#bookreview: Flirting With Darkness | Ben Courson

Flirting With Darkness by Ben Courson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ben Courson starts by telling us why he wrote this book: because there are twice as many suicides than murders in the United States, because we are not called to live with depression but to defeat it, because he has walked this road before and wants to share the hope he has found.

The meat of this book is in the second part, where Courson shares the various tools and practices that have helped him in defeating depression. I went into this a little skeptically because it started off rather Christian-counsellor (pray and read your Bible and everything will be okay). I’m not saying that God can’t heal, but I’m also wary because God doesn’t always heal. In fact, Courson does address this:

“Well-meaning people might tell you that the solution to your problem is right there in the Bible, but I’m here to say that it’s more complicated than that. So-called biblical counselors may be able to provide some relief to people with mild cases of depression, but when you are in psychological pain, you’ll need more than a spiritual Band-Aid.
And that’s perfectly okay.”

There’s a level-headed mix of faith and science in his eleven “weapons”. There is both very Christian-y stuff (dive deep into Scripture, hold on to heaven, letting God love on you) as well as medical stuff (exercise, stop wallowing in social media, go for therapy, take medication). He also goes for the slightly bizarre—having crazy adventures with your friends!

Part 3 is where things get a little disjointed. It felt like Courson had a bunch of thoughts and slapped them into a chapter each, jumping all over the place. I understand what he’s getting at though: If the Creator of this amazing universe knows the stars by name yet still loves and calls you by name, you should accept that He wants the best for you!

Courson circles back to a few central thoughts throughout the book—that God loves and cares for you, and a proper understanding of God’s love, who He really is (in spite of religion, despite Christianity), and what He wants for you will help you defeat depression. I’m slightly wary of the reshaping-consciousness-by-telling-yourself-truths thing (which feels a little positive-confession to me), but overall, the message is clear: we need to learn how to rest in God and accept his grace, whether that means you pray for healing or you head to the doctor’s, or both.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harvest House Publishers via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#bookreview: Written to Be Heard: Recovering the Messages of the Gospels

A couple of days late because I was waylaid by the London Book Fair!

Written to Be Heard: Recovering the Messages of the Gospels by Paul Borgman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This took me longer to finish than expected, mainly because it requires a lot of thought (I tend to speed-read my way through a lot of things, which isn't really optimal, but is what works for me). Written to be Heard, however, is the kind of book that you want to mull over and read with your Bible open at the same time, not because you don't trust what Borgman and Clark are expounding on in the text, but because you want to see with your own eyes the patterns that are being pulled out for you--and maybe read aloud to yourself.

Part Bible exposition, part literary study, the writers cover each of the Gospels in great detail, teasing out the biases, aims and structure of each writer, or in this case, storyteller of the Good News. Rather than cross-referencing the Gospels to each other and arguing about their differences, as we tend to do, they suggest that we consider each Gospel as individual stories, and as a transcription of an oral heritage. Variations, repetitions, and the way each book is structured then becomes understood as less of haphazard and poorly-constructed narrative--they are instead cues for listeners to pick up the points and themes of each Gospel.

Written to Be Heard: Recovering the Messages of the Gospels gives modern Christians a lot to chew on. As society moves from heavy reliance on text and the written word back to a preference for audio-visual forms, maybe the church should also reconsider what it means to read the Bible aloud.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#bookreview: The Bad Habits of Jesus | Leonard Sweet

The Bad Habits of Jesus: Showing Us the Way to Live Right in a World Gone Wrong by Leonard Sweet
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think I was expecting a lot more of this book than what was delivered. I mean, it's a cool title. It felt like it was going to be one of those cool, cutting-edge books that blows your mind and opens your eyes. You know, something like Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality.

Instead, The Bad Habits of Jesus reads like rushed blog posts, like short soundbites cobbled together screaming for attention in an oversaturated world. It doesn't read like a book - which was what I was expecting it to be. Maybe I have over-defined criteria to segregate the media I consume.

At the same time, it felt like Sweet was overextending himself and his definitions in a bit to fit his title. An easy example would be Chapter 2: Jesus procrastinated -

Jesus delayed doing what he wanted to do or needed to do because the timing wasn't right, because he was telling time by his Father's clock and making the most of the time his Father had given him. Jesus stalled because "There is a proper time and procedure for every matter"(Ecc 8:6). High procrastination for Jesus was less to put off doing things than to wait for the right moment to do things, which often conflicted with the timetables and schedules of everyone else.

Look, I get what Sweet is trying to say, but it basically turns out to: you may think Jesus procrastinates! But he doesn't! He's doing things at the Right Time!

So yeah, you may find some good stuff in here, but it's written in a way that I'm disinclined to take seriously. I may be showing signs of age here.
If you're looking for something on bad-ass Jesus and how to live radically, I'd say maybe you should pick up Subversive Jesus: An Adventure in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness in a Broken World instead.

Note: I received an e-ARC of this book via Edelweiss for review purposes.

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#bookreview: Queer Virtue by Elizabeth Edman

This... will be an interesting book review.
I picked this up from Edelweiss for review because... well, because it looked interesting. Then I kind of forgot about it until it came up in my queue. And then, I was all, now, what did I get myself into?

Well, at any rate, here are my thoughts. For better or worse.

Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity by Elizabeth M. Edman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an inherently difficult book to review. Whatever I say, for or against, will probably upset someone in either camp. And I use"camp" instead of a mere divide, because this is an intensely polarising issue with people who would want to build trenches and throw bombs and sing fighting songs and the like. Whatever I rate it will also be a problem, so that remains squarely in the middle, a 2.5, because there are many things she says that I agree with, but there are also many vague areas - either due to my lack of ability to understand, or her lack of clarity in writing - which shall remain question marks.

So, on to the content.

As a professing lesbian and ordained Episcopal priest, Edman comes from the viewpoint that being queer is simply who she is. She argues that the binaries that we adhere to (male/female; right/wrong; good/bad) are overly simplistic, especially when defined in relation to current cultural norms, i.e. you're Christian, therefore you're good. You're not Christian, therefore you're bad. You're LGBT, therefore you're bad. You're heterosexual, therefore normal, therefore good. You're white - good; you're not, no good, and so on.
Throughout the book, she posits that being Christian is to be "queer" - which makes it terribly easy to dismiss the book offhand and declare her a heretic, unless you understand how she understands the term, which is:

something that has at its centre an impulse to disrupt any and all efforts to reduce into simplistic dualisms our experience of life, of God.

This spoke to me because at the core of my experience, my Christianity, is the need to continually break the barriers of the sacred and secular divide, being able to live a life that is whole, no matter who is watching or what I'm doing. She also quotes, early on, Paul's passage on neither male/female, Jew/Greek, slave/free - mainly to say that these are false, temporary binaries, both then and now.

If you expect her to continue quoting scripture to explain why it's Biblically justified to be LGBT+ (or queer, the umbrella term she uses), you'll be sorely disappointed. Instead, she uses her life and her experience, the reality of her lived life as a Christian and as a lesbian, to point and say that this is who I am, this is my identity, and God loves me. Which is true. You cannot deny that.

She also redefines "Pride," acknowledging the traditional Christian definition of pride as a destructive sin, an excessive self-esteem and self-sufficiency, but using instead the queer definition, which is about "healthy relationship with Self, Other... and transcendent reality," and involves "a reciprocal dynamic in which one's sense of self-worth feeds and is fed by relationships with others." In many ways, what Edman does in this book is translate basic Biblical theology and knowledge into queer terms, most of which are usually misunderstood because we are not part of that community, drawing parallels between progressive Christianity and queer community experiences.

Edman doesn't go into specifics of how a queer should live as a Christian - frustratingly and admirably - because, in the end, Christianity is a path - a pilgrimage, if you will - into the arms of God. Urging her to do so would feel rather voyeuristic, and falls into the trap of defining people only via their sexual expression. It comes back to that problematic system we have made of grading sins, as if one were worse than the other. The reader can guess, though - her casual references to sex and partners, her celebration of casual grinding, her final story of breaking up a community due to her own failure and affair - that she is much more on the liberal end of things; I am much more conservative in these matters so I would disagree on this point. And yet, as I said, she does not give any firm answer on these questions (pressing questions to the heterosexual, I suppose, rather than to the queer community) so I cannot catch her out in any explicit fallacy or heresy, if I were so inclined.

But I am not.

I am no stranger to self-hatred, and if the gradual opening of the Church to accept queers into their communities to tell them that they are loved is a help, I am all for that. In Chapter 5 - Scandal, Edman says this:

Pointing to that cross wasn't an accident, or an odd literary choice. [Paul] was telling his audiences, the people in his churches, that it was impossible to ignore the cross - and very specifically the scandal of the cross - and fully understand what Jesus was up to.

Again and again, she comes back to that central point that most of us have forgotten, in our comfortable Christianity and our simplistic, dualistic view of the world: the cross itself, in its day, was a scandal, not a pretty bling-bling or badge of honourable membership. This draws me back to what Craig Greenfield says in Subversive Jesus: An Adventure in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness in a Broken World, that:

Jesus Himself was a friend of the broken... not just an occasional visitor.

Whether queerness is something you're born with, whether it is a genetic aberration, a mental disorder, or just a quirk of nature - we don't know. I don't know if we'll ever know. It's not our place to judge. Throughout this book, Edman is calling us - Christians - to remember the scandal of the cross and the Jesus of the Bible who ate with the sinners and who did not throw the first stone. She opens up a doorway, a bridge, into understanding the lives of the people we've branded as queer, as abnormal, showing us that they are just like us. Human. Fallible. Broken. Desperately wanting love. She ends by inviting authenticity and hospitality, asking us once again to ponder what it truly means to do justice.

Our mission in life is not to maintain the status quo. It's not to protect the sanctity of Us the Church from the evil of Them the Other. It's to stand in the gap for those on the outside and to help them reach sanctuary. It's

From a list of laws
seeing all our flaws
To the blind, the lame,
we are all the same
Our High Priest has come
to make us all as one in Him
- 6 - Inside His Presence; Question Mark; Neal Morse

You may ultimately disagree with her stance. I don't know. I think that I do not want to definitively decide one way or another because I would rather have someone come to God because of the existence of this community - the ability to find like-minded people who will fight the fight of faith with him/her/hir - than to turn them away "until they repent". Because if God had done that to us, none of us would be saved.

I'll just leave you with this last quote:

Be the priest, who simply by standing in a place of vulnerability, invites someone else to enter the sacred.

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Ramblings on Esther: For such a time as this

I was re-reading Esther, and after all this time, I guess the one thing that still sticks in my mind is Mordecai's question to Esther: "Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14b)

Who knows if you were born into this time, into this place, into this situation for such a time as this?
Who knows if you gained this position, this authority, this stature, this voice for such a time as this?

Because these are dark times for Malaysia. And if you, who were born and bred here, do not stay and build, who will?

---

I wish I could remember the song Josh wrote for Star of Persia. All I can remember is the first half of the chorus - "For such a time as this, I live to serve my people, now I know what I was meant to do" (I think. Something like that. hahahahahaha THAT WAS 12 YEARS AGO OKAY.)

I also wish the songs were on youtube because they're nice. But songs only, no video. hahahahah.

I should rewatch it and cringe at my awkward hands and facial expressions. And my ducky runny nose voice.
Not. NEVER GOING TO REWATCH IT. Never ever ever ever ever.

---

I like the way God fixes up the events in Esther where Haman, puffed up with pride at the honour the King and the Queen are giving him, is suddenly humiliated by having to honour the one guy he really wants to kill. And it's like the King could have remembered to honour Mordecai anytime before that event, but he didn't until that one sleepless night.

It's also interesting that Zeresh says "If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him," to Haman right before the fateful banquet. It's like, these Jews were captives in a foreign land, and yet God's reputation still went before them. He fights their battles. He keeps them alive. He prospers them in adversity. You will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him.

---

We are sometimes strangers in our own land. But it is our land, because God has given it to us.

Some are called to go. Go far away, spread the gospel far and wide, live by faith. Bring the good news to the people who need it.

But most of us are called to stay. Not to stay to be complacent, or to stay and wait for heaven, but to stay and build where we are, so that we can be a blessing to the people around us who do not yet know God, and so that we can channel these blessings to them and to those who have been called to go. We stay because the people around us need the gospel too.

It's easier now. We live in a glocal society. We're local - we meet the needs of the people around us, of the community that surrounds us, and yet we are also global - with the touch of a button, with the click of a mouse, we are connected to many far flung places. It is a boon, and a curse.
A boon, because we can reach many people in many places at the same time.
A curse, because we then forget that these are real people, with real problems, and not everything can be solved with some screen time.

But this is the time we have been born in. A special time. A crazy time. A time with unknown possibilities unfurling before us.
And if you have been born for such a time as this, what seed has God planted in you that will bring glory to His name? What are you going to water in your life so that when that moment comes you are ready to step forth into the plan that He has for your life?

That is a question you need to answer.

---

At the end of Esther, it isn't that the decree to kill the Jews has been revoked. The King can't do that because he isn't above the law (ha ha ha. *ahem*). But what the King can do is to issue another decree that would maybe supercede or change the outcome of the first one. And the King, being this weird person who likes to delegate things to other people (didn't he learn with Haman?) lets Mordecai do whatever he wants with his signet ring.

And crafty old Mordecai uses this to totally annihilate all the enemies of the Jews that were hiding in the land of Persia. [Eh, not just Persia - the message goes out to all the provinces, even from India to Ethopia.]

How's that for retribution?

---

I think God has been stirring things up, both here in Ignite in San Jose, and back home in PCC in Penang. There's an expectation, a waiting, a hoping for things to come.
Sometimes it feels like there's a long way more to go.
But sometimes it feels like it's almost here.

The question is if we will respond as Esther did - firstly with a call to prayer, and then with an act of faith.

To all artists: You are called

Exodus 31 (NASB)The Skilled Craftsmen
Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. 3 I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship (workmanship), 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, 5 and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, that he may work in all kinds of craftsmanship. 6 And behold, I Myself have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all who are skillful (wise of heart) I have put skill (wisdom), that they may make all that I have commanded you: 7 the tent of meeting, and the ark of testimony, and the mercy seat upon it, and all the furniture of the tent, 8 the table also and its utensils, and the pure gold lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, 9 the altar of burnt offering also with all its utensils, and the laver and its stand, 10 the woven garments as well, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, with which to carry on their priesthood; 11 the anointing oil also, and the fragrant incense for the holy place, they are to make them according to all that I have commanded you.”*

I love the fact that NASB puts it as "I have called by name" and "I Myself have appointed" as compared to the very vanilla "I have chosen" and "I have appointed" in the NIV. Does it make a difference? Probably not. (Mr. Exact Translations would probably disagree. Bwahahaha)

But the fact remains that in the narratives of our lives, the knowledge that God has chosen you - not just simply any "you", but called you by name and appointed you personally - is incredibly important. It's the difference between receiving, say, a generic employment letter, and being personally called by the CEO of a large multinational to be told, "hey, [your name], you're hired!" And then he doesn't stop there. He goes on to say "I've also given you everything you need to make sure you do the job well." 

(Maybe not a very exact analogy.)

The most beautiful part of this passage (for me) is that these two guys, Bezalel and Oholiab, as well as "all who are skillful" aren't being called into some holy-type job, such as the priesthood - though there's another whole passage about those who are - but they're called into doing craftsmanship. 

It's a clear difference to the normal narrative of today, where you're usually "called" into missions or "called" into ministry. Here, they're called into being artisans... or artists. We don't really work in gold, silver and bronze anymore. Jewellery making and wood carving are also not that common. But if you really want to translate what they do into modern terms, what they did was build the tabernacle, and all the beautiful things in it: 

- The tabernacle needed these curtains of so-and-so sizes and such-and-such design? Sure, we know how to make that. 

- You need a gold design on that there sacred item? Yeah, that's the kind of thing I know how to do.  

It's kind of like saying, you're called to be an interior designer so that the church can look beautiful. You're called to do flower arrangements so people can enjoy the flowers we put up every week. You're called to graphic design and web design because that's what the church needs at this point of time. It's the everyday, mundane stuff, which doesn't seem so very important in the grand scheme of things.  

I'm finding it difficult to say what I have in mind because in someways it seems just so trivial. But the thing is that the physical beauty of the tabernacle, the temple, and the churches of old was very important because that was the outward, physical representation of God to the world. And buildings was their primary way of representation because it's there - it's big, it's large, it looms in your sight and it was a place that people gathered.

In our very tech-driven, digital world, it isn't the physical beauty that is paramount. It's the way God is represented in our online world. Why? Because where buildings was where one generation used to live and gather and build community, a large bulk of that has moved over into the digital world. And though buildings and physical things cannot be eliminated, I would dare to say that our digital, online presence is our primary way of representation because it's there - it's big, it's large, it looms in your sight and it is a place that people gather. 

So we don't do "artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood" anymore, but we do "artistic designs for work in websites, forums, and blogs, and in the making of videos and in graphic design." Or something like that. And the Spirit of God is equally in you, as it is in the pastor of your church.

As this commentator says:

It is definitely notable that a very obscure craftsman like Bezalel is just as filled with the spirit as the much better known Joseph son of Jacob, who is responsible for saving his entire family from the famine.  Just as Moses is told all of the divine plans for the construction of these various articles, it means nothing to have a divine plan without having a divinely skilled craftsman to carry them out, and that is what we find here.

* Emphasis mine. 

Becoming Holy: a continuum.

But you see, holiness is really a continuum.

Yes, we know that we are made righteous through the finished work of Christ, and that His blood has covered  all our sins, making us holy in His eyes. But that's the end game. That's the final judgement. In this life, in this plane of existence, we're not there yet. The Bible says "be holy as He is holy." (I Peter 1: 14 - 16) If we are already holy, that wouldn't be an instruction. It would be a statement: You are holy as He is holy.

It says be. That implies becoming.

It means that we live a continuum between holy and sinful, somewhere between saint and sinner, neither one or the other; both at the same time. Our religious binary says that it cannot be so. It tells us that you can only either be a saint or a sinner, good or bad; you cannot be both.

And yet we are.

Because even as we succeed day by day, we also fail day by day to live up to God's standards and that is the struggle, the battle that we have to live in. At this point of time, in this very second, you could probably say to yourself, "as far as you know, I'm living right. I'm in the perfect will of God." And yet ten years from now, if you're still alive, the likelihood is that you'll probably look back on this very moment and say, "Oh God, how wrong I was! I was such a sinner."

Because we are still becoming. We're on a journey. We are not there yet.

The problem is that we cannot accept this truth. So we turn away people who are struggling more than us, with sins more obvious or "awful" (in our eyes) than ours, saying that they cannot join the club until they've turned away from their sin. Except that the only way they can fully turn away from the sin that plagues them is through the grace of God poured out in their lives and experienced in the body of Christ, where they are given worth.

And there is that excuse, of course: I'm only human. 

Of course you're only human. That's what God made you to be. You'll be susceptible because of the fall. You'll make mistakes. You'll change your mind. You'll fall over and over again. You'll get into messes and blame everyone and everything around you. You'll have raw instincts that move you to aggression and hate and lust. You can always claim, "I was born this way. I don't know any better!"

And yet the truth, oh the beautiful truth of this remains: You are human.

You have a choice. You don't need to give in to your baser instincts, though sometimes you will. You don't need to follow whatever the world tells you you are. Because you are a rational being with free will, and as freely as you can decide to do wrong, or to continue living where you are, you can just as freely decide to live one day better, live one day a little more righteous, live one day with a higher expectation of yourself. And even if you fail on that day, you can decide to live that way again the next day, with the full grace of God covering you, until one day you realise that you've won that battle.

And that is the grace the church needs to extend.

Not a political correctness that says "It's alright to live in sin. We welcome you anyway."
Not a righteousness that says, "We can't accept you because you're gay/you don't live right/we don't like your lifestyle."
Not a permissiveness that says, "Look, come in anyway, and you can do whatever you want in the church."
But a church that looks with love and says, "You know that we hold these standards. We understand that you struggle. Let's struggle together and see if we don't come up on top of it. Because while God is holy, he is also merciful. And the grace and forgiveness He has extended will continue to cover you, even as you come to know Him. And we believe that as you come to know Him more, you will be changed by Him, and your battles will no longer be your demons, but your victory grounds."

Because that is where we all live, regardless of our sin.

In the continuum of sin and holiness.

Narratives: Who am I?

We've reached Exodus as part of our cell group's Bible study, and I stayed up until 2 a.m. on Monday night (uh, I mean Tuesday morning?) prepping slides (and getting distracted by YouTube and Dreamworks' Prince of Egypt) because I felt like it (totally unnecessary, but oh well). And now I'm staying up late Tuesday night, after said cell group, writing this. (Why, I wonder, why? Why can't I just go to sleep like a normal person?)

Moses' questions and protests (Read Exodus 3 and 4) when he was called by God to go back to Egypt and deliver the Israelites are questions that rise often in my life. Not always in the same sequence, not always only once, but often over and over again - especially the first one, "Who am I?"

"Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?" (Ex 3:11)

Who is he, indeed. Only a son of the line of Levi, the line of the priests (though the priesthood hadn't been instituted yet, so maybe that doesn't count?). Only the adopted son of the previous Pharaoh's daughter and therefore the step-brother of the current Pharaoh, a Prince of Egypt. I think that makes for added misery/conflict to the whole "let my people go" saga.

Who am I is the recurrent question in most of our lives today, maybe because the narratives in our lives often say we're only average, nothing special, so we can't do anything much. Maybe we buy in to the narrative that says I must be a rich white male to do anything worth noticing, or I must be a starving genius from a third world country to be recognised. The narratives in our heads and in our books tell us that nobody notices the middle-class, working class kids, the in-betweens, who try their best because they aren't special, precocious, or obnoxious enough to be watched. Only the outliers, the very good or the very bad, the Hero or the Villian, the ones with the special talent, get the attention we crave.

We're so plagued with self-doubt and self-esteem issues as a generation (or two) that it isn't funny anymore. So we find the need to pigeon hole ourselves, to define who we are by what we do (or at least by what we do best), or who we're related to (as long as they're famous), or who we know (the more famous or infamous the better), or any other thing that can somehow make us sound better and greater than those around us. Yet the more we try to attract attention to ourselves, the worse we feel about ourselves. There was a guy who tried to kill himself because he couldn't get the "perfect selfie". Our self-esteem issues are getting way out of control.

If you were to ask me who I am, I could give you a myriad lables, depending on who you are to me. I am a daughter, a cousin, a niece, an auditor, a writer, an editor, a singer, an actress, a worship leader, a dancer, a Christian, a child of God, a failure, a winner, a manager, a teacher, a blogger, a thinker, a reader, a hoarder, a single, a young adult.
These are the sum of my parts, but they are not all of me. I'm more complex that these titles imply, and yet, I use them because it's simpler that way, and if I were to excel in something (oh look, I edited a book that's on the bestseller list - I AM NOW SOMEBODY) then that's a way to bolster up my faltering ego, to prove to myself (and others) that I can do something.

Then you get God's answer to that question: It's nothing to do with who you are.

"But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain" (Ex 3:12)

Like, what? Does that even make sense? And yet it does, because it takes the pressure off little ole fragmented you, and puts it all on the great big God of creation. It means that it doesn't matter who you think you are, or how much you doubt and hate yourself. All that really matters is that God Himself has chosen you and has promised to be with you until what He's called you to do has come to pass.

It's a difficult answer to come to terms with; it's one I struggle with most frequently. My inadequacies and failures often feel like a millstone around my neck, dooming me to further failures - sometimes not because I'm not good enough, but because I don't believe I am, therefore I don't see the need to try. There is a desperate need to change that narrative in my head, to still the voices that whisper "if you don't try at least you won't fail." And maybe that's why I've been coming face-to-face with an overwhelming wall of love, as if God is standing in my way saying, "look here, I've told you this before and I'm telling you this again, and I'm just going to shove it in your face until it gets into your head."

I'm desperate for a Word to tell me what to do, where to go, and all I keep getting is Anna, I love you. You're precious and special to me. Who you are is more important than what you do. I've called you, yes I've called you, but first and foremost, I've called you to be Mine. Anna, listen. Trust me. You don't need to 'love me enough' because I have love enough for both of us. I have faith enough to keep you going. I am that passion in your soul you've been holding tightly to. I am that song in your ear you've been listening for. I am the words in your heart you've been trying to write. Everything you've done for Me I know, I see, I remember. Your faithfulness is your righteousness, your steadfastness is proof enough of your love. I am a jealous God and I am jealously in love with you. I am a jealous God and I am jealously guarding you for Me.

Who am I then?
There's only one fitting answer to that question: I am His.