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2005-07-08 - 10.05pm previous entry next entry

God. And how much I need him.

Today feels so weird and blue and I don't know why. Is it to do with yesterday's bomb attacks maybe? I don't know. I just feel weirder than I have felt for a long time. I don't think it's just about that though. Stuff has been festering for a long time, and when everything around feels insecure then I guess festering stuff gets magnified.

I can't really write here about what's festering because I don't trust myself to write nicely. Although that's not true, I DO trust myself to write nicely. But I don't know. Before yesterday I had started a diary entry as usual and Arthur woke so I saved it on Word and never got to finish it. Yesterday I wasn't about to post it anyway because I wanted to just write that we are okay after the bombings and stuff. Now I don't want to post it. I don't want to be like I was being then. I hope it's okay that I'm just gonna drop whatever loose ends could have been tied up about guestbook messages. It was stressing me out too much, and I wrote like 5 really stressy paragraphs and now I don't want to think about it.

I don't like who I am becoming at the moment. I feel it creeping in, especially at night when I lie awake, I see how I am changing inside, and it's like rot spreading. That sounds gross and extreme, but that's honestly how I feel about some of the ways I think lately. I don't like it. Don't like it at all. I don't even say here, but that's probably good since I would hate to be seen as I really am at the moment. What a contrast with the "old" me, in my old diary, where I used to be as honest as honest could be, warts and all. I did not mind people seeing the worst of me. Now I do. Why is that? Do I concern myself more with what my readers think of me now? I don't know why that should be. I still mainly write my diary just for ME, to offload and record things that are important to me. But maybe that's just what I THINK, and actually I am subconsciously writing for an audience. That is not good, if that is the case. Lately I am aware that a few people are boycotting my diary, or I guess just avoiding it. If they still read me then they are doing a good job of avoiding my guestbook, when they used to regularly leave friendly comments and I happen to know still leave other people friendly comments. This should NOT bother me, and what is more, I should not even have NOTICED anything like this, even if it's true! But I'm horrible, and letting things like that matter and upset me, and festering about it and wondering what I did wrong or why people avoid me or stop liking me, and that leads to anger towards said people and bitterness which eats me all. through. each and every. day. When actually I might be wrong and nobody is avoiding me!

Is this not crap of me?

And that is literally only one tiny weeny example out of a lot of others crap things happening in my head. I don't know why I am changing. Noooooo no, Alice, you know perfectly well why, so don't even think of letting your fingers waffle out those words on the keyboard ahead of your brain.

I have a million things to write about today. So much to write about Arthur. Soooo many photos to show you. More thoughts to add about yesterday. Much of my usual cheerful waffle to spout. But I can't can't can't get past the written version of a lump in my throat. A lump in my keyboard (!) or something. I need to write and write and write and write and write and write like I used to in my old diary, until I feel better and I'm all written out with my feelings. I miss that. Why don't I just DO that here? That's why I made this new diary, so I could do that again, instead of just having a diary about Arthur. This IS a diary about Arthur, but mainly it's about Arthur's MUMMY, me.

Neil is working late tonight. I put Arthur to bed around 7pm, and he finally nursed nearly asleep and then dropped off around 7.30. Now it's 7.55, so he may well need resettling if he wakes at the half hour like he often does. Then he should be out for the evening, except that he's teething rather badly at the moment so he's a little more disturbed by teething pain at night. But anyway. Then I don't know when to expect Neil home, and he emailed me to say he has had a headache all day, which usually means he needs to go to bed and take a bowl with him when he gets home :( Poor Neil. So I don't know. I will probably start this entry and then lose the right mood to finish what I was saying if I get an interruption along the way. We'll see. Or maybe I'll just write it and save it for my personal file, and never add it to my diary. Who knows. Or maybe I'll never get past the end of this extremely long-winded paragraph?! ;)

For now, I will just push the London stuff to the back of my head, and maybe I will get the chance to write about it later. My own trifling waffle is so trivial compared with it all, and I feel guilty for it, but I know I shouldn't really, so I'll push London to the back till I've purged. Or just waffled some more - whatever this entry ends up being. But long. It will undoubtedly be long!

Here's the thing:

I need God.

There it is, in a nutshell. With a huge emphasis on the word, "need". I just don't know how to write about it, because my feelings seem like tidal waves, so overwhelming and I don't know how to pick them apart or understand them, let alone explain them. All I know is, I am needing God right now like I can't even describe. Everything in me longs - LONGS - for him. Every fibre of my being. I feel raw and screaming-inside with it. For the first time in a long time, definitely the first time since Arthur was conceived, I long for God so desperately that I feel frantic. I want to shut the world out, run away by myself, anything to get myself some space just for me and my loving Father God. I even need to find time away from Arthur to meet with God. I never felt so desperate for time alone with God before. Well actually that is probably a total lie, since I have been through desperate times more than once since I became a Christian, and had a lot of similar feelings to this before. But anyway.

I sit here crying just because it welled up and poured out of me when I typed those three words that said it all, "I need God" Just writing it made me cry. Such is my longing for his touch.

I know God has been prodding me lately. I guess I have been far from him for a little while. Never so far that I don't say the odd prayer or remember that he is in my life, but you know, that's all. The passion all went. Writing that just makes me weep.

I don't know how to describe my relationship with God, or my feelings for him, my love for him, the things that have happened between us. It is all too big for actual words so I don't know how. I used to manage to express it so much more easily than I'm doing now, tsk. There is just nothing like it. Nothing. Nothing even comes close. It's like a whole different level of emotional feeling, a whole 'nother gear of feelings, that I never knew existed before I became a Christian. I had noooo idea what I was getting myself into, hehe! I was 19 when I became a Christian. October 15th 1995. In the evening. Wow, ten years in October! That is just one of the most precious calender dates in my life, because of how wonderful that evening was, and how A. Mazingly my life has changed since. I had no idea on the evening of October 15th 1995. Noooo idea. I just thought, "Ooh, this seems like a nice thing to believe, and I would like to subscribe to it since I feel it is something that will truly help me with everything I have struggled with in my life so far." Plus, I listened to what Christians believed, weighed up what I thought about it, and decided yeah, I believed it could be true too. I thought that was all it was about!!! It makes me smile at myself now when I think about it, after all that has happened since! :)

I did not know that God would actually come right into my life and touch me, physically, emotionally, spiritually, every which way. I had no idea he was that real! I had no idea I could KNOW him, and love him because he's as concrete and tangible as Neil or Arthur or anyone else lovely. I mean, I don't sit opposite him at the table each evening and I have never seen his face. But I FEEL him. His touch has even become familiar to me, and nothing else feels like it. I talk so much that inevitably I spend nearly all my time with God just waffling on, but I also learnt that if I wait in silence and let my heart do the talking and praising, he speaks to me and I can hear his voice. Not booming like in the comedy programmes on TV, but quiet and gentle, or just intangibly, like soft electricity touched against my very skin that can be translated into meaning. If I listen and make my heart open to him, he has blessed me with so much that amazes me. He gives me words of encouragement to say to others, about things that I don't even KNOW about, and which they tell me is exactly what they needed to hear to comfort them, and of course there's no explaining it but for God, so he gets the glory like he should :) He pours songs and poetry into me. I never share this with others really, it's too personal between me and God. I write down the songs and words as they appear in my heart or my mind. I sing them when I want to be at my most intimate with God, because there aren't words to me that are more intimate than the ones God has given me. Once he seemed to plop a melody in my heart along with words, and it was just the most beautiful love song I ever heard. I couldn't have written it. But there it was pouring out of my mouth as I sat alone with God one day. I wrote it down as soon as my prayer time was over, and I still sing it but it makes me cry lately because of how far I have come from that place.

Arthur is crying in his sleep, poor little lamb. I hope he is not having a bad dream. He doesn't seem to, as far as I am aware. Maybe his teeth are hurting him. Poor Boo.

Anyway. So lately I am getting a few familiar "prods", shall we say, from God. Ones that I have had before when I have felt far from him for a while and he has been calling me back to him. Out of the blue, a line of a worship song will just drop into my head. Which is quite an unusual thing when I haven't really had ANY worship songs in my head for a long time. The line is always super-relevant to me at the time. It's almost always just telling me that God loves me. Although sometimes it is more specific, to tell me that he knows my heart and the thing I am going through is going to be okay. He melts my heart, he woos me, like it says in Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs, whichever you call it) in the Bible, to call me back to him. Over and over, all he seems to want to tell me is that he loves me, loves me, loves me, and nothing else matters but the fact that he loves me. He loves me more than words too, because sometimes my emotions randomly react as though someone injected me with mushiness over the realisation that I am loved beyond comprehension by this awesome God. Totally out of the blue sometimes, like while I am driving my car and not even THINKING about God, lately. I nearly pulled over today on the way home from the supermarket, such was the strength of emotion that hit me. That's when I got such an urge to just drive into the distance till I was away from every distraction and every person, and could just BE with God alone, and be intimate with him until I don't know, he reminded me that I needed to go home again or something! But I can't do that anymore, because my precious little boy was in the back of the car, and he he needs me all the time now. I can't just randomly drive off to some nature spot like I used to, and sit till the sun has set, crying and singing and praying aloud, and laughing for sheer tingly joy because I am feeling close to God. All of a sudden I felt trapped, claustrophobic, frantic, about getting space with God. I felt bad about it because it seemed to clash with how I felt for Arthur. Which doesn't feel right inside. Not how I FELT for Arthur, but just.... I don't know. Like I should never have an urge to be somewhere other than in ARTHUR'S presence. And I did.

Urgh.

This week Arthur and I went into town to pick up a couple of things (a bib that is like an all-covering raincoat for Arthur's messy solids! And needles for my nappy sewing. And a couple of toys that I couldn't resist for Arthur!) and we found ourselves walking past the Christian bookshop. I turned around and went back, I don't know why. I just thought, why not? Nothing I want or need there, but I just felt like walking in and glancing around the shelves, that's all. So we went in. A song that I don't know but which was obviously being sung by Hillsongs Australia was playing, and I can't for the life of me remember anything about the words or tune now, but at the time it touched me so much that I very nearly just stood and cried right there in the middle of the shop with Arthur in the pushchair. When worship songs do that to me, I always know God is touching me, reaching out to me, wanting to love on me.

I remember Meg once said to me that she felt that God has been missing me lately. It really touched me at the time, but lately it keeps being on my mind. Does he really love me THAT much, that he misses ME?! I know it's true, that he DOES love me that much, and he even misses me when I don't spend time with him. It just boggles my brain, that's all. And right now it hurts in my heart that I have neglected the one I love so very much, so that he misses me and has to call me back to him because I have wandered from his side.

I know that this is why my thoughts are crazy at the moment. Why I am becoming bitter and resentful and yucky and stuff. Why things get to me instantly and I want to react with spite when I never never never do that with God close by my side. It never even occurs to me to be horrid or bitter or spiteful or paranoid about things when I am close to God. That is why these things are a big big neon warning sign to me that I am straying too far from my God.

I suddenly feel so tired of things. Tired of me. Tired of life without God. It's such an effort and I just go round and round in ever decreasing circles and end up despising myself because actually it IS true that I can�t do life without God. I just disintegrate. I die inside. It�s literally like, God with me = light on; God not with me = light off. Of course he is always with me, but you know what I mean. I can�t fathom how I lived without him.

This afternoon in the car, I figetted around restlessly with the radio controls, the ones I am normally content to just listen to, whatever chart music or similar stuff is on. But today (and other days this week) I am restless to get away from such music. My soul craves worship and praise, and music that stirs me about God again. I fiddled around till I found a Christian radio station that I used to listen to a long while ago. There was 5 minutes of chat about the bombings in London (it�s a London-based station) and how the church is responding, which was interesting. Then the news and boring adverts and stuff, and then suddenly this song began playing that seemed very familiar but I don�t think I have heard the words before, and I have just googled the lyrics (by Brendan Graham) that touched me so that I wanted to cry and cry to ease the ache in my heart. Here they are:

Oh my goodness, how totally relevant those words were to my heart today. It�s like God himself spoke them to my soul, just when I needed to hear them. Not just for how I�ve been feeling lately, but for the hurt in there about the London bombings too. The verse was relevant and touching, but it was the part about God raising me up so that I can stand on mountains that broke my heart. Every time I heard that line it was like wave upon wave of wonder afresh at the realisation that God DOES raise me up. He personally lifts me when I am down. He has done this time and time and time again, till I can�t even count them all. Boy oh boy am I weak. But in Christ I am strong. Because it�s like the song, and like when you are a little child, when you sit on your Daddy�s shoulders, you are on top of the world, protected, raised up, thrilled, close to someone strong and protective who loves you, and strong as strong can be. More than I can be on my own, that�s for sure. What a blessed relief it is to remember, to realise again, that I am God�s and he is mine. That I am safe in his arms. That I am allowed to fail, because he always loves me and he raises me up. I haven�t done this for a LONG time, years actually, but just this second a Bible verse popped into my head and I have the urge to end my entry with it. I will have to write another entry about the �normal� stuff that is piling up another time (hopefully tomorrow). I�m so glad I wrote about this tonight. My little soul feels better. Soothed, somehow. I love God. Love him, love him, love him. I could sing of his love forever.

Oh gosh, here is the extent of my lapse � I can�t FIND my Bible!!! Aaaargh!! Where is it?!! I neeeeed my Bible all of a sudden. I will have to use Neil�s, and that is okay, it�s still a Bible after all (!), but my Bible just makes me smile at the sight of it, though it�s the exact same version/cover as Neil�s. I feel warm and fuzzy towards my Bible! Hehe! It is battered and Neil�s is not. It is marked and written in, and full of pages that are crinkled and stuck together where I have cried over verses, and there are pages and pages of my favourite verses written out in the back. I miss my Bible! But anyway, I will look up the verse I want from Neil�s Bible.

Oh wow. An hour later, and I am just completely lost in wonderful wonderful verses! Neil is home now too. I meant to search for a specific verse in Psalm 3 (if my memory serves me right), but opening the Psalms was like opening a massive box of scrumptious chocolates, and I couldn�t help reading and reading, and being more and more delighted to read those lovely words again. Now I have found sooooo much that is relevant to me at the moment, and in particular plenty that is super-relevant to the situation in London, that I don�t know WHAT to quote here as the end of my entry! I was going to quote a verse that tells of God being the lifter of my head and my shield and other wonderful things. I feel so happy that I am excited to be reading my Bible! My heart is leaping with excitement to read about God!! I can�t describe how happy this makes me :)

Ohhhhh there are SO many!! So many verses and I keep going, �Oooh! Look at THAT one! I simply HAVE to quote that one tonight!!� and then I�ll let my eye wander and see another one that�s just as wonderful and relevant. God is lovely.

Okay I managed to pick one. It�s how I feel, and also it is a better declaration for me than the one I made in yesterday�s entry after the terrorist attack on London. I am part of a �we� with other Londoners, and I stand with the declaration that we will not be terrorised, and we will not be divided. But also, I have been forgetting lately that I am a child of the living God. I am a �we� with my brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is my declaration as part of that �we�:

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging�. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." (Psalm 46:1-3;7)

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