I Love Bullet Points

This will be short. I'm writing more so that I don't forget rather than for the sake of art, inspiration or discipline.

Here are some things I'm learning:

• If I am not honest with God because I am afraid of losing His love, we do not have relationship. We have small talk. There is no fear in love.
• Boundaries keep relationships healthy. God has boundaries too. He makes choices and I may not understand them or like them. He allows me the freedom to choose whether or not to trust Him. He doesn't demand my trust. Just as He won't be manipulated by whether or not I give it to Him.
• I think I might be a good teacher someday. Weird.
• I love making yummy omelettes and I love eating them even more.
• It could be that God wants to work out some character kinks in me as I journey through my land between. By withholding the thing I want, by allowing disappointment, by leading me through the wilderness, He is not only teaching me to trust Him, but He is graciously trying to burn away some of the dross in me that keeps me stuck in unhealthy patterns, thought processes, and behaviors. Ughhh...personal responsbility. I think this is what conviction feels like.
  

The Giant Blowhorn

I've been thinking a lot about the Israelites lately. Their wilderness. My wilderness. Their trust issues. My trust issues.

I was reading more of The Land Between the other day and these words struck me:

"Trust is the glue that holds any relationship together. Throughout these hardships, God desired to forge a people of trust...the Israelites are the people of promise, headed for the land of Promise, and they are totally unfit to take possession of the land in their current position. They really don't know God or trust Him. The purpose of the desert is to forge a relationship of trust."

Seems there's a theme here. T.R.U.S.T. And if I look at the rest of the Bible, I find the same theme woven through the pages, imprinted on each story, each character, each challenge, each victory. And if I look at my life right now, and my life over the past year and the decade or so before that, I find the very same theme poking it's pesky head at me everywhere I turn. It's as if God is holding a giant blowhorn inches from my ear, "Shawna, don't you think it's about time?"

Yes, I do.

I wrote a poem about it today.

fierce love look

shape me in the fire of this pain
to fit inside the hold of your arms
where fear is forgotten, only a vague
memory of days gone by when I knew
about you, saw you from a distance
in the pages and the pulpit, before
this fire illuminated that fierce love
look on your face