On Being female... An Introduction

My marriage is ending. It wasn't something he or I saw coming, nothing that happened over time, as we were together as man and wife less than a year, we just didn't grow apart. In fact we were ripped apart the day I chose to leave him. My choice. His choice was to continue being abusive. My aim is to share what God has laid on my heart as I struggle to understand what it means to be female according to His design and creation as well through my struggles with sin. Something I have noticed in the past four months since I have been separated, is the constant wrestling in my life of role vs. design. God designed me as a woman and therefore with certain qualities, yet I seem to cling to the world and the Christian definition of what my role is rather than my design. Western women define themselves (and one another) based on what they do. God doesn't revoke our female-ness based on such things, He instead created us as women. I am afraid I can tell you better what I should DO rather than who I AM. God is urging me to explore that. This blog will be the messy documentation of that journey, I will include scripture, what works I am reading as well as my own messy musings and experiences. Givens: we live in a fallen world, I am a sinner, others sin against me, I need Christ and I rely on grace. Philippians 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

Wow! That was painful

I am re-reading my posts.
It has been about a year since the Lord turned my world upside down.
I went from a snotty, selfish, tough girl, to... well to a work whose purpose has yet to be realized outside of bringing Him glory.

As I look back and read, I see it all. My need. My sin. My searching. It hurts me to much now to see how defiant I was. How much I hurt. The past year has been a world wind. Much of which I don't have enough distance from to form a coherent story. All I can be sure of is that He has been there the entire time and He has made me into a new creation. I suppose that is all I need.

And as a new creation, I go forth into the world and ask Him; what can I do today for Your Kingdom?
My life is full in a way I have never known.

I thought about going back and deleting my old posts, because they are not representative of who I am any more, but they are real and they are real places where I have been. The hurt, the confusion, the ambivalence and the anger are all real. So it makes me think. Who I am without Him. Isaiah 1 says a festering wound. That was pretty accurate. Who am I now? Well, that remains to be seen... I am His.

This has become my new meditation the past year: [Philippians 3]
7But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Spring cleaning...

I live in a summer climate.
Two of the things I miss about the East Coast are Spring and Fall.
I like the feeling of being able to start again.
Well, this past weekend, I have been doing some spring cleaning of my own.
It's called my love life.
To put it simply, I got rid of all those "but what ifs".
That feels good.
But the hurt doesn't.
Funny thing, it's mostly not my hurt, it's theirs.
One cried.
The look on the other's face b r o k e my heart.
I know I have to do me right now.
Deep breathe.
Why does it hurt so much to breathe sometimes?
Like my chest is caving in around my heart.
Maybe it needs to feel protected.

That's probably why it took me until spring to do the cleaning that was left over from the fall.

Only the leaves smell more, after they've had the time to rot.

Create your own Spring.

Personal Velocity

n. 1. The average speed at which one lives their life. 2. The amount of time it takes for one to become motivated or inspired in life.

bzzzz. the gate buzzes and i hear the screen door clicking as it attempts to close. i squint, my body in a sweat, trying to process the slant of sunlight while calculating the hour. central standard time.

i shuffle down the tile hall floor. and i hold down the buzzer for a party goer on her way to church. i nod as she wishes me a happy birthday.

1, 2, skip a few. 25. i have always been one to heed the advice of my elders when it comes to living life. never been in a hurry for it to hurry up. yet i always feel like i'm waiting for something to happen. not that my life is without excitement, no it is exciting. like i expected more, got a bad deal, less that i bargained for, paid for the trendy dinner and am still hungry.

i'm taking a breather right now. i'm good at my job. i like my home. i'm making friends (though this is an arduous process). settling in. which is not to be confused with settling down.

there is still this stirring within me, to keep moving, don't slow down. but i can feel this reisistance in the past few years, to grow roots. so i am here, planting shallow roots and attempting to pull them up at any given moment.

my personal velocity. well, i haven't been dragging my feel on lots of the important stuff. however, the better i do at these things, the more i realize they're not important to me. job, car, house, kewl. but it's funny, i think my personal velocity is revving up the RPMs and i feel like i'm spinning my wheels, because i keep looking around me and seeing the same thing.

that doesn't mean there is nowhere to go. i think settling gives you the ability to confront what we can always run from, what is within. that is ofcourse, if you don't fill the urge to run, which is caused by settling, with a new adventure, before you listen to the wisdom of the adventure you're settling into. example; marriage. wooohooo, big adventure, high velocity. while you are settling into this, you decide to have a kiddo (another high velocity activity) to make these uncomfortable, and natural questions, go away.

so i am here. uncomfortable. high velocity, trying not to see it as my wheels spinning but as an advernture inward, and though i may not appear to be racing to the next stop, i still can see myself chugging along. the velocity all depends on the limits of the object in motion.

apple in flight

"The pull you have is stronger than gravity...", he starts and ends,
waiting
for some
consolation
in his trepidation,
i smirk, feeling what he's
insinuating
watching
his words trail behind my
simple gyrations,
heel
click,
shatter on contact -
my scent rides out the wind.

It won't materialize in
the anticipation when i come straight for you
i'm a succubus
or how i stretch under your skin -
classify me bubonic

it's how my wink leaves you on the
brink
of more
that you can't catch.

Babes in Candyland

I don't bake. I am not domesticated like that. I don't make cookies and give them out as presents. In fact, I'm more likely to be the one to spit on the cookies on the table in the break room because that kind of concentrated effort and forced feminization blows my mind.

Needless to say, my mom and I didn't bond in the kitchen making cutesy Christmas cookies or even cakes. I learned to cook at five, my first meal, hot dogs for me and my dad. And that Christmas, with my mom crying over the turkey that did was still frozen in the middle at 8pm, my dad sulking in the living room, I proudly declared to my uncle and grandma, I would make them hotdogs for dinner.

My mom and I did, however, bond over clothing and men.

We didn't even have a stove growing up. Not due to impoverished circumstances, but rather because my mom didn't cook. Sometime in my teen years my mom worked as a buyer for a food service company and we acquired an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie oven, which sat (sits) a top the refrigerator in which she baked Stouffer's pizzas well into my college years. That was the extent of baking that occurred in my home. More like browning of frozen goods.

Correction, I don't bake, unless I'm consciously avoiding something. Making brownies at 11:30 at night to avoid a stack of papers that need to be reviewed, making cookies on Sundays to avoid planning out the next week. Lately, what I have been avoiding has been my life.

I am currently entertaining making chocolate cupcakes - from scratch- at 9pm on a SATURDAY.

How did my life end up here? When did this become my life? I have been asking myself that same questions for the past 11 months. That's about how long ago this feeling started, as far as I can see.

Recently, people I have talked to have said,"It's just your 20s. They suck, especially 23, 24 and 25." That thought had never crossed my mind. I have heard of the terrible twos, moody teenage year and my mom told me every birthday from when I was 9, that 25 was the worst year of her life, but is it possible we go through a series of "terrible" years through out our life; these cycles where nothing seems to be going right, though you're right on track?

So far I loath 24. It is the only age I can say I honestly didn't want to turn when I woke up on that December morning. Twenty-three was decent, twenty two excellent, twenty one exciting, and what I remember about 20, it was the pinnacle of existence, but 24 from the start has been a game of punching me in the stomach and when I fall down, doing a Mexican hat dance on my heart and soul. No, this is not a weepy, "oh my poor love life" blog, though I assure you when Betty Crocker is abound, so will be that genre of blog. This is a doubleUteePH? blog. A, I throw my hands up to the Universe and scream in the car with the windows down, white flag waving, crying on your best friend's couch, seriously?, SERIOUSLY dude?, blog.

With it, 24 has brought a stringofmen that make my head spin, yes, my life skills are becoming refined with each one, but did I really need to make up for my lack of adolescence quasi-boyfriends with a slew of guys that are really great but do not fit quite right.

I digress and I promised it wasn't that kind of blog.

It has also brought with it, my conscious choice to stay where I am geographically.

A fabulous grip on my career and several doors with matching opportunities.

A commitment to the machine in the form of a mortgage and a monthly car payment; and while some may say, "Ah-ha! That's the issue, the all so sudden forced maturation of BILLS and economics!", I must respectfully disagree. It's not that.

It's not the guy thing,or lack of guy thing or the overwhelming of guy thing, it occasionally IS the geography of it all, but not consistently enough to warrant complete abdication. So, why do I feel like I can't get a grip, on ANYTHING?

Is it as simple as, simply a phase, the tumultuous twenties? Or should I be calling Dr. Phil and talking about the tragedies of my parents throwing out my toy blocks and my odd need to put lipstick on my dolly's head pretending he was bleeding after he fell off a cliff? It was an accident, and I always fixed him up. Hey, I even bought him real pampers, okay, my mom did. He was anatomically correct, I didn't want him to be embarrassed if there was an accident. Always be prepared, I say.

So, do you think it's hard to find buttermilk in sub-tropical climates?

That's a silly question, I do live in the South.