Redeemed.

Wow.

I can't really say much more than that at this moment, when my heart is COMPLETELY full, and I am just basking in God's goodness. Have you ever had a moment like that? When His love, grace, forgiveness, compassion and kindness is suddenly made so very real, and all you can do is sit back and say "WOW."

Last night, I took part in a moment like that.

I had the opportunity to pray over the one whom God has given to me, the one whom my heart has been waiting for, and God unleashed His perfect healing and perfect love in a very real, very tangible way. It was amazing, and beautiful and powerful and everything that our God is. It's not very easy to describe and I don't feel the need to the details of that intimate moment, but I can tell you that I have not experienced something like that in my whole life, much less with someone that I've dated.

You see, in the past, I haven't made the best choices when it comes to men. (For those of you who have been there with me, you can shout out a loud "AMEN!"). I feel like laughing, crying, and cringing all at the same time when I think over my dating history. There are definitely some ugly moments, some moments that I wish had never ever happened. There are times when I let my guard down and completely went to places far beyond where I ever wanted to go. By God's grace I still have my purity, though I am not without scars. I honestly cannot tell you why I made those stupid choices, and how I could possibly think I was following the Lord closely when some of my actions were so far from His Word.

By nature, I am a "fixer." If something is broken, I will try my very best to find a way to fix it, because I can see the potential in it. I love to believe the best about people, and for some reason I sometimes think that MY words and actions can change someone's thought pattern. Without fully realizing it, that is the mindset I had in many of my dating relationships. I overlooked major issues in order to be with someone that I "loved", and I misinterpreted their ungodly actions as love.I would plead and pray with God to change their hearts, but little did I know that on their end, they didn't really want their hearts to change. I mean, maybe they did, but I can only go off of the fruit I saw in their lives, which really wasn't much. I thought that I was being respected, but now that I'm looking back, I realize I wasn't, at ALL. Not that I was being beaten or abused in any way, but I feel as if I was taken advantage of. Yet I have to also point a finger of blame at myself, because I did nothing to stop it. If I didn't put up a fight, then things were ok, right?

No. Not at all.

I consider myself to be a strong, independent Northern woman, yet for some reason in dating situations I froze, and tried to be as giving and as accepting to my boyfriend at the time so that they would cherish me. Sometimes that meant comprising values I held dear, yet somehow I was able to justify my actions. And maybe by being so loving and giving, I could "save" that person. I hate to even write all of this, yet it's all true, and I feel as if the Lord is prompting me to share part of my story in order so that someone can be encouraged, someone can know that there is hope, grace, and forgiveness.

There is one instance that sticks out in my mind, the moment when I almost lost one of the most precious and sacred parts of myself. It was frightening, and SO so wrong. And as I reflected on that moment later, I began to feel completely ashamed, and it made me question the entire relationship. What had we built our relationship on? It certainly wasn't God...not in the least. I began to think over most of the times that he and I hung out, and I realized that I had never really walked away feeling encouraged or without some form of guilt. But he LOVED me, right? So did that make it all ok?

Nope.

That relationship eventually ended, and I tried to share with him my thoughts and feelings on that one moment, but he only tried to justify it and never really apologized. I couldn't believe it, but it only solidified the fact that we NEEDED to break up. I didn't cry very much honestly, because I knew how wrong our relationship was. Praise God that in his mercy, He allowed me to walk away and start afresh.

It wasn't until just a few weeks ago that I was able to forgive myself for the shame that I've been carrying, and to give it all to God. It was really hard, but I had to forgive that person who had wronged me, and then let it all go. This was all largely due to the beautiful relationship God has brought about in my life this past April. It has been nothing like I've ever experienced, and now I can say that I know what it means to be truly loved for who I am, and to be respected. My heart is being treasured and cared for, and I have NEVER walked away from spending a day with Ben with a feeling of shame or guilt. From the very beginning, my needs have been put above his, which is something I had to get used to.

But the most important and beautiful thing is how Ben's love and actions constantly point me to Jesus. There is NO way that he could love me like that on his own, but by God's grace and power, and with HIS love, Ben loves me without abandon, without a regard to my past. He is not perfect, and he would never ever say that he is, but he is perfect for me. When you truly let go and let God direct your path, He does exceedingly great things. He is continually teaching us about His grace, His redemption, His love, and His forgiveness.

As I prayed over my love last night, the Lord brought a phrase to my mind that I could not stop repeating:

You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You are free.

Over and over He spoke that to my heart, and I spoke it to Ben. It was NOT by my own power, but by the power of our God. His love and redemption were tangible and real and quite indescribable. I know to some, this may seem silly or weird, but it was real, and beautiful, and something that neither of us will ever forget. I truly cannot deny that it is Christ's power that is at work in my life, and I want everyone to know!

For those who have made mistakes, who maybe are realizing for the first time that they never fully committed their lives to Christ, who think they are too far from grace...you are not. Ben and I will both tell you that you are NEVER too far from the love of God to reach into your heart and change everything. You are not defined by your mistakes or anything that happened to your past. No matter what transpired, you can be free from any chains that are wrapped around your heart. The devil tries to come in and speak lies that you are unworthy, unforgiven, unloved, but he has NO power when it comes to the blood of Christ. All that God wants is the glory, and when we choose to bask in His love and forgiveness, He wipes away our tears and gets rid of everything that is holding us back from a deeper relationship with him. He frees our hearts and sets us in a "wide and spacious place." Sometimes, that process can be a little bit painful, but remember that in the end he will make it all okay. It is part of that refining process that is necessary to grow in your relationship with Him, and it pushes you to a place where are 100% sure that He is real, and that He loves you beyond measure. 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of God's grace in such a beautiful and poignant way.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

How beautiful and freeing is that? Paul goes on to write:

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

I have nothing to add to that. 

You are making all things new, and we are free.

A Deceitful Heart.

I think it's safe to say that over the past week, I've done a LOT of thinking.

As most thinking goes, it was spurned by an event. Not a significant event to most people, but one that is significant to me. The event was this:

I saw an ex with his new girlfriend after purposefully going out of my way to try and avoid them. 

 (dun dun DUNNNNNN).

It was obviously in the Lord's will for me to see them, and so I did. It was only for a brief moment, and I don't believe I was seen, but it was enough to influence my thoughts over this past week and it left me with no choice but to take a close, hard look into the depths of my heart (which can be a REALLY scary thing, let me tell you). And what I've found is that my heart is deceitful, wicked, and all too often desires the affection of men (or people) above the affection of God. That's the gross and real truth.  

 "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."

 Galatians 1:10

Um yes. That is me. A genuine, bonafide, people pleaser. Oftentimes I feel like the jobs I have require me to be that way, and I think I allow that mindset to carry over into my everyday interactions with friends and colleagues. I'm a DOer, meaning that I love to create and bake and give and I'm not going to lie, it's really satisfying to hear praise for my work. Or sometimes I get caught up in a "one-up" competition with someone, which generally goes something like this:

Person: "So this one time, I got my boyfriend a puppy for Christmas. He loved it so much!"

Me: "Oh that's cute...I got my boyfriend 2 puppies, a goldfish, and a pony, just for fun. He REALLY loved it!"

And then it just escalates from there.

That may be an extreme example, but you know what I'm talking about. And I think I do those things, because...well, I'm ashamed to say it, but because I doubt the love my Father has for me.

Why in the WORLD would I ever do that??

Oh, that's right, because Facebook is greater. Waiting on texts that never come is really important. Spending energy thinking about people who don't think about me is helpful. Pursuing unhealthy relationships is #1. Loving man first over loving God first is the best way to live.

When laid out like that, I feel pretty foolish. C'mon Danielle, let's use that "million dollar education" (as Mike Davis likes to say) and the brain God gave you to figure out that all of these things you're pursuing are NOTHING compared to pursuing the love and glory of God.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.

Philippians 3:8

Because I like to be real, let's just delve into what "rubbish" means for a moment. In several sermons I've heard, coupled with my own research, "rubbish" means several things: offal, excrement, crap, just to name a few. Use your imagination to think of a few stronger terms, and there you have it. 

ANYTHING I pursue outside of Christ is, quite literally, a load of #$&%. 

(This just keeps getting more and more encouraging). 

When confronted with THAT knowledge, any sort of pride or joy I feel like I've experienced by pursuing the affection of man above the affection of God is completely destroyed, and I am left broken, guilty, and ashamed.

BUT  (and there's a big one here).

I don't have to stay that way. 

SIGH.OF.RELIEF. The thought of carrying around that guilt all day, everyday, without any reprieve, is terrifying. I would become a monster, and not even a cute, "Where the Wild Things Are" type of monster. But an ugly one and mean one, because I am full of sin, self, and all things terrible. Praise God I don't have to stay that way.

For me, this revelation of God's love and forgiveness has to happen daily, because I mess up every single day. Multiple times a day, when I look on Facebook and see that 20 more of my friends are now engaged, or when I happen to catch a glimpse of an ex, it is the hardest thing to try and not think negative, self serving thoughts like: 

What's wrong with me?

Why am I STILL single?

Will anyone EVERY love me?!

WHERE HAVE ALL OF THE GOOD GUYS GONE?!

All of those thoughts show a doubt in the ever present, never changing love of my Father. They are from the Liar, who only seeks to destroy my heart. Who wants the scars and the bruises that have accrued over the years to completely over take my heart and destroy it. Who finds joy and satisfaction when I pursue the things of this world above the things of my Healer, my Beloved, my Abba. And I find that those thoughts creep in when I'm not working on my relationship with my Father, which happens more often than I would like to admit.

As I listened to a sermon on loving God this morning by Shea Sumlin of The Village Church in Texas, all of these thoughts came to a head, and once again I was confronted by my utter lack of trust in God's love for me. Shea brought up the point that NO ONE can ever love God in the way He loves us, because we do not fully believe in his unshakeable love for us. We put his perfect love on the same plain as imperfect human love, and there is really no comparison between the two. I have been disappointed time and time again by human love, but never have I EVER been disappointed by the overwhelming love of the Father. If a human were to demand that we love him with all of our hearts, soul and mind as Christ does, that would be prideful and sinful. But because God has no sin, he CANNOT sin, he demands that love from us. 

He gave his Son for us.

He loves us with an everlasting love.

He forgives our sins.

He binds up our hearts and heals our wounds.

He never lets go.

He doesn't want to let go.

He is always the same.

He will not leave.

He gives us His Spirit.

He protects our heart-we don't have to guard our hearts with Him. We can love him fully and completely, and allow that love to spill over over everything. 

And those are just a few reasons why he deserves our love. Where does this sinner fit into that love? How can I receive it?

Well Danielle, believe in Him. Trust in His love. Know that He will take you back every time you fail.

This was illustrated in a beautiful way in the sermon I heard, and made me tear up just hearing it. Pastor Shea told a sermon of a modern day prodigal son, who took the inheritance his father promised him and blew all of it on temporary things that left him full of STDs, without friends, and at the end of his rope. He wanted to return to his father, to ask his forgiveness, but he couldn't bring himself to confront his father himself, so he sent one of his father's workers home with a note. The note asked his father's forgiveness, apologized for everything he had done, and acknowledged that he wasn't worthy of anything but working on the farm for his father. He asked his father to lay a white sheet over a fence if he was allowed to come home, signifying that his father forgave him. The train the son was riding was going to pass by this fence and if he saw the sheet, he knew he was forgiven and welcome by his father. As the train approached the farm, the son couldn't bring himself to look out the window, but he was told to come to the window as the farm came into full view. What he saw wasn't just a singular sheet over the fence, but as far as his eye could see, white sheets covered EVERYTHING. He wasn't just forgiven, he was FORGIVEN, and welcomed home with open arms.

A love like that should bring tears to our eyes, should bring us to our knees in repentance, should spurn us to serve and love God first, above all else. 

 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.

Matthew 22: 37-38 

It is a hefty command, one that I know I'm going to fail at today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

BUT (another big one).

I serve a God who will put out the white sheets for me and take me back time and time again.  A God who loves me in spite of myself.

If that isn't love, then I don't know what is. 

  

The life of a (Sexy) Spinster.

Oh, hello.

WARNING: This is very real, very unfiltered. Don't read any further if you feel like you can't handle that. 

This past week has been a week of many emotional events, including news of various relationships that have just thrown me for a loop and put me in a funk.

I also came to the jarring and bizarre realization that 3 guys I've dated are either married to or will be marrying girls with the same name. How crazy is that?! I'm really hoping that's some sort of record or something...I'll be writing Guiness soon. Maybe it's a sign from the Lord telling me I shouldn't date...ever. I really don't know what brought on that revelation, but as soon as I checked Facebook to confirm that it was true, all I could do was just laugh and laugh and laugh, straight from my gut. No one was home at the time, or one of my roomies would've thought I was going coo coo for cocoa puffs for SURE. But then as I continued laughing, I suddenly felt the urge to weep, much like the first time I watched "50 First Dates" and Rob Schneider told his kids to dive down to the bottom of the ocean to fetch his...man parts.

Thankfully, I didn't begin to cry. The laughter eventually stopped, and then all I could do was just sit there, feeling more unattractive and unwanted than I have in a long time. (Part of that might have to do with the fact that I was slouching, while wearing my dad's cuffed sweatpants from '83 and my hair all a mess. I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet). My bizarre realization stuck with me throughout the rest of the day and into the evening, when I had yet another thought:

I am a spinster.

This thought was just about as unpleasant as my early morning thought and so in order to ease my troubled mind, I had to do a little research as to what a spinster really is. According to Wikipedia: (college kids, ALWAYS cite Wiki as a source. Your profs will love it), a spinster is:

A spinster, or old maid, is an older, childless woman who has never been married.

(and)

For a woman to be identified as a spinster, age is critical. A "spinster" is not simply a "single" woman, but a woman who has not formed a human pair bond by the time she is approaching or has reached menopause and the end of her reproductive lifespan.

(Positive-I'm not approaching menopause. But wait, there's more...)

 "If someone is a spinster, by implication she is not eligible (to marry); she has had her chance, and been passed by," explains Robin Lakoff in Language and Woman's Place. "Hence, a girl of twenty cannot be properly called a spinster: she still has a chance to be married."

(Well, crap. I'm 23. And I've been passed by a few times. Definitely not getting any younger).

"In modern everyday English," the New Oxford American Dictionary says, "spinster cannot be used to mean simply ‘unmarried woman’; it is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed."

(Hm. Unmarried, childless and repressed=yes yes and sometimes. Greaaaat). 

"By the time of the 19th century, the term evolved to refer to women who were so finicky that they refused to marry. During that century "middle-class spinsters, as well as their married peers, took ideals of love and marriage very seriously, and ... spinsterhood was indeed often a consequence of their adherence to those ideals. ... They remained unmarried not because of individual shortcomings but because they didn't find the one 'who could be all things to the heart.'"

(Ohhh geesh. I feel like I'm a very picky person when it comes to relationships, but is it possible that I'm in the wrong for being TOO picky?? AHHH!)

Come to find out, none of that is very encouraging or lovely. Supposedly there's even a documentary that's been made called "Cat Ladies", which chronicles the life of several women who claim to be spinsters and who spend their whole lives devoted to their cats. No chance of that happening to me though, because the 2 cats I have tend to drive me up a wall and I mostly want to throw them out a window, not collect more of them and put their pictures on sweatshirts.

As I continued to process this, one last thought came to my head, and it is this:

Why can't I be a SEXY spinster?

No, I'm not talking "sexy" as in fishnets and back alleys, but simply as a strong, independent woman who loves to dress up occasionally and paint her toenails red. A woman who can bake, clean, and crochet a baby blanket or bikini when the occasions arise. A woman who doesn't spend her Saturday nights throwing back drinks at some trashy bar, but rather hones her sewing skills diligently, and now has several ruffled aprons to show for her efforts. This woman doesn't need a wedding gift registry to ask for such things as a KitchenAid mixer, bamboo spatulas or mixing bowls, but has acquired them out of her owns means and diligence. (Frankly, which one of your friends is going to drop the big bucks to get you a KitchenAid anyway?) 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't see my current, single position in life as something to be cried over or felt sorry for. Sure, it'd be nice to take a break from the sewing every once in awhile and maybe go out for a lovely dinner, but I'm not going to sit and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for it to happen. No, I'm going to be productive and learn new skills, or get better at my old ones. I'm going to daydream and plan and think and journal and play outside and wear twirly skirts and cowgirl boots. I'm going to redeem the term "spinster", and be more creative than ever. I'm currently working on my third apron (it's bright pink and precious) and I have plans to make my own Easter outfit! Ideas for cupcakes and cheesecakes continually run through my head, and I'm very thankful to have a place where I can sell my goods and create a client base. Speaking of selling goods, I just might take some of my cakes, cookies and healthy goods to local farmer's markets. Seriously, why not??

I feel as if this time I've spent dabbling with domesticity is going to serve me very well in the future. It's hard, but I try to keep believing that somewhere out there, maybe in the remotest corner of the earth, there is a man that has been specially designed for me, and he will love everything I have to offer. He will love my apron collection and my baked goods, and will enjoy taking long walks through the mountains with me. He won't mind going out for hot dates, but he'll also be content just to stay in and watch ESPN, while I craft lovely things in the next room. I think he'll even be a little creative, and will enjoy surprising me with sweet little things just to see me smile. He'll occasionally feed something I made him to the dog, and I might accidentally dye one of his favorite shirts in the wash. But it'll be ok, and we'll kiss and make up, because we were meant for each other and will love each other unconditionally. 

Sadly, that day hasn't arrived yet. 

Until then, I'm going to keep on keepin' on, doing the things I love the most and giving hugs and reassuring pats on the shoulder when I can. Spreading smiles and laughter and sunshine wherever I go. Judge me if you'd like, but I'm having LOTS of fun.

Spinster OUT.