I have had a whirl wind week and just got back to life yesterday! It was so great. A trip to Bermuda, two Mat Kearney shows, a day visit with a friend I haven't seen in awhile, a hilarious movie, and another show at Busch Gardens where I laughed so hard I thought I was going to die!
Still working on Heroic Verse. It's not coming as well as I want it to. When I am thinking about it falls into place, when I finally get to sit down and work on it, I fumble all over the place. I am working on it though and here is a snippet of it.
"When I was in the tenth grade my English teacher and Young Life leader introduced me to Indigo Girls’ “Rites of Passage” album. That album got me through some hard times. I have purchased that album more than any other singular album. I am moved by their music. It soothes my heart and for some reason it empowers me. Indigo Girls emitted a strong female character with out being too overwhelming, more so empowering. I don’t even know why it did either. Some of their music actually makes me feel more beautiful when I hear it. It is as if the lyrics are telling a deep secret that whispers recognition and encourages solidarity and isolates the isolation for the three minutes and thirty seconds that it permeates the barriers. Until the next song picks ups its own rhythm and leads its parallel within me."
We'll see how it goes. Something will be up this week though. Something of substance one way or another.
Thank you for reading.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Counterfeit
I am one to pick up the “hot new thing” after it’s not so hot and the next thing has started. I recently picked up a book series that a few of my girlfriends were into, because I had some down time and figured I would check it out. It really started so innocently. I was at a girl friends house and we were talking about which movie we wanted to watch. The first movie of a highly anticipated teenage book series was out on DVD and we decided to watch it. A free movie is a good movie in my book!
The movie wasn’t bad. Actually, it was highly romantic and intense, so much so I physically responded to it. I could feel a deep longing pulling from inside my stomach. I decided the movie wasn’t too bad and it left a lot of unanswered questions so I would just check out the first book, I needed something to read anyhow. I read that book in 24 hours. All 580 pages of it.
I could tell why millions of teenage girls were in a frenzy about this series, and I’m twice the age of the targeted age group. It was a mythological story about an intense immortal love that was full of the fairy tale dream that all girls want. It was a girl being pursued by a man who made her his whole life and neither felt they could live without the other, even though one was dangerous to the other.
I finished the book and felt an immense tug in the part of my stomach that’s just below my breastbone and right above my diaphragm. It ached and left me feeling lonely and longing for romance and intimacy.
It was in that place of longing that I found how dangerous those books were. It wasn’t dangerous because it was unethical or profane, actually it was well written with great language usages. The danger I found in it was the counterfeit, stirring up a great longing with emotions that if not identified can leave you feeling empty and lonely.
The thing with counterfeit is that it’s a forgery. If you really think about it in monetary terms it looks like it, it smells like it, it even feels like it, but when you try to cash it in there is no worth in it. The book did that to me. It felt like what I want in my relationship, the intensity, the idea that every girl wants a man that would kill or be killed for her. We dream from a young age of the grand example of a man who is noble and looks at her with an intensity that makes your heart race and your palms sweaty. We dream of his selflessness and his protective perfect ness, knowing that he will never leave and never hurt us.
The problem with that is no man can fully live up to this unrealistic expectation that life tells us we should be looking for. No woman can live up to it either for that matter, we are human, imperfect and relationships of any sort take commitment and work. This desire is so great and so deep that when you really start to unpack the dream it is a supernatural desire, desiring a supernatural response.
I have daydreamed about my husband since I was a little girl. I want the guy on the white horse who shows up at the bottom of my window with a boom box in his hands with “In your eyes” blaring from it. I have daydreamed about him showing up in places where you never would expect to see him. He’s strong and mighty with big dreams and supernatural abilities to appeal to all my female whimsy. It’s almost like playing Barbie’s in your head. I have dreamed for him to be ruined after falling in love with me. I have had numerous crushes and have found myself falling in the trap of, “Could this be the one?” and the truth is that it’s always the same dream, just a different face to fill in the blank.
I learned with the book that the longing it stirred within me was a longing that could never be filled by a boom box blaring-horse riding-movie-star-hottie. That longing was a dream that could only be satisfied by one.
How perfect to incapacitate a generation of women by feeding them fraudulent truth? Whispering in our ear that we all long for this and it’s a natural feeling and we should go look for him. Only, accepting the counterfeit will always leave you feeling cheated, robbed, empty, and duped. So we roll in the dream and soak it into our skin and let it permeate everything that we are. Only, once you go to redeem that desire in anything less you find there is no value in it, because no one can really live up to that expectation all the time.
The devil is a shoplifter. If he can get us to accept the counterfeit then he can keep us from really cashing in on the true thing that God has for us. A genuine authentic romance of love and intimacy, the truth is that He already did die for us. We have that great love story already unfolding in the fibers of our creation; it is actually defined by our creation. By realizing that the creation of Eve for Adam was not as a completion but as a compliment, it frees our individuality up to freely flow in the confidence of our identity. I think that makes us better partners anyway. Imagine a generation of women who are empowered by who they are, who aren’t afraid to wait for the authenticity of relationship and maintain the purposes God intended in a wife.
I am valid. My dream is valid, but the security in that dream is knowing that we both are deeply in desperate need of a savior to develop our relationship and that neither of us will fulfill the great longing that lives in the secret spot just under the breastbone and right above the diaphragm. That’s a reserved spot that developed by a great God who loves us and created it to be the fulfiller of it.
The movie wasn’t bad. Actually, it was highly romantic and intense, so much so I physically responded to it. I could feel a deep longing pulling from inside my stomach. I decided the movie wasn’t too bad and it left a lot of unanswered questions so I would just check out the first book, I needed something to read anyhow. I read that book in 24 hours. All 580 pages of it.
I could tell why millions of teenage girls were in a frenzy about this series, and I’m twice the age of the targeted age group. It was a mythological story about an intense immortal love that was full of the fairy tale dream that all girls want. It was a girl being pursued by a man who made her his whole life and neither felt they could live without the other, even though one was dangerous to the other.
I finished the book and felt an immense tug in the part of my stomach that’s just below my breastbone and right above my diaphragm. It ached and left me feeling lonely and longing for romance and intimacy.
It was in that place of longing that I found how dangerous those books were. It wasn’t dangerous because it was unethical or profane, actually it was well written with great language usages. The danger I found in it was the counterfeit, stirring up a great longing with emotions that if not identified can leave you feeling empty and lonely.
The thing with counterfeit is that it’s a forgery. If you really think about it in monetary terms it looks like it, it smells like it, it even feels like it, but when you try to cash it in there is no worth in it. The book did that to me. It felt like what I want in my relationship, the intensity, the idea that every girl wants a man that would kill or be killed for her. We dream from a young age of the grand example of a man who is noble and looks at her with an intensity that makes your heart race and your palms sweaty. We dream of his selflessness and his protective perfect ness, knowing that he will never leave and never hurt us.
The problem with that is no man can fully live up to this unrealistic expectation that life tells us we should be looking for. No woman can live up to it either for that matter, we are human, imperfect and relationships of any sort take commitment and work. This desire is so great and so deep that when you really start to unpack the dream it is a supernatural desire, desiring a supernatural response.
I have daydreamed about my husband since I was a little girl. I want the guy on the white horse who shows up at the bottom of my window with a boom box in his hands with “In your eyes” blaring from it. I have daydreamed about him showing up in places where you never would expect to see him. He’s strong and mighty with big dreams and supernatural abilities to appeal to all my female whimsy. It’s almost like playing Barbie’s in your head. I have dreamed for him to be ruined after falling in love with me. I have had numerous crushes and have found myself falling in the trap of, “Could this be the one?” and the truth is that it’s always the same dream, just a different face to fill in the blank.
I learned with the book that the longing it stirred within me was a longing that could never be filled by a boom box blaring-horse riding-movie-star-hottie. That longing was a dream that could only be satisfied by one.
How perfect to incapacitate a generation of women by feeding them fraudulent truth? Whispering in our ear that we all long for this and it’s a natural feeling and we should go look for him. Only, accepting the counterfeit will always leave you feeling cheated, robbed, empty, and duped. So we roll in the dream and soak it into our skin and let it permeate everything that we are. Only, once you go to redeem that desire in anything less you find there is no value in it, because no one can really live up to that expectation all the time.
The devil is a shoplifter. If he can get us to accept the counterfeit then he can keep us from really cashing in on the true thing that God has for us. A genuine authentic romance of love and intimacy, the truth is that He already did die for us. We have that great love story already unfolding in the fibers of our creation; it is actually defined by our creation. By realizing that the creation of Eve for Adam was not as a completion but as a compliment, it frees our individuality up to freely flow in the confidence of our identity. I think that makes us better partners anyway. Imagine a generation of women who are empowered by who they are, who aren’t afraid to wait for the authenticity of relationship and maintain the purposes God intended in a wife.
I am valid. My dream is valid, but the security in that dream is knowing that we both are deeply in desperate need of a savior to develop our relationship and that neither of us will fulfill the great longing that lives in the secret spot just under the breastbone and right above the diaphragm. That’s a reserved spot that developed by a great God who loves us and created it to be the fulfiller of it.
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