I suppose I should comment on the new private status of my blog. It's not meant to be anything dramatic. I've just been sensing lately that I am heading into a season where it would be best to make my blog a more private thing again. I wasn't quite sure who all was reading it- I was getting a lot more 'views' then I knew who were looking.

I miss my family's comments anyways- for the most part you have died out as others have started reading. Hopefully this will encourage more comments from you, and the other readers :)

As others request to be "added" I have no problem sending them an 'invite' to join. I love you all deeply. Thank you for being such wonderful friends, and for even putting up with my long, and sometimes pointless writing.

I'm excited to see what God is going to be doing in this next season, and how that is reflected even in my writing.

If this causes problems for you guys getting in, reading and commenting, let me know.

Love you!

So, not any super clear or deep thought- this picture just kind of describes how I feel. Happy. Content. Enjoying life for all that it is today. What a gift!

I love you all deeply.

I found a link to this on another of the blogs here on blogspot... I believe it's a band's website. Out of curiosity, I had hit "next blog" on the top of mine, and was led to a young Christian woman's. She had a post with a link to this ministry to bring 'hope to the hopeless' and I could not pass that by.

The last few paragraphs are incredible...but you need to read the whole story to receive the full inpact of their power.

I have been so amazed by God's specific, intimate love for me this past week. He cares about the details...and He is ALWAYS providing, before we even recognize the need. He is really so faithful, and so good! What more can I say? Words on paper seem so short and bound. I had an incredible time with Him and my dear friends on Valentines night- I cannot imagine having enjoyed it more (as a single, lol). We all were so filled up and pouring out (not just leaking- but pouring! ;). Then, saturday night I had an overwhelming time, flat on my back, unable to get up for probably 20 minutes- knowing little more of what was going on then that He was moving in me, and pouring love all over me. I was so filled up and didn't even realize it till much later just how far reaching His love was!

It's like everywhere I turn, I find these little acts of devotion from Him, these little love notes, these whisperings of an infinite God, who is intimate...with me.

Finding this story through such a random journey feels like another small note He left me, knowing exactly what is in my heart, and that this would minister and encourage, and inspire me to walk in destiny...with Him, right now.

I think, I'm in love ;)

Okay, now that I've bragged abit... please enjoy this story- and let it minister and awaken you too- because after all, you are reading it now...and clearly He has lead you here, where He's romantically left it, for you to read.

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.


You can read more of Jamie's writing at myspace.com/jamiewrites

I want more.

Tonight, I'm overcome with a desire for more- more of it all- more of Him in me, more of Him pouring out of me. I want to be like Christ, and I desperately need Him!! When I consider how He loves us, how he loves His church- a harlot...He never stops loving us because we push Him away, or because we get angry at Him, or ignore time with Him to spend with others. He doesn't quite His love because we aren't listening, or because we 'really blow it' like we all do....no, still He loves us, lavishly.

I need Him- oh how I need Him. I get irritated, I get hurt, I get 'bugged', I let people and circumstances put me in funks...I don't love like He loves. I try to- but I so often fail.

Truth is, he told Isaiah to love a harlot, and he tells us to as well. He's called us in to work with Him, to be one with Him, and that means loving the broken, wounded, jaded, and all-together not-yet-lovely. I am so amazed and again, overcome, by His love for me and his total faithfulness toward me amidst all my sin- and I want to be just like Him!

That brings me to another aspect of what I want more of....I want to be just like Him, and do miracles! I want to lay hands on a person in a wheel chair, and see them stand up and walk. I want to look in to people's eyes and know them. I want to see- truly see. God, I claim a deeper anointing in the ability to see- to see things as you see them- to see people as you see them- to see events not just as they are at that moment, but as they were, and as they will be. Lord, I'm knoching, I'm asking, I'm seeking...I want to do all that Jesus promised His disciples would do. I want to walk on water!! I want to raise people from the dead!!!!! Why not? I want to command storms to cease, waters to be still. I want to walk in all the authority He has destined me to have, and to declare an end to abortion- to injustice- to impurity- to all the lies that steal and rob and deceive!

I want more.... I want more intimacy. I want to listen more, to rest more, to soak more- to be more in love with the Lover of my soul. I want to commune at a deeper level with Him- to hear His thoughts, to see His vision (and His eyes!!!), I want to hear more stories, and dream more of His dreams...I want to love His children more....I want to be more overcome by Him- I want Him to course through me like electricity...I want to be abandoned to Him.

less of me God- more of You!!

“Who am I that you should know my name?
My fragile thoughts and tiny frame.”

“Oh but my Mighty eye has seen you all the same.
And when I saw, I came.
For you are just as I had dreamed,
And you are worthy as I deem.
The rivers of my love alas have found their stream”


“I have heard of your fame.
Our mothers sang of a man untamed, unrestricted, unashamed
Healing the broken, raped, and lame.
They said He’d wash away my crimson stains,
These bloodied sheets, these dried up veins.
They said “Court his favor, in his love remain.”


“When I saw you, my body was crushed and broken
My hands were cut, my side pierced, my life a token
Of affection, the price demanded, the judgment spoken.
And faithfully I made the shut gates, open.

All this I did when I saw you.”


“But all I have to offer is myself, bruised and broken, naked and untrue.”


“In my Lover’s eyes you are undone, and in my arms all things are new.”

(a little prophetic poetry- let it speak to whoever it's for)

We start each poetry class with a quick 5-minute writing assignment. This came out of today's, and I actually love it! We were told to finish the line "My lover's eyes are like ____" as many times as we could in the 5 minutes. Thought it would be fun to share what came to me...

.......................................

My lover's eyes are like the first dawn of creation,
light spilling out across the virgin sea.

My lover's eyes are like a sign,
telling me I've found just where I need to be.

My lover's eyes are like bolts of lightning,
sending thunder through my soul.

My lover's eyes are like the _______,
making every line of my poem whole.

I'm so anxious to do something remarkable right now!!! It's weird- I just got so full a moment ago, like something possessed me to do something HUGE! Only problem is...I don't know where to start! I just want to write something powerful- heal a lame man- change time!

Oh, let it not go to waste Lord. I really want to act. I am tired of simply words and feelings- I want to be the spark I've been called. I want to ignite- I want to trigger a reaction, a revolution.

We say so much, even dream, but what are we DOING that Christ did?

We are knowing the father. He did that. Thats counts for a lot. That is the start. The start of what though? No one cares for "Once upon a time" where there is no "happily ever after."

Love like we mean it...

Ah, I don't even want to contain what's filled me- I want to pour it out somewhere it will shine and spark and ignite and burn. Will it here? Where shall I pour it out?

I'm in Economics, you know, my favorite class.

Our last discussion topic was an economical look at Roe v. Wade. Here's our bullet points:

After abortion was legalized it declined from $4,000 - $5,000 (if performed by a doctor or $1000 if by an unlicensed abortionist in unsanitary, dangerous conditions) to $500.
-risk of abortion related complications and even deaths decreased a couple hundred times!
-as abortion costs fall, women may modify their behavior by lowering the intensity of pregnancy prevention, increasing sexual activity, or some combination of these two.
-summed up, more women are getting pregnant because it's less costly.

- Soviet Union- Abortions were legal, but there were no forms of birth control, so abortions were used as the only form of "birth control" Some women would have 8-10 abortions through their lifetime.

-Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of the smash-hit book "Freakonomics" even argues that declining crime rates in the ate 90's can be partially attributed to the legalization of abortion, because the children who are 'unwanted' are the ones most likely to become criminals, and now due to the legalization of abortion and consequential lowered cost, these "unwanted" children (excuse me, fetus') can be terminated.


Upsetting?

Sorry, you probably weren't coming to my blog to read something unsettling, or upsetting.

It's been cutting up my mind all week. I heard a statistic on the radio Friday night, "1 of every 3 women in the US will be pregnant at least once before they turn 20"

I'm 21. I haven't been pregnant, that means there are 2 other girls, one has been. I want to know the statistics of how many of those 1 in 3, terminate their pregnancy. I of course don't want to know, don't want to have to think about that every time I see a beautiful safe belly. But I DO want to change it, and I figure in order to do that, I will need to know the statistic. I'm willing to be unsettled. I'm willing to be upset.