Grace for the worst in me.....

I am a Bitch.

Now I type that knowing that I have just started off this blog on a very harsh, and rather shocking manor. Please let me expand on this statement by saying I am not in a place of self-harm nor am I in a state where I am spiraling in an unhealthy way. This stamen was prompted by a beautiful piece of literature by Jan Meyers Proett. Jan is one of my new favorite authors. What started my respect and enjoyment of her writing was with her contributing to an online magazine called Red Tent Living. Jan's words of honesty and truth are utterly refreshing and hopeful. Through these posts I found my self-picking up her book called Beauty and the Bitch- Grace for the worst in me.

This book expands on the fact that each woman holds two realties in her that she chooses to live out of. One is based in beauty where each woman allows her self to be impactful and impacted in beautiful and vulnerable ways. The other is a state of self-protection that is know as the bitch. This part of the women seeks to protect and control in the worst ways. This is where past hurts and disappoints reside. Women have the opportunity to choose one or the other, however there are very different outcomes to each choice.

As I was reading today I found an excerpt that left me.... well just read for your self…

"God wants your heart. The bitch wants you protected. God is not concerned that you clean up your lavish spending habits or bringing in secrets as much as he longs for you to bring to him your tender ache, confusion, and pain over your unmet desires. The bitch will make sure you never let the tender ache surface"

I have chosen to be the bitch in a few places this summer. She has fought to suppress the ache and pain that has come throughout these warm summer days. This realization was hard to come to grips with, and you can somewhat see it in my last blog post. I had a plan however it is no longer my plan and my unfortunate need for control is freaking out underneath my surface because I cannot control over what is next. As I kept reading I found my pencil underling most of the content located on the next few pages.

Jan continues by speaks about dreaming and how there is no guarantee. She talks about how the bitch "sneers at our desperate longing and mocks it calling it weak and foolish". She then quotes Sharon Hersh who says, "Redemption does not mean that God meets out needs and then our souls stop longing. No, redemption dose not eradicate desperation. Instead, redemption allows us to surrender." To surrender means letting go of our plans and control. We surrender our plans and our longing to alter the really that we are in. "We are asking the bitch to step aside, telling her we understand why she is so scared, hurt and anger, but that her service of self- protection are no longer needed. We open our grip and allow both desire and the suffering from unmet desires to be real." Our longings do not leave however we make a choice to follow after God. To let him lead us to the places he has for us. And we rest in the fact that there is nothing God wants for us to do except to just come. To bring all of who we are to him.

My longing to have a master's in bible and theology, my longing to be in a relationship, my longing to have fellowship with my amazing friends, my longing to keep discovering Chicago, my longing to only be a few hours away from my home, my love and wonder of snow that dances in the winter, my heart for Moody and Chicago, these are all so glorious and i find that my heart is holding all of them.

Gerald May says-

"If our choice of God is to be made with integrity we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods. True love then, is not only born of freedom; it is also born of difficult choice. A mature and meaningful love must say something like, ' I have experienced other goddesses, and they are beautiful, but it is You, my true heart's desire, whom I choose above all."

I have found that my love for my God and the deep desire to glorify him in all I say and do is so much greater than those listed about. However, with that understanding I am left feeling vulnerable and afraid that he is not going to be who he says he is, what he does not care enough and there in disappointment is waiting for me if I let go of my longing listed about and fully live out of God love for me.  God loves all the desires I have listed and those that I have held back from writing on this page, but redemption does not mean that what I long for will stop existing, my redemption means that God will provide and love me. I can be curious about what those longing will turn into or hold for me.

For the first time I am finally saying that I want to be in Arizona, I want to work at the college that I am interviewing with, I want to be part of that amazing community and the life giving attester that exists there. This feels huge to me, because by vocalizing the desire of my heart I am opening up my self to the possibility of being very disappointed if rejection comes. It feels risky to have this much hope, especially with the knowledge that I could be doing the exact job that I want to be doing my first year out of college. This possibility would put me in like a 5% grouping of college graduates.

I need redemption. I need to stay present in remembering that God has a plan. And yet I am so unsure as to what is next. So the bitch and the beauty are battling everyday for control but tonight I am choosing beauty.