my everyday life
in my everyday life
i live somewhere between couch potato and athlete
somewhere between idiot and genius
junk-food-junkie and health nut
sloth and workaholic
somewhere between hermit and socialite
wallflower and life of the party
i love small spaces
i don’t like vaulted ceilings
i like the woods
not so much the open plain
i enjoy being on a lake fishing
but don’t care for pleasure cruising
i’d rather be in the Rocky Mountains than in the Grand Canyon
if i had to pick between snowshoeing or beach combing on vacation, i’d pick the snow every time
life is full of in between places and preferences
and sometimes the non-in between places are addiction
not just booze or drugs
but extremes
things that control
and i used live there but not anymore
and lack of having preferences is people pleasing
and i used to live there too
used to
because i’ve worked to overcome both in my life—
addictions
and
people pleasing
and it is living the in between life i find curious and interesting
it is where contentment grows
where i remain sane
and for lack of a better term, it is where i am grounded
it is where i find my faith
it was in the extremes—the addictions—the people pleasing places i first sought faith
damn near ruined and hemorrhaging from life’s beatings and reeling from the pain of it all
i looked up
and found God wasn’t so far from me after all
and Jesus was walking in those extremes
He went to those places, didn’t He?
He walked in the fringes of life because that was where the sick people were
it still is
body sick and soul sick and needing a doctor
a hope
a hand
a heart transplant
that is where Jesus went
that is where Jesus still goes—
to the sick
and i’ve been sick before—
damn near ruined
shattered
unable to put myself together or stop the bleeding
and i looked up and there He was
Jesus.
and i took his hand and he took my heart and squeezed it
squeezed it so much it hurt more than i imagined possible
because my heart was a stone and Jesus was the abrasion, erosion, the lichen
and the oxygen that broke down the stone
but my heart didn’t disintegrate, crumble, or dissolve
no, the Jesus-breaking-my-heart process turned it into flesh
feeling and beating heart of flesh and when my stone-turned-flesh heart began to beat anew—
beat with a pulse from heaven itself
i stepped out of the fringes and found freedom
freedom from addiction
freedom from people pleasing
freedom from living in the fringes
and now i can go to the fringes like Jesus
not to be captured or oppressed or dominated by them
but because that is where i remember myself — the self with that heart of stone that was hemorrhaging
blood from a rock
until blood from a body— the body of Jesus— saturated my world-born-stone-yet-bleeding heart and made it new
fleshy and new
and i’ve turned into someone who can go to the fringes and love the ones living in them because i did
i did live there
and i’m not better than them now — just because i don’t live there anymore
but i am different
inside i’m different
aware of my worth as a God-made-me-in-His-image human
and my heart beats in time with the songs of angels and the hum of creation
and i am free
Jesus made me free.
