A clipping from today’s physical journal entry:
Oh how funny.. Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe” is blaring from somewhere down the street. :)
Anyway-last night, and really just recently, the theme of the tune has been “acceptance.” Feelings aside, I am where I am, and if it’s not a place I like, and I can’t seem to get out of it, the God alive inside me, can. As long as I’m determined to have things a certain way, even if they’re good ways-God can’t do His work, and I can’t reap that harvest.
I find myself asking constantly then, “HOW?” I guess that’s the question of the era. Who ever really finds out how? I guess sometimes the “how-answer” isn’t necessary. It’s nice.. but when I don’t know how exactly [a friend] would best receive my love- I just do what I know to do, and let [them] deal with the effects. Not forgetting the responsibility that comes with an act of love.. I guess God and my relationship may be similar.
Holy cow the sky is so blue. Unreal. All right, so.. there was.. oh yeah. So [a certain person I know] has had this understandable burr under [their] saddle about the seemingly self-effacement exhibited in church. But [they] went ahead anyway and tried as an experiment the prayer that goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” and found it to be an intensely peaceful experience. We were talking about all that, and a revelational thought came to me. It may or may not be accurate Biblically, but I don’t think either way it would invalidate its essence.
Basically, I believe when we pray, “have mercy on me,” the plea is for God’s perspective.
Mercy, in my mind, is salvation. Coming from holiness into blemish, to inspire, rescue, redeem, restore, encourage, or reveal.
In that sense, I NEED His mercy in so many ways. Recently, I’ve been needing it to bring me back to a place of true assessment. Of myself and others. For the purpose, of course, to be truly alive and therein, glorifying to Creator-God. OH HOW I need that. Somehow, left to myself, I WILL appraise myself as defected.
ThAT is my Dead Self.
My dead self feeds on self-mutilation. As long as I’m beating myself up for something, I’m feeding my own corpse, and since a man cannot serve two masters, my dead self will be in power, and the cycle will continue. It wants me completely useless to God [dead] and will even stoop to friendly fire to get it. I oooooften find myself there.. beating myself up for beating myself up.
Oh my. Something’s going on downstairs. It’s so beautiful.. the breeze is like running water.. the little clicks and chirps in the trees are like bubbles.. The leaves are starting to fall. I guess it’s the sycamores that are already bare. I smell gasoline. The maintenance guy was here earlier, I wonder if he’s going to weedwack or mow. Ohp!-mow. He was fiddling with some tool or another earlier, and I could just barely hear him singing to himself. I imagine it was an old folk song.
“The sound, you hear, right now, is a.. LAwn MOWer.”
[^that’s an inside joke.]
I’m going to go do my own maintenance now..
carlabaudrons.art 