free-- was one night in my apartment on via XX Settembre in Florence, during my first semester.
I'm a nightowl. That is a trait I have always blamed on my Sweet and Precious Grandmother Taylor who, even into her late 80's, would stay up until at least one am. She just did. For me, that's when my creativity would just pour out of me. And on this night in Florence, I taped a long row of heavy, cream colored, medium texture paper to the walls, got out my vine charcoal, my pressed coal, and my burnt red and white Conte crayons and for hours and hours I drew.
Furiously I drew, free handed I created one of the most stunning profiles I've ever done. That was, by three am, a night for Tori Amos, my huge Koss headphones and I. It was a night the exaggerated arias upon which I pitched my soul rang with the exact purpose of penetrating the recesses of a heart that simply ached. It was in her voice I could search the corridors of that heart. That was the night I felt I went To Venus and Back.
Frequently I would step back and review my work. So began the dance as I dug my bare feet into the marble floor to literally brace myself and wage a war as my arms would delve in and that charcoal would grate that paper. The grit fell to floor like sheets of chiffon, into little piles and peaks that resembled a spilled bag of bittersweet chocolate chips. My work that night was bittersweet. It was the one night in Florence I remember being enveloped in the cushioned, angsty groans of Tori's throat, a night I laid down all the aesthetic harmony I could muster for the very last, most gut wrenchingly honest time.
Again and again I would pause to step back and review where my furor had taken me, what was shaded too heavily, what needed more or less. I would draw with the charcoal, smear with a finger, rub with the side of my hand, drag the coal down the page with my forearm, then extract lines and draw with my eraser. Erase. Redo. Realize I didn't have any clean skin left and then would use my clothes as a towel, so the ridges of my fingerprints would be clean enough to grab any remaining coal. It was the furor divinus described by Plato. During the last two minutes of the song my entire body would crash into her crescendo as I drew, my head would throb and tick to the staccato of her screams and beat of the drums as inwardly I composed the condition of my literal soul. She could scream for me in places I did not know hurt. But what I didn't know was I had an audience.
Of the two roomates I had, the blond one had been watching me for something like thirty minutes or more as I "sang" what must have been an awful noise, dipping down, swingin, goin to town on that papered wall I would later have to erase, and I had no clue. I'm sure I looked utterly insane, particularly to this poor gal, who had no studio experience whatsoever. It was impossible to tell I turned ten shades of red simply because my hands were solid black from the charcoal and every time I'd step back I'd put my hands on my chin, my forehead, my arms ,where ever. I'm sure I looked awesome in that very moment.
What a pair. Tori Amos, a preacher's kid, and me, lookin like a coal miner's daughter.
Those were some of my best pieces that first semester. I am thankful for these photos, for they are all that remain of that portfolio-- it was stolen, minutes before my final exam. I hadn't even signed them yet. Most of the drawings were that fresh.
What I find most ironic is that it was prior to college my artwork flourished. I showed in galleries. I sold my work. I painted murals. Yet, college killed me. I turned academic.
I began to think too much and in that I began to doubt myself.
I tried a myriad of solutions to make it better--even going back to school. Yet every time I would even pick up a pencil, I'd feel the need for a crutch, and then -- every time -- would be disappointed. Everyone could see it in me, and everyone else was pleased with what I did make, but I never liked any of it.
In the last five years my will began to crumble, and I began a myriad of self help books. Self help audio. Self help this and self help that. One thing I've learned folks: One can only help oneself so much. Eventually there's nowhere to go. You can't lean on people, because people are people and people let you down. You can't depend on you, because you let you down. So, I determined I was going to do whatever was necessary to get back to it and I happened upon The Artist's Way. Lo and behold, it was even spiritual. It included concepts like prayer. Positive thinking. But most importantly, and I somehow knew, it was merely served to open a door to something much larger than myself.
I didn't get very far.
During week two I took myself on the required artist date and went to Half Price Books There I purchased a lovely vintage book I could then creatively desecrate and finally tune into my long standing desire to turn a book into an art journal. This book was perfect. I knew I couldn't draw. I knew I wanted to draw -- I was going to make a conquest of this, this thing,this block. I wanted me back. At the time, all I knew of my problem was my love of the Renaissance standard was in the way. This book fit perfectly into my scheme, quite simply because it is about the very root of the Renaissance: The Greeks.
Late at night, during my second round of this creative chemo, something came over me. I had just finished drawing my own hand -- the most basic assignment of any art class.
It was ubiquitous and it was all I could do to get a pen and paper fast enough before the words left my ever loving mind.
I am no writer. I mean -- I am a painter. I mean, its what I went to school for. Who would think I would ever be crafting words, if you will, simply to share this story that God has given me to tell you. A story. It's not even mine -- I'm just a player in it. I write papers. Art History papers. Here's one -- The Obscurity of Michelangelo: Self Portraiture and it's Paternal Source. Yeah, a fun read, isn't it?
You see, in my former self, I would refer to Michelangelo as my main man, the Humanist of Humanists, the only one of his day that lived and breathed the Neoplatonic fuel that was the Renaissance. The very heart of my study --my identity-- was wrapped up in him. I even lived one block from his house on Via Ghibelina, and would only live in the Santa Croce neighborhood of Florence (because it simply is the best part of town and) he's buried there. Period.
But you see, that is yet another example of the delicacy of God's hand and how gently He is woven into life. It's how He works.
Michelangelo was what? A painter too right? It's what you think of. I guarantee you think Sistine before David. But oh contraire, my darlings. He never thought him self a painter but rather a sculptor,quite literally because painting was viewed as the lesser artform. This is a humorous drawing on the side of one of his thousands of poems (which flows much better in the old Italian) that reads:
I've already grown a goiter at this drudgery --
Self Caricature of painting the Sistine
as the water gives the cats in Lombardy,
or else it may be in some other country--
which sticks my stomach by force beneath my chin.
With my beard toward heaven, I feel my memory box
atop my hump; I'm getting a harpy's breast;
and the brush that is always above my face,
by dribbling down, makes it an ornate pavement.
My loins have entered my belly, and I make
my ass into a counterweight;
without my eyes, my feet move aimlessly.
In front of me my hide is stretching out
and, to wrinkle up behind, it forms a knot,
and I am bent like a Syrian bow. Saslow, James. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
I was born with a crayon. Watching my daughter at a mere eight years old, it's amazing ,because she has the itch too. However, the first time I recall my passion for Michelangelo, and the Renaissance specifically, I was in the 9th grade, on my way to spend an hour with Frau Landers in my German class and looked into the glass windows of the library. What were those kids doing? They were in Humanities, and were painting on sheets of butcher paper, taped underneath the tables, to get a better idea of what Michelangelo went through.
It was shortly after I fell in love with Michelangelo I set out to paint my first mural. I was in the 10th grade I believe.
My bedroom wall, now my moms office.
This is the Sibyl that foretold the "coming of the day when that which is hidden shall be revealed." I just learned that.
Thus began my love of Renaissance art. Prior to my senior year of high school, I had never taken an Advanced Placement class. In the twelfth grade I took AP Studio, AP Art History, and AP European History. I was in love, and my path was set, straight for Italy. I know like I know now that was a God thing. Never taken an advanced level course, and so I take three and perfectly comfortable in all of them? That's God.
God gave me my love of Michelangelo. God put it in my heart to see the similarities between us: both of us lost a parent at six years old, both of us spent a lifetime struggling to find the other parent in other people. Michelangelo was born in the city that gave birth to the Renaissance, the very city I came to live in, and spent the happiest years of my life.
Listen -- the Renaissance-- do you know what it means? Literally it means Rebirth. How sweet He came before me, and gave me a passion for this Rebirth, as to lovingly temper the term "Born Again." This was a phrase I wanted nothing to do with. To be this would make me judgmental, self righteous, and mean. Born Again! Over and over I heard it, and none of those people were kind it seemed, or genuine in the least.
Because He foreknew me, and how much hurt would come in the misuse of such a simple term that would turn me off -- just look at how the Lord brings me healing and beauty when I finally came to terms with being redeemed. I don't see these scars, I see not only the Renaissance as a whole, but look at that ceiling! This is the literal icon of the Renaissance itself and it's painted by my favorite artist of all time. I can even say and be it without flinching, because the deep love I have for the Renaissance, the creation of man, pales in comparison to what I now know.
One of the people in my past who hurt me the most told me time and time again you can study the bible your whole life --academicize it even --and you will never understand it. They were right. I see now. I have my new goggles, and I also see beauty, healing, forgiveness in it, and although I am not yet completely free, I am on my way, and it is through Christ, and Christ alone.
Genesis, Old Testament Prophets, Pagan Sibyls who Prophesied the coming of Christ, and His ancestors
The central theme of the ceiling is the book of Genesis. From the Separation of Light and Darkness, pictured here on the far right, to the Drunkenness of Noah on the Left. Look just above the first story in Genesis.
One piece of a very large puzzle just fit into place. She was painted on my bedroom wall during a very uncomfortable, very dark time of my life. And that is a Godwink. I love Godwinks.
You know, Michelangelo hated this project. Hated it. He was working fora tyrant, for one, Julius II the Warrior Pope, was not joy to work with by any stretch. His cane was used for more than walking. He was way up high, freezing on the scaffolds in the winter. He even fell from those scaffolds once, which left him seriously injured. Jeez, just imaginethose stairs everyday at least twice a day. He was so tired and depressed even, his students report such a lack of hygene due to self negation that at one point his shoes had been on so long, when the shoes were removed, so was skin. Skin. Yet, in what was probably for him a grueling four years, he created this masterpiece -- the crown jewel of the High Renaissance -- on a flat ceiling.
There are so many truths here. Apply this to your life. What is your Sistine? What about your boss or your coworkers? What is your scaffold, your false sense of security? Friends, people, trinkets and toys? Your PhD, religion, the Universe or the moon?
As for me, I am reconciling my former self to the new creation I am. I refuse, after seeing all of these sweet details fit so perfectly together to feel shame or guilt or fear of these gifts I'm coming to learn He's given me, just because others abused the Word, leaving me to think believing their words made people ugly, spiteful and cruel.If you are reading this and that sentence means something to you, I hope you can hear me when I say that following Christ is nothing, nothing at all like that. Nothing. Trust me -- the wounds I have are so deep I cannot see their depths. It is because of a love, a love I never asked for, I have forgiven and will forgive what I have not yet come to understand of my past.
See, with God the unimaginable is possible. I am totally different, doing things I would have never imagined. I am professing Christ. I spoke to six or seven hundred women in three days on a stage, perfectly comfortable. It seems this is a season for preparedness and learning, readying myself for a call to ministry.
I am a painter, not a writer. An academic, not a story teller. To know that in Christ I can all of a sudden have a hand that writes, and almost a thousand people, apparently, in ten countries, who have read, shared, got mad or curious, and even refreshed, is just simply amazing.
The majority of my six years at Starbucks, required me to get up at 4 am to open the store by 4:30. I was always the perky gal ready to rock and roll, run my bar, and bring smiles to many, which would, at times, annoy my very sleepy coworkers. Sometimes, I'd go so far as even to dance and sing while I merrily made a production line of caffeinated delights. I loved my job and I met so many wonderful people there.
Music has always held a special place in my heart and let me tell you -- it got to a certain point at my old Starbucks, my coworkers would hide this cd from me.
Just now I remembered the title, and just now I wept over this keyboard to see yet another means He was at work, by the title alone.
It was at Starbucks the seeds for my love of Gospel music were planted. First I fell in love with Otis Redding. Then it was Ray Charles. Doo Wop. The music, the rhythm, always got me -- it even affected my child, who took her first steps to "Ive got a Woman." But it was the gospel roots I grew to love most.
No matter what soul or R&B group from the 1950's it was, I always went back to Gospel, much to my family and friend's astonished curiosity. I wasn't a Christian, but I was a Goth girl (not the generic HOt Topic, Marilyn Manson Goth, but Old School Bauhaus Goth) who wore black everyday, real Victorian corsets and bustles, who slowly turned more to Pin Up and Rockabilly as my love of gospel grew. I even admitted it was weird.
You see, I outplayed this CD in the Starbucks I opened, after returning from Italy in 2001. This is also the store that sits caddywompus (yes, that is a word) from Prestonwood Baptist Church, otherwise known as the Bapdidome or the Jesus Bowl, depending on the circle you run with. It is the very church I mention in my video I feared as I watched being built. Why?
The Christians were coming.
No one in the service industry ever wants to work on a Sunday. It's true. Straight out of church, where they supposedly learn to live like Jesus -- and their behavior is exasperating for the most part, not even lined with the courteous gesture of eye contact in conversation as you are about to serve them.
Allow me to use the words of Tim Sinclair from his book Branded to best describe the camp I sat in as an agnostic tossed in the tides of religious people, hiding under a banner of self righteousness and practicing external religion:
Fortunately or unfortunately, the world is watching, and our ridiculous actions aren't fooling anyone. Those who don't know Christ aren't buying the act. In fact, they're ignoring it. Following Jesus has become to them like a high school variety show, complete with dated costumes, cheesy songs, and bad acting.
There were a handful of people at Prestonwood that didn't fit this bill. Two of them were the people the Lord put in my path to show me the love of Christ, without my --get this -- ever knowing it. Jarrett Stephens encouraged me when I needed him. I even called him randomly while in college, working on a paper for Medieval Spanish painting. I needed a biblical reference for blue and white thread. Guess what? He found it. And Diane. Diane is a woman who radiates in a love and a peace that only Christ can bring. I've always said her house is my favorite place to be, and that still holds true. You can just feel the love seeping out of the very walls. Back in the day, I can't remember how many times I'd say just that, but in secular terms.
You see, He's in everything. Everything.He placed me in that Starbucks where the seeds for the literal Gospel were planted in my love for Gospel music. God wired me to love music in general.
I literally do not remember most of my childhood thru parts of my teens, even some adult years, but listen -- play any Depeche Mode song and I can tell what ,where, when, who, and even how I felt, sometimes even the smell in the air. That is not a genetic preference, let me tell you. My mother has never understood my absolute love of music and its therapeutic value to me. Inside music, and even on the dance floor at the Goth club The Church (ironic, isn't it) I attended --religiously-- for over a decade every Thursday and Sunday night, I would get lost, completely lost in the music, for hours on end.
That is a God thing. Cause guess what? He used Sam Cooke to woo me. He's an artist I was introduced to where? Starbucks.
This was the first song I heard, and as I tend to do when a song becomes a bookmark on my life, I had this on repeat for at least a week, if not longer.
I had no idea what this "change" was gonna be, but I knew even then it would be a big change of some kind.
I remember one day Jarrett told me over the phone, in our conversational, fun tone he and I always kept, "He's chasing you, Hollie." Keep in mind Jarrett knew and respected my boundaries. Certain words like "prophecy" and "spiritual warfare" were (and frankly, still are) like triggers to me that shut me down -- yet -- he said that and it did not make me uncomfortable in any way. Perhaps that was because that notion was ridiculous and absurd to me. No one and nothing had that kind of control of me -- but me.
After that, Jarrett and I did not talk but twice a year, maybe. He was busy, and so was I. But God wasn't.
Several years passed, I became a single mom, finished my degree, and well, life just got the way and became hard.
In all of that, one day, I happened upon this song. Over and over and over again I played it -- having no idea what Jesus gave me water really meant. Not a clue -- which will always serve as a reminder to me that a person will only ever know when He wants them to.
The best part about that, my friends, is He will never ever send you out ill prepared, and at this point in my life, I would not have been able to handle just how remarkable receiving His love is. I wouldn't have been able to understand it. I was still shedding my self-deserving skin, and I had yet to experience what I thought was true, made for me, love.
Enter James, a fella after my own heart. He was academic, geeky, well read, and when I found out he drove from Texas to Georgia for Christmas and listened to Sam Cooke the entire way-- man, that sealed the deal.
He became very special to me right then and there, and he happened to be "Christian." Go figure.
Shortly before coming to Christ, while James and I lived together, this next song randomly played on Pandora.
It just filled me (and still does) with joy, one that made me feel like my heart could positively burst, particularly when the five part harmony comes in around 1:19. I simply could not explain it.
It is a mean old world in which to be alone.
Even at this point I refused Him, but I knew who Sam Cooke was talking about.
But, alas! Jesus Gave Me Water and boy did I get thirsty quick. Every day I would (and still) go to Starbucks to study, and when I came upon that chapter in John, I probably looked like a complete idiot when I stood up shouting something to the likes of, "That's where that song came from!" And I wept what Amelie refers to as "happy tears," just because they now happen so often.
So much has come out of working across the street from Prestonwood. I met Jarrett and Diane for starters. He was then just a guy in seminary, and now he's their teaching pastor, who is still just a guy to me, however a fantastic teacher and wise. His care for me, came in a way I never expected -- silently -- particularly when I wanted him to answer me. I am learning from both of my mentors there is wisdom in silence.
My first visit to a church -- willingly to go to church-- was The Village. I pulled in and saw it was in a converted grocery store? What was I thinking? If there were any silk plants, I was walking out the door. That's where I drew the line. Whew, all I could think of were my labels and that passage from Sinclair I quoted above. That's when I learned the labels I had of church folk in general were just as strong and just as damaging as theirs of me and how I looked, especially after hearing what Chandler had to say, but more importantly how he said it.
Matt Chandler is the teaching pastor at The Village Church, a place I now call home -- a Gospel saturated home. Guess what? I recently learned he was preaching at Prestonwood while I worked in that very Starbucks. He and Jarrett are friends. Shoot, they probably came into my store together. Who knew.
Jarrett Stephens and Diane -- two "random" people I met at a Starbucks --have prayed for me for nine years. Nine years. Jarrett baptized me October 1st 2011.
You never know how He's at work, and when you find out, and can see or hear it, it is sweet indeed.
This morning I thought about TV and Italy as I drank my Iced Venti 5 shot Americano with a smidge of whole milk at my local Starbucks. Some have often wondered why I do this every morning. James, in fact, used to get irate that I would -- but in the macrovision of this tale -- Starbucks has been part of its very foundation. It isn't out of tradition I drink my coffee there, but rather out of a space in which to work and be worked on, or as today proved, worked through. Undeniably it is a place for meeting people of all kinds, and just in my story alone, proves you never know who, what or how is behind any of your everyday experiences, except this one notion: God.
Since coming to Christ, I realized I have not watched television. Not that I have anything against it, but rather I simply don't have the time and there is no longer a need for me in this season to be distracted. While the Lord's wrecking ball utterly began to destroy everything of my former self, I lost my cable, and for that I didn't flinch. Quite frankly, with the borrowed time I had after James and I broke up, even then I did not watch it.
Sweet Genius
My family loves to watch reality cooking shows and even in something so simple as this, I could no longer stand to watch it. How ridiculous is it that people offer themselves up to this judge or a panel of judges, after, in a time constraint, must a perfect something, and be made out of ridiculous ingredients, all under the guise of creativity? And then this guy decides who wins or loses--it's absurd. All the while, the viewer sits there, watching life happen, rather than participating in it. I recently met a woman addicted to Reality Television. A wave of layoffs at work led her to fear losing not her home, her car, but first and foremost, her cable -- which rightly led her to seek help.
There is no level of frivolous to addiction and the shadow of a promise of having more, being made happy or even being better than, whatever. Shoes, shopping, sex, drugs or rock 'n roll. Pick your poison, as the saying goes.
The eye, we all know, is the window to the soul. The eye is everywhere in the Bible, and with good reason. Think about it folks: As we watch our TVs we have a mute button, but there is no button to eradicate the vision but keep the sound. In light of visual addictions, folks, let's be honest, and go after the fastest growing addiction on this planet - one that confounds scientists because it is literally rewiring the brain: Would you be addicted to simply listening to porn? I think not.
A few short weeks into living in Italy, I remember sitting on the 7th floor of the highrise by the Esselunga (a grocery store where old women will run you over on the pasta aisle). I was with my then boyfriend's flatmates, and we watched the traffic pass. Yes, you read that correctly. In such a city as Florence, Italy, we dealt with not having a television by sitting down to watch traffic.
I have described living in Florence as the happiest years of my life. With that memory, I realized it was the last time (while in Italy) that I desired to watch television at all. I was far too busy living, growing -- having the best time of my life. It wasn't until tragedy struck that I needed to watch TV: September 11, 2001.
I remember walking to school and everyone, no matter their nationality, looked dazed and confused, people crying on the streets. It wasn't until I got to school and walked into the cafeteria, a yellow room about the size of an American master bathroom, grey and heavy with cigarette smoke, wet with tears and packed with American students, weighed down in a panicky grief. The majority of them were fresh from NYC-- having only been in Italy since late August, adn there they stood, seeing images of the second plane fly into the tower. That was the singular time I can recall ever hearing CNN in Italian. Not speaking the language, I translated for them.
The picture of the Bibile above was taken the day after the first time the Lord ever woke me, mentioned in my testimony. Not knowing anything of the Bible, other than what I knew from Art History, I opened to Romans, one of the thirteen books written by Paul. This was a man, previously known as Saul, the most ardent persecutor of Christians, who literally sought them out to kill them in droves. Yet here --here-- he's talking about his absolute longing to go where? To Rome.
The day before I gave my heart to Christ, I realized why I could no longer paint: Florence. I held onto Italy so tightly, it paralyzed the very reason I went there. It was killing me and it hurt, especially because I had been trying for a decade to make my dream a reality and go back. In that letter, the most beautiful piece of prose I've ever written, I gave up ever seeing Italy again. I simply let it go.
What I know now is that was God, getting ready to pick up my heart. Like Paul, and anyone who comes to Him, a new heart is given, and each one beats with its own passions, talents, and purpose.
That was the first peek the Lord gave me into the path He has for me, that He will give me my heart's desire, and like my daughter's namesake, Amelie, I melted into a humble puddle before the Lord in awe of his master plan and care for me.
And today, years later, today I did business with God. Today I thought about TV and Italy. Today I thought about how, in the last 48 hours, not even a wink of time --that was both hard and mind blowing-- carried with it a drama that couldn't be portrayed even in one minute of the First 48.
I have wrestled with what a calling is. I have wrestled with how to best learn, to trust the Lord and His timing, His provision, His way for me. I have wrestled with the approval of others, fear of man, doubt and fear in general, convicted of superficial prayer, and the moment I p.r.a.y.e.d and loved Jesus, dirty with a face full of tears, mascara, and snot bubbles, He showed me bam! bam!! bam!!!, in every way I asked Him to show me, that He is listening.
And to my dear friend Carone, I thank you for listening to me this week, and for allowing me to tell you now, the Lord was there, listening to us both, because where two or more are gathered, so is He.
I dedicate this post to you and thank you for bringing this video to our attention.
They say hindsight is 20/20, so on that note, I really don't think it was an accident that the fella I thought I would marry is a Professor, an English Professor no less.
I met him on the his birthday, the worst birthday on record for him, because he was mourning the loss of his mentor who was buried that very day. He was miserable and distraught. But we had one thing in common: we were willingly hanging out with people we knew to be quite lacking in character or drive.
I went out with his 'friend' John, a guy James did not like, and described as "smarm." The word sounds dirty, even shady, just like John, and he is really just another guy just as empty as anyone else (if not more so) and blown up with lots of charm and lots of personality -- something for which I think James was most jealous because he was just as empty but so unwilling to display it, or even be broken by it.
I can say this because I was just as guilty. I was empty, thinking of myself as full. Full of life, full of love. I was there, sitting in that karaoke bar, knowing this John character was beneath me and what I deserved, and I was toying with him because I had absolutely no interest in him whatsoever other than to curb my boredom. What's even worse about this is that he was late to pick me up and he didn't buy one drink. I knew I had hit bottom. Jeez, I was in a karaoke bar and I can't even sing.
I do not say this to be cruel. Even in those days, when I filled myself up with self help, self love, and liquor, I knew I deserved better, but accepted less --willingly. I say this because it paints a picture I'm sure many women who read this will feel in their core, and that, ladies, is called conviction, and it is good.
But when James appeared, boy! That was much better -- a Professor! I could put all my faith in him. He could save me from a night of boredom, he could save me from feeling lonely that night -- and that's what he did for nearly three years, while I tried to fix him, having no clue how impossible that task is.
What fun it was to match wits and size each other up, making an eager display of our fragile, delicately painted ego's grounded in self and knit with our own brands of academic know how.
I cannot deny I loved him -- I cannot deny that I still do, either. Trouble is, I loved him too much. I loved me too much. He loved me too much -- He is as much a part of me as I am of him, and throughout this story you will see why.
You see, because we had it all wrong. This is Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew, and this folks is a painting that put the Catholic Church in an absolute uproar. See those windows? See those clothes? This painter not only invites you into this scene compositionally, but he also references Michelangelo's hand in the Creation of Adam panel of the Sistine, but he also places Christ in a bar, with common, everyday, broken people in the contemporary slums of Counter Reformation Rome.
I'll tell you: that karaoke bar was probably one of the most seedy joints I've ever been in. It is interesting to note too that I had never been in one before or since. The astonishment of Matthew, that Christ would call on him? Him? This is a shock and awe we would both share, respectively. I do believe that is the same shock and awe that James verbalized in his first poem to me, describing sitting between a red headed gal for whom he held great distain and me as the 'raven haired huzzah' that stirred his affections.
For nearly three years I mothered him. I tried to model love as I knew it, to the very best of my (and then unknown to me) - fractured-ability. I played the part of the desperate girl who saw his potential. I cleaned him up, taught him things he should have already known three years shy of forty, and in the process learned how fragile he truly was, but how great he could -- and hopefully -- one day will be.
He was raised in the Deep South, where good ole boys were driven to small whitewashed churches by the mothers they loved. They all loved Jesus, but never really knew why, except because it was a tradition. Mama and Daddy and Grammy and Grampy did. Approval's snare is a sharp and deadly blade in the south. When you don't have it, the wounds run deep and cut to the core.
Knowing James put my suffering into perspective. I had the freedom to wear my anger on my sleeve via my dress, my pink hair, the black clothes, etc, but he -- no he coped as many do, in a way that is much worse. He silenced his screams, existing in a body that went unnoticed unless it was bullied, much like I was. He faked happiness, frolicked in fantasy -- with the fake companions of D&D and an addiction to Cosplay and the creation of his identity, wrapped up in a fictitious character of an English Sci Fi Show, Doctor Who. I do not say this specifically to be cruel in anyway, but rather to point out his preference --and possibly yours-- to surround himself with "friends" to puff him up in a false sense of security and value, rather than let God love him. One day he will, because I know God uses everything for good, and his self sufficiency will be positively obliterated when the Lord truly reveals Himself to him.
Cosplay is his distraction, his means of pretending to live. To this very day if you were to look at his Facebook -- and he is not alone -- you will find nothing but a foundation built in sand.
After that night in the Karaoke bar, we began to date. Shortly thereafter I realized I had a choice to make. I had actually been talking to a fella via Facebook I had known for about a decade who was, shall I say, an electrifying conversationalist, and had my interest piqued. And it hit me:
Me, just hours before our first date.
I was chatting with two men -- a first ever for me. Both named James. Both 37. Both with beards. Both with dark hair and blue eyes. One lived in Louisiana, the other in Dallas. One was a very poor choice that would certainly lead no where but a very good time and trouble and the other, well, he had a promise I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I chose Professor James. I chose him because that was the first time I ever heard God, and that is no lie. It was a tiny squeak, but still just as powerful. Anyone who was around will tell you -- that even as a non Christian -- that in the very moment I realized the similarities between these guys with the same name-- something told me-- something I could not identify as anything other than the 'universe.' It told me to choose Dallas James. So I did. No matter what, for that choice, I am eternally grateful.
I was set up -- literally. Jesus himself was in our matching.
A month into dating James, I told him he would be the one to save me. After saying that I totally forgot about it -- until it happened.
He just shared with me in October his fear when I told him that. He knew even then he was walking in the shadows, in his created facade he calls life. He knew he could talk theology all day, but could not talk of Christ, but would rather hide behind systemic theology and argue over circumcision and conspiracy theories.
James, and the few fellas before him were my weakness, for I kept dating the same emotionally or physically unavailable guy. Just as he will continue to date me over and over and over again until he does business with God.
You never date outside of your emotional circle. Mother Theresa would never marry Hitler. And I can readily admit and apologize publicly that I spent --at the very least-- the last year of our relationship feeling emotionally superior to him, when in fact, we are both equally broken. As a matter of fact, it was in the moment I (catch that I) tried to fix him, my life changed forever.
A Way was made for me, because I do not know I would have ever known this had I never met and loved James.
Here I was, a broken girl who desperately wanted love met a teacher in a bar. Jesus meets you where you are at, and can -- and will -- meet you anyway He chooses.
