A Daily Decision

I like sleeping in.

Oddly enough, I find myself sleeping better when the sun is out. I've even had periods of time in my life when I was arguably nocturnal, sleeping in until the afternoon. Though I appreciate the mornings, I'm a night owl by nature; I find it difficult to get up a lot of mornings. Every day is a new chance to break that habit, but it takes at least a couple of weeks to solidify sleeping habits. As I look at mornings as a metaphor for my spiritual life, it reminds me that waking up to see God's work and the way He wants me to love is a daily decision. I rarely wake when I'm not obligated to...I never get up just for the sake of seeing the morning. I always feel like I need a reason to wake up - never acknowledging that the morning in itself is enough reason. God's been teaching me that just because my habits are comfortable, that doesn't make them better or even good in the long run. It's worth it to forgo them for what He wants.

This is one of my favorite songs, and I think the lyrics are particularly applicable.

Night/Day
Mae

I’ve been
Dreaming such a long time,
And I’ve been waiting for the sunshine.
But all my friends, they say I’m getting by
With sleeping in.
They say I’m sleeping in.

You know whenever I try, I want to get it right,
But I distract my focus and blur my own sight.
'Cause I’ve convinced myself that my best can only come in the moonlight,
And I keep sleeping in.
I keep on sleeping in,
And missing something...

(Close your eyes before the daylight breaks.)

There are things about me I just can’t ignore.
I know I want to change, and I see that door.
On the other side, daylight decides there will be war with sleeping in.
Oh, I know there’ll be no more sleeping in.

I wait, I wait, I wait
Only in jest.
I wait, I wait, I wait
With no need to rest, I wait.
"The day, the day, the day will come again," I say.
A ray of light can only get in if I say.
I’ve been putting off this purification,
A rebirth and a regeneration inside of me.
And I’ve been saying "no" for far too long,
Even though something brand new is coming out of me.

I’m going to wake up, wake up every morning and then decide.
I’m going to wake up, wake up every morning and make it mine,
Rain or shine.

I wake, I wake, I wake and greet the day;
The light is on, the change is made - I can see my way!
The day, the day, this day has come again!
Each ray of light will make its way into the core of me.
I always knew that I was missing something.
I know this time that I will leave nothing up to chance.
And in the wake of this brand new day,
I see the light and I feel the sun and I’ll do it all again…tomorrow.

Better Than Dreaming

This week at Trinity, Jill Boscoe was our guest speaker for Christian Life Week. A kind but brisk, approachable but wise, jolly but profound woman of 75, Jill has definitely shared some life-changing stories and perspectives on campus this week...and one in particular stood out to me. In chapel today, she spoke of dying to the old self, the sinful nature. That part I'd heard before, and I was feeling pretty good about it. I'm awakening, right? God's getting rid of my old self as we speak, and I'm pretty solid about what that will look like. Right?

Well, partly. I'm aware that I'm being made more aware, which makes some amount of sense. But as Jill explained what aspects of the old self we need to die to, she mentioned dreams. I first thought of dreams as in big plans for the future, ambitious visions, or idealistic escapes - Jimmy Stuart from It's A Wonderful Life came to mind. That's what I associated with dreams: a longing for something to happen that is almost achievable, but constantly cast aside for the sake of practicality. Then Jill began reading her own dream she had to die to: a very personal, very relational dream that wasn't a borderline unrealistic ambition, but an emotional and spiritual desire for her mother to come to Christ. She endured heartache and distance, longing for her mother's heart. My own heart wrenched when she told us of her mother's death after never coming to witness Jill at her ministry. But then, as she neared her conclusion, she revealed that her mother did indeed commit her life to Christ. She did so on her deathbed, and not at all the time or the that way Jill had expected and hoped for, but God took her home anyway. "You see," she said, closing her book and looking up at the students intimately, "If you take care of the things that are precious to God, He will take care of the things that are precious to you."

Today, I realized that I had dreams I didn't even know were dreams. I knew I had deep desires and hopes, but I had never called them dreams before, and I certainly hadn't died to them yet. I don't want them to die. I've held on to dreams because I feel like I'm perfectly justified in having them, and I want to keep my hope for as long as I possibly can. I've been longing for dreams I've had since before I can remember to come true, excusing myself by maintaining that hope is Biblical. Now I'm learning that I have to let them go first even if they could come true, because they're my dreams. They're not God's dreams for me, and they're not reality. As beautiful and wonderful as dreams can be, realizing the stability and truth of reality is always better in the end. All a dream does is deceive and put my hope in the dream itself, and not the One who chooses whether or not to fulfill it. And as blissful as dreams may seem, God knows that the beauty of His dawn is worth waking me from my dreams, because this dawn is infinitely better...and most importantly, it's real.

The Dawn Comes With Waking

I returned to Trinity after winter break only two weeks and two days ago. However, in that short and seemingly insignificant space of time, God's worked in me more than I've let Him in a very long time. This process has really stretched over all of last semester, but now it's become more tangible and joyful as I learn to express it. He's led me to finally start facing myself for who I am and who He's made me to be, which I tend to be very reluctant to do. I've let Him show me how beautiful His creation is in everyone and everything else all my life, but I haven't let Him show me the beauty in myself as His Creation in years, if ever. Not only that, but I slipped into the sin I had once mourned as twisted and wrong: worshipping the creation and not the Creator.
God is slowly awakening me to His very presence and reality, and to the things He's doing in my own life and in the lives of the people all around me. It's barely the beginning of a lifelong process, and He's tried to wake me countless times in my life. He's worked in so many different ways to get me to open my eyes and see Him there, but I constantly shut Him out and focused on my own agenda, my own perspective, my own sources of love that I liked better. I had been so blind to it all, thinking I could see all the beauty there was to see. I'm rather beauty-oriented to begin with, you see...I tend to greatly enjoy looking for and bringing out the beautiful aspects of things and people around me. I was quite proud of that, thoroughly convinced that it was the reason people would love me. I never gave God the credit for giving me that ability and perspective, and I never considered that HE loved that about me. I forgot that He Himself was beautiful.

As it dawned on me that I would be working through this growth process for a very, very long time, I realized that I wanted to record it somehow. God has taught me so many things in the past that I've simply forgotten about or attributed to something or someone else. I need a way to give Him credit for what He does in my life as He does it. The idea of keeping a blog came suddenly, and at first it didn't appeal to me much. I dislike conforming or copying, or feeling like I'm jumping on a bandwagon, especially if I don't have a strong purpose for doing so. But I know myself in that I won't grow nearly as much if I don't have something keeping me accountable to giving God daily credit for the work He does in my life and in my heart.
This blog won't be extremely structured or thematic. It will most likely consist of haphazard vulnerability and random little revelations that come to me as I read or listen to something (I'll be reading My Utmost for His Highest all year, and crazy love and Captivating until I'm through). I'll reflect on lyrics or poems that strike me as particularly moving or meaningful, as well as some assignments that also coincide with the process. Yes, assignments. My life has the theme of "self-discovery as God's creation" in pretty much every single aspect of my life - which therefore includes my classes. God is and has been working intricately and actively...and I'm finally starting to see it for how beautiful it really is. I'm learning to love how He brings us beauty after hardships that makes us forget the mess that came before it. That's why I've chosen to call this "The Beauty and the Mess". The phrase dropped into my head as I was debating on a name, and I fought it for a few minutes. "That's random," I thought. "I haven't heard that song in forever." The only response I sensed was that that proved that it wasn't just a random name - it's what life is. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to define and title what it was that I wanted to do.

As I was thinking yesterday about how God is gently shaking me awake to see this beauty He's created, I couldn't help but think of the morning. I have morning classes this semester, which I anticipated as somewhat of a hardship, especially in January. But one thing I had forgotten about and find myself enjoying is the distinctively still and quiet, profound beauty that morning holds. The world is slowly revealed as the day begins with soft and brilliant colors; the darkness of night is eliminated and forgotten as the sun slowly shines into every corner. We can see again. Even though every day has a dawn, I rarely wake up to see it. I've missed countless brilliant displays of God's creation over the course of my life because I've simply stayed in bed, where it's comfortable. I've seen a lot of sunsets. I really like the moon and stars. Other beautiful things I've come across on my own terms have been enough for me so far. The difference this time is that God is waking me up to see His dawn. He wants me to begin to witness what I've barely even given second thought to before.

But the full power and beauty of this particular dawn won't come until I'm awake enough to see it.