in the valley.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
"And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me 'My Husband,' and no longer will you call me 'My Baal.' For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. Hosea 2.14

My lovely pastor spoke today about the valley.
It's been the story of my life for about 3 years now.
where i am in the desert, in the valley and i can hear God's heart whispering to me "come away... come away...." but i so often ignore that voice, "ill get to it later".he calls, not begging or pleading, but longing. he wont pull us there, he will draw us there. we will WANT to go into that place. its when we are desperate, when we are shunned by the world, called forsaken, called forgotten, we have stage 4 cancer, our family is falling apart, we are at our wits end-- then he calls us away. we dance in the wilderness. we dance with HIM in the wilderness. he says to our hearts, in its fragments and broken pieces, "its ok. you are safe here. this is intimacy with me. you are safe. i see you in your broken places. i love you, oh i see those tears and i have them in a bottle. you are safe. you can be yourself and i will love you for it."there, we lean into his embrace as he holds us close to his heart. we rest our weary head on his shoulder and he teaches us how to pray. he carries us through the dryness. we are carried through the valley, he refreshes us with his living water. we speak another language.
and we survive. we learn real intimacy with the Lord and we are never the same. it changes us, it changes our hearts. we learn how to cry and know we are being heard.
and we are never the same.
the Lord has brought me through so many valleys, where i just cant "feel" Him. Where i feel overwhelmingly lost, confused and broken, asking, "where are you? why do i feel so alone?" But, then, he has never left me. it was in the silence that he was speaking.
Jason Upton has a song that always penetrates deep into my heart:




it always gets me so much how the Lord speaks to our deepest places. He speaks to me alot as I'm falling asleep in a dark room. Its very intimate conversations. I feel so refreshed after. He speaks and I just ponder, think, write. thats when i can feel the kiss of heaven on my forehead.
the funny thing? that time of deep intimacy with the Lord usually comes when i am in an intense crises in my life. when something is wrong, then he lures me away from it so i can lean on my beloved.
that ends up being a permanent "lean", so we end up like this bride in Song of Solomon.

Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
leaning on her beloved? (Songs 8.5)

i really dont know where im going with this but i just like how God is speaking stuff to me about it all. i need to just sit and journal.

Time.

It is no more crazy than a dog finding a rainbow. Dogs are colourblind, Gretchen. They don't see colour. Just like we don't see time. We can feel it, we can feel it passing, but we can't see it. It's just like a blur. It's like we're riding in a supersonic train and the world is just blowing by, but imagine if we could stop that train, eh, Gretchen? Imagine if we could stop that train, get out, look around, and see time for what it really is? A universe, a world, a thing as unimaginable as colour to a dog, and as real, as tangible as that chair you're sitting in. Now if we could see it like that, really look at it, then maybe we could see the flaws as well as the form.---- Stuart, from Kate and Leopold

Ive been thinking alot about time. time passes so fast, yet we cant see it-- like in the quote above.
It is my 21st birthday. Really, im kinda shocked. But you know what? I'm still the same person. I have the same skin color, eyes, bones, organs, muscles, brain, blood type, veins, heart-- the same ones i was born with. the only thing that has changed them is time. as i get older (with time), they change a little bit, aging and being changed by my surroundings. But you know what else? in our lives, the thing that majorly changes, affects our attitudes, situations, reactions, how we talk to others-- that change takes place in our spirits. We live, remember things, laugh, cry, think and communicate through our spirits. we can say "ive changed so much", but in actuality, its your spirit that has changed. it goes from glory to glory.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. -1 Corinthians 3:18

Have you ever seen Kate and Leopold? I love that movie. In this movie, a man from the 21st century is hurled into the 19th century by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. He is followed back to the 21st century by a man who is actually his great great grandfather who eventually invented the elevator. Heres the summary:

Meg Ryan stars as Kate McKay, a modern female executive in New York City whose drive to succeed in the cutthroat corporate world has left little time for romance. When her genius ex-boyfriend Stuart (Liev Schreiber) opens a portal in time, the experiment transports Leopold (Hugh Jackman) from 1867 to the present day. A charming bachelor and the royal "Third Duke of Albany" in his own time, Leopold is fascinated by the 21st century. As the courtly Leopold and the decidedly liberated Kate tour the town, a mutual attraction develops into something deeper, a relationship that's threatened by Leopold's temporary chronological status-- http://www.starpulse.com/Movies/Kate_and_Leopold/Summary/

In this movie, Kate and Leopold are hanging out in NYC, and in one scene (in the 21st century), Leopold sees his childhood home (the beginning of the movie was taking place in the house). he goes inside and sees that it has changed 200 years later. He finds a childhood treasure box, his mirror and his quarters. It has changed to become a children's room, as it appears. He sees it and realizes that time has changed the surroundings. the room is the same since he was in there (chronologically 200 years prior), the mirror is in the same place, its just a different time. time has changed. (theres a trippy scene later that Kate is looking into the mirror at the same "time" as Leopold, who was looking into it to prepare for his 1876 ball, the scene switches between them and between time, even if the mirror is the same)... it really makes you think about how you spend YOUR time when you are going day by day, the daily grind. I heard a quote once that said,

"I dont want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well" -Diane Ackerman

I really dont want to do this:

Lisa Alther: "Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you."

I want to make my life count. I dont want to look back 4 years from today, knowing the things i want to do this year never got done. I want to do everything I can to not waste the time God has given me on the earth.

check out this sick time lapse video:



how are you going to live today to make YOUR time count?