Jan 2, 2013

The Year Of

I wrote something last year I never shared... too personal, too deep, too raw.  But I went back to it today and read it.  I'm in a different place now, so I'm ready to share now, albiet slightly edited to remove the more personal details...

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First written in January 2012:

In recent years, I'm a namer.

2010, The year of contentment. (Heh. Never achieved.) 2011, The year of change. (That's an understatement.) And now, in the dawn of 2012 I find myself wondering what I should name this gift of time. Fleeting, fast, and precious - I want to claim it as my own, and so I seek a name.

Transformation.

That's the word in my heart these last few days…

It's a painful word. And its a word I'd rather avoid. I'd like to name 2012 the year of settling. Or rest. But to be honest, those don't reflect the journey I know my heart needs to take… a journey that I know will lead to a deeper trust and peace. A journey that will lead to my own healing and the cessation of certain 'patterns of the heart' that I do not want passed on to my daughter.

Why transformation? What needs to be transformed?

Many things, but at the core, I need my picture of God transformed. I need to believe in the core of my being that He is good, kind, generous and capable - TO ME. Not just to others, for that seems obvious enough even to my own broken heart. I say I believe those things, but like everyone, my picture of God is colored by my experience… and in the story of my life, in ways most people may never see, that hasn't been the God I've seen since I was a young girl. I'm not saying He hasn't been good and kind to me. I'm not saying he isn't generous in his mercy and love or capable in his ability to work out impossible situations. I'm just saying that in the places closest to my heart, in my most vulnerable areas, that hasn't been the obvious picture to me.

And so what I say I believe and what I feel in my heart to be true are two very different things. I can't be the only one living with this dichotomy?

Transformation. In short, I want the God of my head to be the God of my heart. And I want Him to blow my boxes and limitations and preconceived notions out of the water.

I'm a little scared and a little (lot?) angry and a little tired and a little despairing… but finally, oh finally, I am a little hopeful. 

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Why am I sharing it now?  Because He is faithful to transform.  I'm not "there" yet, but I'm in a wholly different place today than I was one year ago.  I feel freed -- unchained... unshackled... able to see more clearly than ever before that God treasures me.  I know I have value, and that what makes me feel happy and peaceful matters as much as it does for anyone else.  I'm not as controlling as I was a year ago, and I'm certainly not as angry. 

I am transformed.

I haven't yet come up with the word for 2013, but I feel in my bones that it's going to be a good one...  Have you?  Would love to hear it if you have.

4 comments:

Laine said...

Hmmmmm....2012 was a year of stable unstability. If that makes any sense.
I think/know there is change on the horizon in 2013 and it scares me but I'm trying to be CONTENT and WILLING in it all.
:)
Thank you for sharing your heart, Carrie! You make me stop and contemplate which is a HUGE task for this momma to do these days...but nevertheless it is so important to stop and 'smell the roses' and I am learning to do that more and more (albeit in small increments at a time!)
Love you!

The Stiffs said...

Thank you for sharing. I've been there. In fact in the dark reaches of my heart, I still am. There is a reason I read this today.

Carrie said...

@Laine - Hmm... contentment and willingness sometimes seem at odds to me. When I'm content, I'm generally not so willing to let things change! When I'm willing to let things change, it's usually because I'm not so content! How to have both?! I always have an image of being on a rock in the middle of a stormy sea -- that is stable instability. I pray that you find it in this season!

@ The Stiffs - I think none of us ever cease the journey. It's a process, and we don't arrive, but hopefully each day we learn to trust in His goodness, love, and provision a little bit more, even when it seems all we are given are hard things. Thanks for telling me it encouraged you.

Anonymous said...

Decide to be a good person who will not be evil.
Inherent in the offer of clone hosting is a clue:::"Earn" by hurting others. This violates this vow, causing people to incurr evil, and the clue you need to avoid it. Sadly, as young people too many are still corrupted, still unenlightened and make the mistake when offered.
Only innocent pure children ascend into heaven, while evil is relegated to entering clone hosting, where they are reincarnated as lesser life forms. One day the Christian Rapture will be used as a "consolation prize", and usher in the era of compensation according to the Bible:::1000 years with Jesus on Earth.
Everlasting life with Jesus, but only for true believers:::Placement to suffer on the next Planet Earth punishment for worshipping a false god.

Disgraceful how little they allowed, how they fight tooth and nail, don't allow questions, force repression with AI because they have the freedom, etc.
"You'll be sorry you didn't fight hard up until the end." Managing culpability isn't their only goal. Managing my compensation is another. They want freedom, they want control. Now they have it and can dictate how little time I get. But they didn't come up short on their goals. They got everything they wanted out of me. Plus they didn't have to put up with all these evil capitalists who fucked up, begging and praying for another chance simply because I work there when it really doesn't matter. The way it does matter is if they are too wrapped up in their current lives and fail to have a grasp on the reality before them. My working there could snap them out of their routine. But there are so many to try is pointless.

Breaking my ankle at the Summitt was shamelessly gratuitous. The only purpose was to slow me down as I got older, ensuring I didn't continue hiking or being active.
And they knew they were going to parlay kidney failure into cardiac cmplications, effectively doing the same.
People don't believe me when I say the gods are monsters, saying it is specific to my life. We're all being set up for ugly, and Republican debt spending will lead to bankrupcy and the use of all these semi-automatic guns people are hoarding at these gun shows.
The gods are ordering all proceedings still. If one day this changes it hasn't yet. Their vested interest is still very high.

The gods may share some values of the conservatives (mostly good, a little evil), with the exception of capitalism, warmongering and environmental degredation, but they also share in the economic degredation of the conservatives which will bring the United States to bankrupcy and anarchy. It initiated with Ronald Reagan taking the National Debt from $1T to $6T.
As long as the gods have this vested interest of the Situation they are calling the shots. They order all proceedings to ensure they get what they want. This is not to say they will transistion when it is over, but I suspect this final absolution of culpability is necessary for them to completely wash their hands of Earth in preparation for the Apocalypse.

I am more important than Jesus. Jesus is just some guy the gods used to fuck the poeple up.
Jesus is like Heath Ledger or perhaps SNL early '90s:::Used to promote homosexuality. Jesus entered this envionment with an evil mindset, and why the gods used him and his legacy in that capacity. Now people globally worship this false god, creating this dual system the Antients will use to create the perception of reward in an alternate reality envionment.
To every yin there is a yang:::Ascend into heaven as a child is good while "clone hosting" or Apocalypse leading to "1000 years with Jesus on Earth" is evil. Remember what I said::Only the TRUE believers in Jesus will have eternal life, placed on the next Planet Earth to re-experience thousands of years of the birth, life and death life cycle, suffering from overwork, 18 hour days, hunger and misery.

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