opening up.

I half-expected the binding to creak and dust to fly from the pages when I opened my Bible a few moments ago. But it didn't. The Word is always good and true, no matter how much I ignore it.

You know, I talk a lot about God. A LOT. Why shouldn't I? I love Him.

But, lately, I've abandoned my God. I'm ashamed to call Him "Father" for fear of my behavior besmirching His wonderful name. I'm shamed knowing I'm a representation of Him.

Sometimes, the inch-long Ichthus on my foot is my only reminder of who I am, how I should behave, who I serve.

I've been like this for more than a year.

It's time to climb out of the pit I've begun to call "home." It's time to stop trying to run from God. It's futile.

I know improving one's life is always easier said than done. But, this time, I've got to get it done. I've got to get something done.

I've got to pursue Him.

Earnestly seek Him.

Pray.

Read my Bible.

I've got to get back to Christ, because, honestly, I don't know who I am without Him.

"When I got tired of running from You, I stopped right there to catch my breath. There Your words caught my ears, You said 'I miss You, Son, come home.' And my sins watched me leave, and in my heart I so believed the love You felt for me was mine (the love I've wished for all this time). And when the doors were closed, I heard no 'I told you so's.' You said the words 'I knew you knew.' Oh God, oh God, I needed You."
-Relient K

mess.

I just read over the first post on this blog.

I talked about inner beauty and loving yourself as God created you. What a conviction.

To be completely honest, I feel a bit hypocritical right now. Lately I have been so down on myself in so many areas - I don't look right. I work too hard. I don't work hard enough. I don't study enough. I study too much. I'll never get an A in that class. I don't show Jesus enough love. I don't give enough of myself to my friends. The self-deprecation goes on and on.

I don't think I'm alone in these feelings, though.

What woman doesn't think she's not good enough at some time or another? I don't look like Jennifer Aniston so I must be ugly. I'll never be as successful as my male coworkers so why even put forth effort? I'm not as spiritual as Beth Moore so Jesus must not love me.

Pack. Of. Lies.

Lies that are constantly fed to us by the enemy through the media, teachers, bosses, friends, family - anyone and everyone who has some kind of influence in our lives.

Why do we feel like we have to look like a celebrity to be pretty? Their job is to be the essence of the world's perception of beauty. So they work out three hours a day, seven days a week, and never eat meat.

I don't know about you, but I can't handle that lifestyle. I have neither the time nor the desire.

Why do I feel like God can't possibly love me because I've messed up His masterpiece so much? This is a thought that plagues me.

I know He loves me. No matter what. His love is unconditional. I've even blogged about it.

Shauna Niequist (again, that fabulous and insightful woman that I would love to meet) talks about such feelings in "Cold Tangerines." She mentions how she and her husband have always lived in new houses, but she's always felt like an old house kind of person. So they get an old house. It has no bells and whistles but is full of bumps and bruises.

She loves their old house and they constantly work to fix it up. One day she visits a friend in her new home and is overcome with jealousy. She's jealous that her friend doesn't have leaky toilets or an infestation. And suddenly she wants a house that's shiny and new.

She realizes that this is a mirror representation of her life.

"On my worst days, I start to believe that what God wants is perfection. That God is a new-house God. That everything has to work just right, with no cracks in the plaster and no loose tiles. That I need to be completely fixed up. . . . On my very best days, as an act of solidarity with my house, since we're both kind of odd, mismatched, screwed-up things, I practice letting it be an old not-fixed-up house, while I practice being a not-fixed-up person. I wear my ugly pants, the saggy yellow terry-cloth ones with the permanently dirty hems, and I walk around my house, looking at all the things that I should fix someday, but I dont' fix them just yet, and I imagine God noticing all the things about me that should get fixed up one day, and loving me anyway and being okay with the mess for the time being."

So, love yourself. Even on your worst days. We all have terrible days when we somehow gained 20 pounds overnight, the humidity makes our hair look like we're headed to the Class of '85 prom, we can't think at school and can't do anything right at work.

Those days happen. Much more often than is comfortable.

Get used to them.

Embrace them.

Embrace you.

Love you.

Just as God loves you . . . even if you are a mess.

"Cause you're amazing. Just the way you are."
-Bruno Mars

edamame.

Life is . . . difficult.

Wonderful, yes. But incredibly difficult.

It is so easy, commonplace even, to let ourselves get bogged down with all that the world throws our way. And it is much easier to try and take it on ourselves rather than giving it to God.

But, if we don't give it to God, we get too busy to hang out with friends. Too busy to call mama and daddy. Too busy to read that Jane Austen novel we've been working on for months and have only gotten to Chapter 2. Too busy . . . to blog.

It takes a conscious effort to choose celebration over tasks. But, hey, I believe it's possible.

People say that God never gives us anything we can't handle.

They're full of it.

God gives me stuff that I can't handle all the time. The real truth is this: God never gives us anything he can't handle. And that's the beauty of it. That all the day-to-day, the monotonous, the strenuous, the things that make you want to pull out your hair (not to mention the hair of the person stressing you out) . . . we simply can't handle it. But God can.

Now, the trick is to celebrate the little things. Like best friends. And love letters from a Savior. And the brief moments that we do get to read that Austen novel. And edamame. Oh my word, edamame.

In her book "Cold Tangerines," (quite possibly my favorite book of all time and one that I will probably quote often) Shauna Niequist, a beautiful, wonderful, exuberant guru of all things celebratory and joyful, sums it up pretty well:

"I believe in a life of celebration. I believe that the world we wake up to every day is filled to the brim with deep, aching love, and also with hatred and sadness. And I know which one of those I want to win in the end. I want to celebrate in the face of despair, dance when all we see on the horizon is doom. I know that Death knocks at our doors and comes far too early for far too many of us, but when he comes for me, I want to be full-tilt, wide-open, caught in the very act of life."

So, the challenge I issue to the millions of people I like to imagine read my blog when in reality I only have four followers who don't read it is this: Celebrate.

Something.

Everything.

Learn to throw every bit of darkness back where it came from.

And celebrate.

Even if it's just edamame.