Here

Thanks to the current economic state of things, I no longer get free music. I am much saddened by this, but that's not my point. My point is that without Ruckus, I must turn to other sources for my musical delight. I actually downloaded Limewire and got maybe two songs off it, but then deleted for fear I would get caught up and my laptop confiscated and tragedy upon tragedy would ensue. So I sucked it up and went and bought CDs of the music that I felt like I wanted the most. I already had all my Relient K (whom I highly recommend) but I realized that I had no David Crowder* Band. Well, what to do, what to do? I bough three CDs, threw a hissy fit because I couldn't find the RENT soundtrack and proceeded to put a ton of music on my computer and MP3 player.

I also rediscoered the wonder of my CD player at home. I think it is glorious and reminds me of forgotten days' wholesome musical goodness. I was playing proudly my new CDs as I cleaned out my fish tank and I was stopped by the lyrics of a song. 'Here is our king. Here is our Love. Here is our God who's come to bring us back to Him. He is the One. He is Jesus.'

Well, nothing new there. As I was reminded by one of my Carolina not born and bred friends, I was raised in the Bible belt (kinda the upper end of the belt... more like the Bible waistline of the country) and so I know of this Jesus you speak of, this Man who is God who dies to redeem us. Honestly, the way my relationship with Him has been recently, you could replace half of that with blahs. Jesus blah Man blah blah blah died blah blah us. I know of Him, I even know a little but about Him and He knows that I've claimed a lot to know Him personally. He also knows when I lie. That's the thing about the Almighty and All-knowing God. He knows. Creepy.

Of course, He can't just let that go, now can He? He won't let me be apart from Him and still claim Him. He's crazy jealous of me, like He is of anyone who's human, and He won't have me leaving Him for this world. He loves me too much. However, He also loves me too much to make me come back to Him. "True love never forces." So we've been in this little battle since, oh, I don't know, November, and I've been miserable because He doesn't need me and why should I be anywhere if I'm not needed and He didn't stop this and He didn't stop that and Creation was all wrong and He could have made it differently because He's God and He could have made any universe, any one at all, and made it without pain and suffering and abused children and starving people and silly hurt stupid college girls who picked something that was way over their heads and are now left abandoned to the tidal waves and gale force winds of life. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I've been rereading The Shack (which I highly recommend) because the back cover said that the book reads like a prayer 'of the best kind' and my prayer life has been wanting, tell me you. If I can't talk to my Make I might as well read about Him. Maybe then I can make our Hist character. I also know that The Shack is wonderful medicine for a hurting soul. For a doubting mind, no heart attached, I recommend Mere Christianity. Oh, it'll find your heart, but it takes your mind for a spin first. The Shack, though, The Shack rips out my heart and rakes up the debris to burn later. I get so very very very angry at the answers it gave because they were not what I wanted to hear and they ignored the points I came up with and they never stopped my stupid and useless pain and doubt. As with CS Lewis, I would have to put down the book (OK, I threw it) every time I felt convicted, which was getting to be pretty often about the time that I read that "Religion is about having the right answers..." (Also, religion does not equal a relationship) "... [t]here are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of the right things from their brains because they've been told what the right answers are but they don't really know me at all.'

I feel like the Grandfather in The Princess Bride right now. "She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time." This is not the point in my life when my great fear of the Scripture where Christ says, 'Go away from me! I never knew you!' comes true and I must run far away from my God. No, this is the point in my life when I stare angrily, guiltily at the floor because I realize that the heart He grew in me over the past four summers was hidden away at the last of them and replaced by the mind I felt more rightly mine. After all, I knew He had given me the heart but I felt like I owned the mind. I didn't know that my mind was the part of me that was making my life so miserable. I depend on my brain. When it fails, I fail and I was miserable.

So after I sated in anger at the flood and felt like my guilty head was too heavy to raise, I bent over, picked up my book and read some more. It took me a couple of lines to figure out that I wasn't on the same page because Jesus was talking, not whoever was talking before. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" the main character asked. 'Don't believe we didn't try,' Jesus replied. This made me quite angry again. He's gotten especially goof at answering my questions before I ask them. Why didn't You fix this before now, save me from all my recent self-inflicted misery? I ask. 'We tried,' He says. "True love never forces." This is the time in my life when I laugh a little bitterly, close the book and look up at what has, for so long, been an empty ceiling. It's wonderful to have Him back, even though it's not going to stay this easy. We have a lot to talk about. But He's back! Here is my King. Here is my Love.

But wait a second. I'm not so touchy-feely. That's the bit about the lyrics that caught my mind in the first place. I'm happy to love Jesus, I think, and goodness knows I'm forever thankful for His grace, but Him loving me back? No, sir, no thank you, I'd much rather stand over here and just work for You, if that's alright. You have Your almighty space, I'll keep to my bubble. 'Cept it doesn't work that way. He lives in you, not just through you. You might be his hands and his feet but you're also His body. His life is yours or rather, your is His. Creepy.

Or maybe not. What else do you expect from the God of the Universe who throws open the screen door on the porch to pick you up and swing you around in the biggest hug you've ever had, yelling your name out of a love that the world can hear?
Here is our King. Here is our Love. Here is our God who's come to bring us back to Him.