People Never Crumble in a Day

I've started a new post in my head like 80 times in the past couple of weeks.

I mean, about all sorts of stuff. From work and love to baseball and so you think you can dance. How is it that every night I have run out of time to write these entries? It's not like I'm dong anything "bad". I'm watching baseball and so you think you can dance and alias. I'm working my tail off while the oven commences to breaking and managers leave the building and put 5-week-experienced me in charge-- working hard but loving it all the same.

I've heard people talk about that all my life, but am just now, nearing age 20, truly understanding it. And still, not even close to really understanding. After all, marriage and children haven't been tossed into the whole work equation. Shoot, a boyfriend hasn't even made an appearance. So, yeah, there's a lot to learn. But now I'm starting my work/love post and that just isn't where I am this morning.

What else am I doing? Hanging out with the family that I love to be a part of more and more every day-- more exposed to our flaws, but with more time to appreciate our strengths. Missing Emily and wishing there was more time to be a part of her life-- her amazingly involved and faithful life. Trying to be a better friend this summer than I was last summer. Making dinner and cleaning house. Reading other people's blogs and wondering what in the world I have to say. Starting my own post, reading some old ones and discovering how high and mighty I can tend to sound. Being smacked in the face by how so not high and ridiculously not mighty I really am. And discovering day after day when I don't write that I don't have anything to say. Seriously, not a word about my daily life or thoughts means a thing. Even in my head, the imagined posts bore me. I mean, they start out quirky with some sort of quip, but soon dry up and I don't come down to put my fingers to the keys. That is exactly what I feel like-- like I'm drying up. It's a terrible feeling because everything around me is so rich and I do feel so blessed. But what am I adding to it?

Honestly, I don't feel added to. Swear (except I usually don't) I'm not depressed. Promise. And the drying up feeling? No one else's fault but my very own. Because plenty of people, all people I love, are investing in me. We shop, we talk, we hang out, we eat, we play, we laugh, we work. These people basically add everything to my life. Without them there is nothing to do, no one to talk to. But at the end of the day, these people alone add nothing. At least, nothing without the purpose God gives to them being in my life. And that purpose has been sorely lacking. Because I have slowly given up seeking it. I haven't put bad things in place of the pursuit of a Godly life, but I have put things in its place. And over time, those things-- the tv, the cleaning, the work, the facebook, the blogging, even-- have lost a little of their fun. Mainly because coming in the place of my relationship with Christ automatically makes them bad things. It takes a little while to get that frustrated with the lack of spiritual fulfillment in my life to see or admit that, but it is freeing to get there.

It has been a slow fade. Which is why the other day when I drove home from I don't even know where and the Casting Crowns song, "Slow Fade" came on, something clicked. I haven't been sad or aloof. Trust me, I've been having all sorts of fun this summer. And there will be blog posts to come to totally illustrate that fact. But it is all in vain if I don't get this right. This purpose thing. At no point in the past month have I really been aware of this drying up or fading and had you asked how my summer was, I wouldn't have been lying by answering "great." As the song played in the highlander-- the one I may or may not be taking back to school, the one I consider a privilege to drive because I may again go vehicle-less in Virginia where I will have to have a job and where I would love to be able to cart friends of old and new off campus to spontaneous fun-- it felt like I was being reminded that I can just say uncle. I can just admit that I can't and don't want to keep going on in life without the purpose.

It sounds really dark and depressing when put like that. But the joy comes with the fact that there is "the purpose." If I can quote Chris Tomlin, "his name is Jesus and he understands. He is the answer you've been looking for, so come home running, just as you are." The moment I admit that I'm not happy with how I am-- not unhappy with the people or circumstances, but unhappy with me-- there is freedom to not have everything going on around me perfect. It isn't up to me to make life go smoothly. But it surely isn't going to go smoothly if I'm not right with me and the Savior who died to make things right.

And for me it is so much better to be at this point, knowing I have to get better at my relationship with Christ, that I must once again put my dependence on Him, than to be where I was, fooling myself into thinking that everything was great. In the words of Casting Crowns " be careful if you think you stand, you just might be sinking."

Jesus casts a rope. He cast it on the cross and He is still actively saving. It's not about who I can go out and save (though I would love to find places, or really more like take God up on the places He has already provided, to tell others about this rope and this savior). It's about me still being saved. Not that I am, but that He still is. There is comfort and joy in knowing I have a way out of the nothingness-- something reassuring about a firm grasp on that rope. Especially after confidently standing in quick sand, though with more and more frequent glimpses of the trouble I was in as my feet went deeper and deeper. Then suddenly, the realization that I can't. And the fear that accompanies the inadequacy. But then, a rope.

A way out. Someone who loves you, no matter the trouble. Someone who still, dirt and all, wants time with you. And who knows that time with Him, what I've lacked for some time now, it's exactly what I need.

People never crumble in a day. But they do crumble. And I was. Slowly, though, what I need is once again becoming what I want to do with my time. That is, time getting to know the man behind the rope.

Well, and then adding so you think you can dance and shopping trips back in.

Funny, those things seem so much sweeter when I've got "the purpose" on my side.

His name is Jesus. He understands. He is the answer I've been looking for. And He. Never Crumbles. Period.