over and over I have been reminded of this quote:

"faith isn't faith until its all your holding on to"

I have it on a long sleeve t shirt in a box or in a drawer. It's ingrained in the depths somewhere in me. Its actually the theme of K-Wild, a part of Kanakuk where you go camp in the wilderness for an extended amount of time. oh if my 15 and 16 year old self could've seen what faith would look like. how it would grow and change and move. how it would be the steady ebb and flow along the shores of my life. how the numbing times of little faith and the desperate times of much faith would mark my life. how overflowing faith can equal overflowing joy in the midst of incredibly dark times. how I would hate it and want to rid myself of it yet desperately need it all in one moment. how it would hurt. Oh, how faith can hurt. It burns steadfastly and fiercely away things in my life that I want. Things that I want more then my Jesus many times. And the flame of faith comes in and burns them to ashes. And in that devastation, the faith still remains. And its all I can do to scream, 'No, I don't want this. I don't want faith to define all of this. It hurts too much.' And faith remains.

Because when I am faithless, He is faithful.




“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

'But how?' we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Go forth and live,
xoxo Lyd

Soul Carnage

Why don't we relentlessly and recklessly pursue where our hearts lead us? 
Yes, it's carnal. 
Barbaric even. 
The things we see,
We want, we  crave. 
Jesus why doesn't my soul crave You, crave the things in Your heart? 
This wicked world has enchanted my soul and I can't break my gaze. 
In the caverns and basements of our souls we crave a heaven, we crave God Almighty. 
Yet my heart cherishes the dregs, the road scum of this present world 
Holds tightly and clings to it with its last breaking wave of strength. 
Jesus, be my strength. 
We root for the sacred to eternally bond with the wretched on the daily. 
Maybe
Just maybe
The depths, the trenches, and gullies of our very souls crave this only because it is a hollow image, but an image none the less, of a savior. 
And our hearts chase after the lesser.
The sweet liquor and carnal sleep because its thrilling and maybe in the end we fancy ourselves some wretched sort of savior. 
How we need a savior. How we need you, Jesus. 
We fancy ourselves saving the underdog, or maybe it's more that we've given up hope. 
We've lost hope in ourselves and forgotten the return of the Lion. 
As in the holy scene in The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe when Lucy cries out

'Aslan, You've come back.
Is this real.'

Even blessed Lucy lost her childlike faith in the Lion of Judah. 
Or maybe it's just that we're miserable, selling ourselves to the cheap nights because we forget we were made for more than this world. 
For golden back roads guarded by pearl covered gates. 
For our souls to touch this world through being in the dark, but living with light. 
Yet still, my surface soul speaks loudly. 
It wants that drag, that drink, that boy, this world. 
May the depths of our souls burst through. 
May Jesus combust our souls with his sovereign fire from heaven. 
May our Savior make us steadfast and may the Lion of Judah return and find us faithful.

Come, Lord Jesus. 




Go forth and live. 
<>< xoxo Lyd

You hold my heart

I fell in love on that dance floor.

The wood is so empty and shiny now.

But then it held our love, turns, and tears. Dancin the night away to king George and Bart crow band. I was yours forever and you weren't ever going to leave. My soul was laid out bare through our spins and twirls and 2 steppin the night away.

But we've grown up and I call you crying from a corner booth here. This city is magic, don't you know. You showed me that. This floor will always hold the sacred nights of dancing till the morning, love sworn forever, and friends gotten too rowdy.

Meet me underneath the rhinestone saddle darlin.

I'll be yours forever.

Xoxo
Lyd

Plays well with sinners

"Her spiritual poverty enables her to enter the world of the other, even when she cannot identify with that world-e.g. The drug culture, the gay world. The poor in spirit are the most nonjudgmental of peoples; they get along well with sinners. "

How often church people miss this. In the small town and mega churches, redemptive grace wrought from bloody Hands is traded in for judgmental stares and "bless her heart"s that scream from the pews "you're not good enough." sinners who have forgotten they too are saved by grace look at the unwed mother and the gay friend and say "your sin is far too great. Christ's death couldn't possibly cover THAT. " so with rules and prejudices and judgmental looks and the horrific gossip, the churches and private universities and "Christian" organizations turn away people whose hearts are so broken and ready to love Christ.

And Christ comes in.

He comes in and says something along the line of "whoever hasn't sinned? You cast the first stone."

And the high and mighty head masters and heads of denominational conventions, the arrogant and self righteous prick of a pastor, the head of the deacons. They must set down their stones one by one. Because Jesus said so. In the story with the Harlot and with the Blood dripping down the rugged wood of the cross.

He says, You are WANTED.
You and your gay partner, I WANT YOU.
You with the beer breath and hang over. I WANT YOU.
You with the dark secrets and feelings of worthlessness. I WANT YOU FOREVER.

He stands there, with arms wide open. Loving the judgemental churchy people all the while. Longing for them to be His heart and arms to the sinners, to the world. But stepping in to love and save both.

Saving the self righteous and wayward alike.

Let us love.
Go forth and love.
Lyd <><

skin.

It's unforgiving. It won't and doesn't hide the fat or the muscles underneath.  Whatever is there, physically, skin cannot hide it. You can tan it, but it won't tone it. It's there, covering us, protecting our skeletons, revealing every physical flaw we have. And with it's physical transparency, it hides our souls.  The deepest and brightest joys perhaps providing the skin with some sort of joyful glow, the wretched and hidden soul-wounds perhaps causing it to have ill pallor. It it so easily reveals our physical imperfections, transparent to a fault. But when it comes to our souls, our hearts, our will to fight, it gives no clue and no cue to the common beholder an bystander. Incredible how something so transparent can be the see-through blanket we hide our souls behind.

Go forth and live y'all!
Xoxo lyd

through smoke

via

"When the answers and the truth have cut their ties

Will you still find me

Will you still me through smoke

I'm lost in a place that I thought I knew,

Give me some way that I might find you..." -Needtobreathe, "Through Smoke"

Immeasurable are the precious hearts have such a hard time reconciling the fact that their is a God with the fact that He allows horrible things happen to sweet souls. He let's a sister's heart get broken. He chooses not to heal a sick and weary body. He allows horrible things to happen at what should be the safest place for kids to encounter the radical Gospel of Jesus. He let's a best friend experience rape. He does not intervene when thousands pray for rescue.  He allows there to be over 3 million Ethiopian orphans.  He let's a dear friend get cancer. And then another, another, and another. Person after person. Stage four they say.  

He sits, seeming to be totally silent.

Of course, the Holy Scriptures tell us he does not cause these things.

But He is all powerful, all knowing...and all loving?

And He allows these things?

How Jesus?

Not that person. Please Jesus, not that best friend. Where were you? In that dark room with helpless cries, where were you? In the midst of thousands of tearful prayers begging for another soul's healing, Where were you Jesus? 

One of the most freeing and healing things someone shared with me is that God can handle my anger. It is arrogant and prideful for me to think He can't.

I was raised to not swear, to not smoke, to treat others with kindness and to walk in integrity, even when push came to shove. Overall, I was raised to believe in Jesus, to have morals.  I almost lost this belief. Came pretty damn near close. Through tragedy and darkness and that seeming total silence on His end, I had no evidence to believe He was loving, that He gave a rip about cancer ridden believers or rape victims or orphans.

But I wasn't just raised to do the right thing, to not wear my dresses too short or get drunk in public...I met Jesus.  When I was four years old, in Purdy, Missouri, I fell in love with Jesus. 

And even through that anger, through waves of grief that still roll in like the tide of the ocean, I can't get away from Jesus. I can't stop going back, even through the anger and wanting to say Why in the hell are you allowing these things to happen? I know He is the answer. I know He is the Way and the Truth and the Life. I know no one can get to Heaven without the Redemption of Jesus. I have experienced that grace. I know it full well. I know it in my daily walk when I stumble and flail trying to live by the morals I was taught from birth. With my best white-knuckled, moral intentions, trying...and failing.

And Jesus shows up. In the midst of that. In the midst of striving and failing. He sits, He sits, He sits. 
Not giving me any answers, mind you. But staying, faithfully, being the Sovereign and loving and all-merciful Redeemer that He is. He stays and sits.  Silent except for the overwhelming, continuous,

"I love you."
 No Jesus, not that person, not that cancer. Jesus, please.
"I love you Lydia."
Jesus where were you? In that dark and relentless season..Where was the rescue?
"I formed you, I know you. I love you Lydia."

Mercy steps in. He sits, He dines with us and waits in the silence with us. 

 I don't have the answers. He may choose to not physically heal. He may allow rape and famine and orphans, the precious orphans. And I may never hear the answer on these things from Him. I may strive all my life and beg Him to fix them.  But I love Him, I know Him. I cannot choose any other path because I already know the truth and have experienced redemptive Grace. 

It's this motive, this weird and scandalous faith let's me say in the midst of these things, "You are God alone." That let's me echo the words of John Mark McMillan and yell towards heaven, "Harbor me in the eye of the storm, I'm holding on to the Love You swore,"  and that let's me believe in and buy into the idea of Hosanna.

Hosanna is a really cool word in the fact that it is both a declaration of Praise to the Lord and a cry for mercy, almost saying "Jesus, save us."

Hosanna y'all. Go forth and live.
Lyd

via

you

we went perfectly together, back then. I mean, honestly, perfectly, didn't we? I learned to love your lies and you continued to tell them. You wove this web, and weren't reliable and I learned to deal with it. I learned to cope and let it become a part of me, of who I was. Sure, you've grown...remarkable amounts even. You were never there and yet you always were. In clutch situations, you were nowhere to be found, and yet..you are in every memory I have. You are fully you, and yet I wish you weren't. I can't wish you away, because I have let you become apart of the grain of my soul. I owe you everything, and yet forgive you continuously. It balances out, doesn't it? You told jokes, and laughed at the world with its problems, and I learned to laugh along side you. I lost myself in you, and I'm not mad about it. I found my voice and my will through your undying passion. You are unlike any person I know, any person I will ever know, you will never bend or waver in who you are. And I love you hopelessly, relentlessly for it.

xoxo Lyd