To My Heart

"I'll never trust you again...

Just thrown for a loop, cause thought I could trust you...

Nothing but inconsistency..

saying sex is the best way to ease pain....

signing my name on sin I knew I shouldnt of committed...."

-- FLAME

That song. Its amazing. It home too hard. I mean, I cant trust my heart. Its tells me the stupidest things to do, and until now I followed my heart. Growing up people tell you (Disney tell you) Trust your heart, follow your heart but the Bible says different.

God's word says different: The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. --Genesis 6:5

People get these ideas. Where? I dont know.
So many conversations I have had with people this week and they go something like:

Hey Sarah, you are pretty into Jesus/religion/God, whats with that? Thats crazy, YOU? (thats a quick synopsis of 3 different conversations with 3 different people)
And I am like: Yeah, I love to love to love Jesus.
And they say something like: Oh, um, me too.
And I say: For real? Oh what you reading and learning in the Bible?
They say: I dont read the bible. I just try to do what I think God would want me to do,
OR
They Say: I dont need to read the Bible. I am alright with God. If I die tonight I am fine with the Lord.
OR
They say: No one reads the bible.

And I am sad. How you know what to do if you dont know who Jesus is or what he actually did? He wasnt all rose petals and lollipops-nice to everyone and echoing every Disney movie ever with a whisper of "Follow your heart."

I have this anger that I didnt learn this all earlier. I want everyone else to know, that everything you know right now is wrong. My whole family, they got it all wrong. So backwards. Its not about being a nice person. Its not about being a good person and then God wouldnt really let you go to hell. I wonder where people get these ideas of God and their hearts. Popular culture?

That isnt even what this blog was originally going to be about. I carry this burden of my life before Christ with me. This heavy, awkward, bulging burden of life before Christ. I am saved. Christ did rescue me. I look back at my life previous and it was so bleak, so sad, so ridiculous. I look and hate myself. I look back at my wake. I see a war zone of people I hurt and others that I pulled close and just let tear me apart. I tore me apart using various methods that i cant even speak about most of the time. Repeatedly. Over and over. Its a nightmare. A horror film that I see whenever I turn around. I pray to let it go alot. But I really feel like its part of me. I will never really be free because those experiences make me who I am. They make me so shy now. They make me so untrusting of all these new people I am meeting. They cause division between me and these new friends I am making because I know all of them never did as many bad things. When I hear testimonies of other Christians and they say how their lives were before they never compare to the years of sin and brokeness that I lived. But I cant get over it. It stalks me down.

My past is not my future but I cant help but increduously stare at what I have left behind me. I know as I stare and obcess over it I am missing the fullness of the grace and forgiveness being bestowed upon me but the brokenness is so extreme. Everytime I am a little broken now, the lion of the past comes roaring through threatening to tear it all down and pull back the veil to reveal that perhaps I am not as changed as I hope for. I try to rebuke that fear daily but sometimes it is too much.

When I used to walk and do outreach with the prostitues on Madison Ave, I would tell them God was big enough for them and their problems and situations and I believed that. Mariko was the first person to say that to me at Arturo's Tacos on Armitage and Western in Chicago as I cried to her about what I had done. I do believe that.

Its a weird twisted issue of pride that somehow I think my past, my behavior and way of living was somehow so horrible that Christ's perfect life and subsequent death on the cross cannot possibly cover it? I know God showers me in forgiveness but I just cant forgive myself. And it hurts.