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how do you find the truth behind the lies?

when other people write the words you can't say

i am the only one to blame for this. somehow it all ends up the same. soaring on the wings of selfish pride i flew too high and like icharus i collide with a world i try so hard to leave behind. to rid myself of all but love, to give and die. to turn away and not become another nail to pirece the skin of one who loved more deeply than the ocean, more abundant than the tears, of a world embracing every heartache. can i be the one to sacrifice? or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow? to love you... take my world apart. to need you... i am on my knees. to love you... take my world apart. to need you... broken on my knees.
all said and done i stand alone. not much remains of a life i should not own. it takes all i am to believe in the mercy that covers me. did you really have to die for me? all i am, for all you are, for what i need and what i believe are worlds apart. and i pray to love you... take my world apart. to need you... i am on my knees. to love you... take my world apart. to nee d you... broken on my knees.
i look beyond the empty cross, forgetting what my life has cost. wipe away the crimson stain and all nails that still remain. more and more i need you now. i owe you more each passing hour. the battle between grace and pain, i gave up not so long ago. so steal my heart and take the pain. wash the feet and cleanse my pride. take the selfish, take the weak, and all the things i cannot hide . take the beauty, take the tears. sin in so far make it yours. take my world, all of it. take it now, take it now. serve the ones that i despise. take the words i cant deny. watch the world i used to know crumble down and fall away. take my world apart. and i pray... take my world apart... worlds apart.

-j.o.c.

MAKE me lie down in green pastures

so i had planned to write a sort of "rebound" from the last one to convince myself and anyone else that i am doing much better. i dont know how much i'll stick to that but oh well. last weekend sucked. i was by myself a lot and not really in a good position for that, and i guess kinda focused too heavily and too far in advance on things that i didnt need to. but then monday night cleaned a lot of it up. we had the "labyrinth" here at school for spiritual emphasis week, and the actual setup was kinda corny but the idea was powerful and surpassed any misgivings i had walking in. it's a circular, maze-like pathway to walk, except that there is only one choice of paths to follow. walking in to the center is a "shedding" time where you just dump off to jesus all the junk that you're carrying around. then the center is a place to sit and have reflection and "illumination" from christ and just talk to him and let him talk to you. or just be and let him be. then the walk out is a time for "union" when you acknowledge what you have you have just done and process how to heal and stay strong. i went just for the heck of it, a good time with my maker who knows what i'm struggling with and loves me so much, and i walked away with a lightness of heart that i havent experienced for months. basically for me, the walk in centered on fear. the middle time consisted of kind of a running narrative in my head of us as sheep, dumb sheep, in life just here to do our thing while god as the true shepherd guides us along in the way that he knows is the best way... and just like a shepherd has to MAKE his sheep drink clean water and lay and rest in green pastures, god often makes us do what is best if we are open to his guidance. even if this makes no sense, it helped me to clearly see a situation, and what to do with it from the rut that i had fallen into. i had a solid picture of HOPE. HOPE in the midst of an area that i haven't felt anything but fear and pain and pure sickness to the stomach about for months. it was powerful. it allowed me to stand up taller. it allowed me to see things more clearly. and it allowed me to know that even when the sheep do really stupid things, god knows we're sheep and pulls us out of the thorny bushes without punishing us, knowing that the rips the thorns tore in our flesh are punishment enough, and leads us back to the stream and MAKES us lie down and drink. and rest. and he comforts us and makes sure we remember that he was always there, is there now, and always will be there... yeah. that's the god i serve.

hide and go seek

hmmmm. crazy. here i am again. i was thinking about blogs the other day... they're like journals, obviously, and deep down i think everyone wants their journal to be read. even the most secret part of it... by someone who they dont know or even someone that they do, so that someone else will know the deep needs of their heart and hold them while they cry or just say, "you're a special person... different than everyone else" (in a good way). and so plenty of people pour their emotional stuff into a blog, which i think is fine dont get me wrong, but then when something happens and i think "hmm i should write about that online" i have to ask myself why... am i trying to get attention from people? or worse, pity? i love reading blogs to find out what people are up to and how they feel about certain things... but i guess with my own life i feel like my deep down stuff doesnt belong on the world wide web. of course this is coming from someone with chronic trust issues and a first-class "stuffer." i guess my theory has always been that if someone doesn't need to know... don't tell them. sounds simple huh? yeah well you know that it's not. but if you say something to someone, anything from being attracted to someone or being annoyed or that you laughed so hard one time you peed your pants... someone else is going to know. it might be that person's boy/girl friend or best friend or mother who would never say anything and really isn't a part of it to matter whether they know or not... but regardless, another person knows. we just cant hold things inside as humans. for whatever reason, god made us that way (i think). now that's probably all of my cynical anti-trust crap coming out... but it's proved true time after time after time so now i just dont tell people things. and lots of times, i dont listen to others because i dont want to run the risk of saying something of theirs to someone else. yeah. that got me through high school. with basically no close friends. good job, leah. hold that thought.

so i started going to a new church... first time since 8th grade when i started going to first church back home. i've "tried" a couple churches out here but i hate looking. i hate that they jokingly have a label for it here: church shopping. who am i to enter a church and pass my struggling eighteen and a half year old judgment on it. and besides, you end up criticizing every inch of the service to see whether or not it's "right" for you. ugh. suck. i just want to go to my church back home... but, oh yeah, no i dont. i forgot. well to jump ahead i started going to the mercy house, trying not to "try it out" but just to go and tell god that i love him and let him remind me that he loves me more. it's definitely a very genuine place which is more than i can say for the other churches i "checked out." ugh. but yeah- so yesterday matt connor talked about truth. wherever truth is not, there is death. spiritual, emotional, relational (or physical in peter's community...). true, genuine, and christlike community cant be built by people who cant be truthful. so where do you draw the line between telling people the truth about something (not opposed to lying but rather opposed to saying anything at all when maybe you dont need to) for the sake of telling truth, and telling them for the sake of looking for attention and pity. i hate complainers... but i long to do it just about every minute of the day. i neverknow what to say to people who confide in me because i dont want to say something just for the sake of making an awkward silence less awkward, and i usually am just thinking about what they said, not what to say in response... i dont know yet. at the same time i dont want people to necessarily say anything to me if i confide in them (which i usually dont do) but i just want to get it out. ugh. but, i dont. because i dont want people to know whats wrong with me, or what i struggle with. i just want to complain. and have someone tell me that i'm not like every other whiny eighteen year old girl in the world. hmm. well... i'm not. not like all of them. like an unfortunate few, but not all. bummer. poor us. so anyway i hope you are thoroughly annoyed by my negativity and vagueness. it's working, i guess. that just has to do with something that, well, i cant tell you. back to truth. what if the truth that isn't told cant be told? then what? how do you build community then? or if some people know the truth and are helping you through it... what do you do with the rest of the people? you're living a lie but there's nothing you can do about it. suck. sorry- i guess i'm a little bitter. but god loves me. and he knows. and he is holding me tighter than i could ever imagine. i know it, i just have to let myself feel it.

there. i'm sick of living a lie. i guess i still am, but now you know that i am. maybe that takes care of part of it. ..