So life, as always, got kind of crazy again. My most true and constant friend these last eight years in hospital and tbh I'm scared, if I lost him that would just be too much, so I call him as much as I can, see how he's doing, I'm supporting him by knowing that I'm there, but I'm paying a price. It's been a long time since a phone conversations made me cry too sleep... it's been 12 years since that, like then it's because my heart is breaking, but unlike then it's not for myself, it's for him. I stand back and try to take my own advice, remind myself of who I am, that ultimate identity I have that is beyond this - that I belong to God. I would sacrificing my life for him, but right now I'm sacrificing something far more precious, I'm sacrificing my focus on the Kingdom. I was living like that song "I say goodbye to my father and my mother, turn my back on every other love and press on" I'm not living like that anylonger, I need to fall back in love with the King, because if I don't have that I'm lost.

A year ago I sat hear wondering how to regain my life, how to take control, and not long after I discovered it was not control, but surrender, not regain by recommit. To take all the wanderings and know God again, but not in a half hearted way - where I tried to remain in control, to keep the pain, to let the ghosts haunt me, in an entire way. I have been a Christian for more than a few years, yet I am still learning and re-learning to run to Christ first and foremost. To take away the vices and lean on the only crutch that completes the broken person. As a human being in Imago Dei I desire so deeply and innately that relationship with the Trinity that is God, how do we also run so quickly from it? Hiding and manipulating true gifts from God?

I look out at the gardens, a reflection of both God and man - God's ultimate creation, our humble ways of caring for that creation. How unworthy and made worthy are we! How so very blessed! How dare we destroy such amazingness! In every step we should mimic Jesus and be guided by the Spirit, never falling away from this. 2 Peter 1:10 for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall!!!! Why don't we follow this list : faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity. We need all of those, heaped one ontop of the other!

Thoughts on Worship

I spent a lot of time looking at and considering what 'worship' means and is over the summer, the forms it should take and the forms it appears in. As created beings the act of worship is normal, the first of God's commandments to Moses in Exodus is about worship - we are called not to be idolaters and worship anything other than God. Worship of God is integral, because if not worshipping God we're worshipping something else. That said, here are my initial thoughts.

In my mind the purpose of 'worship music' is or at least should be to inspire the worshiper. There can be no doubt that the creative arts are employed well in this endeavour (there is a reason my ballet shoes are put in my bag whenever I leave for church). 

Primarily worship is to glorify God, but I find the only way of truly doing this is through surrender. To fully worship God you must surrender and sacrifice everything to Him. My favourite prayer "take everything that I have, be everything that I am." If I'm in a place where I'm constantly praying that, every moment is worship without hesitation. 

An amazing form of worship is prayer, using words to open our hearts to God, and to praise Him, to bring ourselves and the world before Him. Though to me, worship is a love song, now that song doesn't need to be an actual song, but it's the easiest way of describing it. It's my heart that's singing. A year ago when I managed to have a fantastic accident at Soul Survivor Church in Watford and fractured my foot whilst dancing to the song... Undignified... with ribbons (which I will never touch again!). I was also suffering from prolonged writers block, and had a really bad chest and couldn't sing. I was suddenly in a place where everything I used physically to praise God was stripped away, within a few weeks I ended up with... nothing, and it really felt like that, I had no song, no poetry, and no dance. During that time I began to fully understand what it was to worship God, my life was falling apart and there was only one thing that could save it, to surrender my will, to surrender my control. Not an easy thing to do, and it took months before I got there, but I had relied on creativity to worship God, but that's not what He needed, or wanted. He wants each one of us, in a new way, to see and experience Him. As I said the creativity is important, but can't be seen as the only thing! I didn't realise this until my entire life was stripped down to nothing, sometimes it takes us a lot to learn these things.

Moving on, times of focused communal worship are stunning because God's people gather as a family to give Him praise and glory, now that can take many forms; written 'liturgy' (another misnomer), hymns, teaching, going out into the community together or just simply sitting down and eating a meal together. Currently the trends focus hugely on songs, surely because of the inspiration this provides, but unless everything else is seen as worship we are missing something vital. 

I want to get distracted for a moment by 'liturgy' I'm not sure why... the word itself just means worship, yet, 'the liturgy' probably more correctly, is power and amazing. I grew up in a place where this created the structure and was the entire communal worship for the week, with the exception of rare occasions. My favourite words have always been "therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name evermore praising thee and saying: holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory." To gather every week and repeat the same words may seem monotonous and boring, but it's the opposite, to fill yourselves again with those truths of God, to know Him better, the excitement in that is amazing, through it there is so much. I worry that it becomes too much of a comfortable tradition for some, but the purpose is to take out those truths and that worship into every day, and every moment and let all of it become worship because it is with you.

As I hope I've communicated, worship is vital, but we cannot rely on one simple method of worshipping God, we must consider that every day is worship, and know Him better through it. We must employ the extraordinary and the mundane. We must completely surrender ourselves to God in every breath and each moment between every breath.

Here it is:

My life can be crazy, so full, so intense, as soon as that intensity stops I begin to crash. That crashing can be anything, from health to happiness.

I don't want that!

I don't want that anylonger... for so long it was all I was used to. I either run myself to burn out, or I stop and can't get up. I want to be happy, I want to find all my energy in God, I want to be so sure of who I am that nothing can shake me because my identity is ONLY found in Christ. I want to be strong enough to recognise the tricks of the devil so that I don't fall without realising what I'm doing. I know that there was the day over the summer when he tried to take me down, but everything was so clear. He keeps trying to take me down in the same way, but I'm so lost I don't stop it... I'm not fighting, I'm throwing one punch and giving up! I'm praying the armour of God for a day and then forgetting the next. I'm losing myself... I'm losing God. That's not who I am! That has never been who I am!

This is a fight that is already won, I cannot surrender when my victory has already been won! It's as if I'm trying to say to God I don't want you... I don't want salvation. I know that is such a lie! If God hadn't been present in my life the way He has, I would be dead, I would no one... I would have no identity, I could have no life. This is a fight for my life, a fight Christ won on the cross... a fight for my life... well you know what? I'm never going to die! Christian's can't die, none of us, we have salvation by the one who hold keys to death, we will NEVER die, we will fall asleep! We can only ever fall asleep! So trying to drag me away from that... could never succeed, I may have lost so much to death, yet at the funeral of the man who held the Kingdom in his heart was such a moment of peace. It was as if God was saying... live like that! Know me like that! He's not dead, he's just asleep, and he lives eternally. It was the most peaceful day of my life, how can I forget that? I look for those who hold the Kingdom in their heart, but I forget to strive for that...

The Kingdom of God is the deepest desire of my heart, it has been all my life. The song that was stuck in my head last year, the song that came back to me again and again until I stopped and thought about the words this summer. It plagued me, because God was telling me, He really was saying "seek ye first the Kingdom" I spent so long ignoring it, it took a year before I listened... I have to listen!

I feel like just writing a incredibly short entry like this:

Last night was awesome, God is amazing. That is all...

But I won't.

Last night I got to the end of my tether with this stuff, I couldn't stop crying, and got so sick of it. I said enough is enough. What ever this is I can face it, because God is here, and with me. So I took out my candles, incense, oil burner. In a dimly lit muggy room I started to pray. Pausing I felt inspired to re-write Ephesians 6:10ff, which is in Greek on my wall, and as I copied it out again, I prayed, I prayed each bit of it. I put on the Armour of God. I carried on praying. Sent some prayer request texts out, because I knew the dangers in what I was doing, and I started to ask God why.

Then it came, the answer, the words that I had heard earlier... Righteous Anger, I was angry, I was so angry. Yet somehow, that anger had been manipulated into hate, hate towards other people, towards God, and in an incredibly self-destructive way, towards myself. I began to think about Adam, about how he died, and knew that I was angry and that was okay. I gave up the hatred that had filled me, hatred towards those who had threatened my life, those that had entered my dreams. I let it go, I let God take it. I began to worship God, I let myself go, and joy began to fill me again!

Then came the ultimate test, I took out the list that I had made, a list of situations to deal with, to let go of, a list that I would have broken down reading a few hours previously. I read this list, and I felt nothing, no anger, no pain. There was too much joy in my heart.

So let me say it again. GOD IS AMAZING!

Indeed, it is time for a change my darling. Look around you, see how bright the day is, the day which you shut out like Haig... You are NOT Miss Haversham! He never meant that as a compliment, so do not for a second take THAT as a compliment. 

Dreams like last night... should not be in your mind. I crawled inside my wardrobe to hide from the world this morning, I needed to be completely surrounded. I read something that I shouldn't have last night. Part of me wants to face it, face what they did, what they said, but I can't, it's too painful. I suppose the contradictions just ring in my head, and its as if... he suggested that I change who I am to fit in, he didn't know that I'd done that, I'd done that over and again and again! And it made things worse so I gave up... because it was worse. It was worse to compromise, to change who I was, I miss who I used to be, I miss the original ME. The girl that spoke with a proper voice, who had surety, who had people around her who loved her like TJ. Then TJ left, and I suppose I gave up. Because I couldn't be strong without him, it didn't matter how the rest of them treated me, because he was there...

It does not matter anylonger, for the first time in my life, I'm surrounded by people who accept me for who I am. I had dreamt of this day, a far off dream, the imagining of a broken girl. Now I struggle, when the present is pain it is easier to get through in hope of the future, when the present is that hope, it seems easier to dwell in the past. Though regardless of this, I'm getting there, I'm making progress, and God is working in me. That is amazing. I just copied a list of bible verses from a website, I'm going to go through them, and remind myself of what God sees when he looks at me, because to Him, my clothes, my voice...none of it matters, He sees me.

It's been a year since Adam died. It's so weird, hard to believe. I'm listening to music that reminds me of him, I'm wearing gothic mourning clothes, I have to, he'd appreciate them. I don't care what the world thinks, what the world sees today. I loved him.