to go away

It's time. I need to recharge. I feel empty. So tomorrow I'm going into nature. Not even sure for how long. Yet, very long. I am just... wanting. Not really for anything.
All the signs are there. irritable, thin emotions, sarcastic, old habits are harder to resist. Yet I need to resist. To get out & go away. To "fall off the face of the Earth" for a bit. So this is me leaving for a day.
"...you can surrender without a prayer,
but never really pray... pray without surrender...
you can fight, fight without ever winning,
but never, ever win... win without a fight..."
-Resist, by Rush, from Test for echo

...your weary traveler...

much to say.

Been a little while since I posted on here. Sometimes this happens at Christmas time. Though, it's not good for me to "not write". So I started a poem. I want to write about Mandela... about Advent... about this latest school shooting... among other things. Yet my life resembles a tour shirt. I am having fun. Baked with my nieces, Mom, Dad, & my Babe, yesterday. Fun was had by all. I'll put my cook/baker "hat" on again on Wed. I get to try my hand at baking hamloaf, after baking more cookies. We made Sandtarts Sun. possibly more on Wed. & then Choc. Crinkles. Annnd I'm hungry now.
Tomorrow, amid the light snow forecast, I have my trip to DE. Yet they could use me back home. So I'm leaving @ 5am. When I get back I'll be staying till at least 4:30pm @ work. Can you say "Caffeine" boys & girls? I new you could. Oh, & caffeine's best friend... sugar. So I don't think I'll post tomorrow, as it'll look like a mile long hashtag. With much misspelled words. So... I don't think so.
A friend posted about advent.
Posting using the Christmas carol I heard the bells on Christmas day & linking it to the U2 song Peace on Earth. As well as 40 [here with Yahweh]. Which got me to thinking of other "longing" songs. Like Petra's How Long. Michael Roe's  Till Jesu Comes.
Someone else mentioned the similar sound of the melody of White as Snow by U2 & O Come O Come Emmanuel.
All this longing. I can't think of more songs off the top of my head, yet I know I'll think of it later. Don't we all long... for that... "better tomorrow" land? Don't we long for those moments we've seen in fiction? Or read? From The Seventh Book of Narnia, The Last Battle.... to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.... to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King... & beyond. A great longing, for the day when things which should never have existed... live... no more. When the king... returns for his queen. When the hero... returns for his girl. Puts her on his horse...& rides off into the sunset.
a day... long for told. When suffering...loss...abuse...pain...tears...separation... are things... we can barely remember. the day... when death dies.
we sit... & wait for this day... to dawn.
We hope
in the fact
that this day
will come
to pass.

I'd love to post a poem. However, I should get some sleep. Even if only to rest my eyes for a spell before I begin my long journey tomorrow. I gotta leave work @ 5am. As opposed to getting up then. So I'll leave you with an extra longing. Then, perhaps I'll also revisit my "anatomy of a gift" post, from years ago.

  
Till Jesu Comes
by Michael Roe 
I cannot wait
till
Jesu comes
I cannot wait,
i cannot wait
And when He comes
i'll
come undone
I cannot wait
to
come undone
Jesu told me
long ago
"Life only goes
so far, you know"
He said to wait
for Him
and so
i sit and wait
But i
cannot wait

I never meant
to do you
no harm
Did you need me to be
your right hand man
Did I
mess up the plan?
Or did i miss
the point of grace
Was for you
to have me
right in your face

I cannot wait
until
you come
No i cannot wait,
i cannot wait
And when you come
i'll come undone
All undone,
all undone

I cannot wait
until
you come
No i
cannot wait,
i
cannot wait


May His grace drip from your fingers,
B

Bummed

I kind of "melted down" today. I don't really like it when that happens. I used to take this "lying down". I used to just slink off  by myself. To let the voices tell me what they always say. You know same old lines, same old lies: "you suck, you are a waste of molecules, ...et. al.
I'm fighting back more lately. Using any & all means at my disposal. You may defeat me... but not without a fight. Not without getting some scars of your own. [Wolverine & Beast aren't the only ones with claws]
So here we go...

a poem:
DAYS

Somedays

You want to crawl in a hole & die

Somedays

You want to give up

Somedays

you want to take the longest walk

till you just fall over

in the middle of nowhere

and exhale

somedays

you want to fight

somedays

you just want to hang

with the people

you don’t have to explain anything to

somedays

you want to write

till your hand hurts

somedays

you want to get alone & scream

somedays

you just can’t stop laughing & feeling

fully alive

hold onto these days

with all your might…

by b.e. noll

several fragments

So in trying to be honest, I've got some stories for ya.

First, I'm not really into Christmas this year. I can't explain it. I'm not in a "I hate Christmas" thing... I'm usually crazy about it. "all out" over it. This year... I'm a step above a yawn. I just cannot engage in my usual "fanfare". I'm trying to figure out why. So far... nothing. Maybe it's because I'm occupied with growth. I'm also not as uber excited over the possibility of snow tomorrow. I usually listen to just Christmas music from Thanksgiving day till Christmas day [& struggle to put it away till new years]. So I just thought I'd share that. It's why I'm not putting up a lot of reflections on it this season. I'm still glad for all that this season means. Glad that God entered His creation. Wrote Himself into "the story of us". Ok.... that's one.

I mentioned seeing my abuser the other day... I didn't completely come away unscathed. I had some "broken moments". Biting at my lip [a very old habit, I'm afraid]. So I have been very close friends with my Burt's Bees lip balm. It works to keep my lips from being chapped & it tastes bad, which aides in the prevention of biting my lip till it bleeds. I've had some emotionless moments as well. These things happen. "falling down is not failure, not getting back up is". I'm glad it happened on a Wednesday. I went to group, which we joined the coffee bar group meeting some missionaries. I did something that was out of character for me. I actually asked most of my guys for a hug. I'm not very big on that. I have a few guys that I hug. Mostly because they like it, & initiate it. This night I went to most of them for one. It's nice to be surrounded by people who "have your back". I'm doing better again. It just becomes a moment to pause & take note of.


Second, I wrote to a good friend the other day. [email] I had told him about my dark pages a long time ago [before I came up with that name for them]. He's known me since I was in high school. He was amazing. I shared detailed info about it. Then, sometime later, I began to go to therapy. I mentioned not wanting to go, rather vehemently. When I finally did go, it took a while to be able to tell those pages. When I did, I wrote to this friend. I told him how I felt. Recently I wrote this "update" for it.

I've been meaning to tell you this for quite some time now. You may not remember me telling you [years ago] about a "how I felt" moment. It was after I first told a therapist my story. I told you about a room. Feeling:

"naked in a concrete room. No windows or lights. chained to the floor. Barely seeing a wooden door in the ceiling...& not being able to reach it."

Do you remember that? I'm sure there was much more detail to it than that. However, I'm not really going to research the actual wording. The point is to take you there... as it is now.

That "room" now:

[this came to me a few weeks ago, or a month ago]

"turns out the room, at least now, is in the side of a mountain... The floor is still there, however, there's grass & weeds growing up between/ around the edges of the blocks. One of the walls is still completely there. The one against the mountain. A small part of the connecting walls is still there. Yet if you turn your back to the mountain you can see a breathtaking view. Which easily makes you forget where you are standing. In what was a dark prison cell. The ceiling is gone. small pieces of concrete, a rusty screw or two, & some splinters are all that's left to remind you there ever was a ceiling, with a door in it, at all. The shackles are vacant. Empty of their prisoner, seemingly for quite some time now. Lifeless on the floor, also rusting. The sunrise streaming onto the mountain. Into the this place like the sun itself was brandishing a thousand Katana Swords. Each stabbing into the concrete..."

Hope... runs free.

Just thought I'd share.


Now... I just need to post some songs...&?
Pentatonix - Little Drummer Boy
Four guys playing one piano - Angels We Have Heard on High

Rest in peace Nelson Mandela... [I may post some of his quotes that a friend put up on facebook later]
U2 - Ordinary Love [from the movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom]
A talk Jamie Tworkowski gave recently [thank you Creative Mornings]

Thankful for our series on "Hope Has Come"
oddly... several movies I'd like to see have hope mentioned in their trailers...
The Book Thief 
X-men: Days of Future Past

Hope... runs free.
Just thought I'd share.
May His grace drip from your fingers,
B 

I don't want to be on here long tonight.
However, I had an interesting incident today. I ran into my abuser today. Well...not physically into or vehicularly. We were in the same place today. As I was "out & about". Did my Chick-fil-A lunch, stopped at Wal-mart [a pit stop, & candy cane tootsie pops -mmm]. We didn't have a deep conversation. We joked. Kept it light. ...and did not touch each other. I don't want to hurt him, if he touched me...I might. Without even thinking. For a long time I thought it would be a really bad thing for us to be in the same place. so, this is progress. I don't want to hate him. It's a waste of my time, my energy. I feel it is a slander of Jesus. I know for some of you this is unthinkable. How can you forgive him?! I don't know... ask Jesus how he can forgive me... his answer... is probably mine, too.

"unforgiveness is like waking up everyday, & drinking poison, hoping someone else will die."

I want to say more. I just need to sleep.
so I'll leave you with a song that's been grabbing me lately.
Casting Crowns - God is With Us 
"...Your the savior
we
have been praying for
in our humble hearts
You will
dwell 
You are
in us
You are
for us
You are
with
us
Emmanuel"

Jesus,
thank you
though
you did not
take away what happened
to me
you never ran & hid
either
You
were there
so
even though
someone else
made my bed in hell
you
lay down next to me
there
There are
no words
to describe you
no words
are tough enough
to stand & accurately
portray
who you are
what you can do
...or how far you will
[& have]
gone to show
how valuable
we are to you...

still need you
and will
for an
endless
unfolding
series
of eternities. 
yours
B

a randomness post. [or "I couldn't sleep anyway"]

I wanted to get up at 4:30am this morning... however, 3:30 will do I guess. So I got up wrote a little bit, read a little bit. Now I am drawn to this. I am supposed to drive today, for work. My 6hr drive to Delaware & back for a delivery. Which will be fine. I'll be awake & "me" for that. I have my Growth Group [small group @ LW. a men's group]. Don't know how much "fun" I'll be to them tonight. I might be either spent or wired, difficult to see. Neither is really "better" than the other. As long as I feel something we should be good. I don't usually sit for that long in a day, unless I'm sick. So I can be ready to run laps around the church when I finally get there. Though, sometimes, I can be "up" [meaning conscious] for so long that I just do not feel much of anything anymore. It doesn't bother me. It probably would if someone else was doing it, though. Emotionless -ness is kind of weird. [yeah, like I had to tell you that. Thank you Captain Obvious] When I'm aware that I'm..."there" I try to avoid people as much as possible. It can be unsettling. Yet, I really love my group, & LW in general, so it's the one setting I sometimes use as an exception to some of my rules about people. I've often tried to "shield" them from my "quirks"... only to find them not simply ready & willing, but almost desiring to be given a chance to "love me anyway" in the midst of whatever happens to be my "current state". A rare find, I know. Yet, what happens, partly because of this is I can try to break out of these states. I may go not feeling much & thinking I shouldn't be there. Yet the warmth of my brothers there, will gently "reshape" my mood. Bring me to a peaceful place. this would be why I sometimes forgo, or ignore, my thought to avoid a situation that involves them. Sundays can be like this as well. Just one more reason I love my church family.

so, after all that, & realizing that my grammar on this post leaves something to be desired. I'll post a few of my random writings from this morning.
I recently finished re-reading my book "Inside a Cutter's Mind". Chances are you know someone who self-injures, even if you don't know they do it. I'll never forget Pastor Rob explaining why he has a bowl one of his children made, sitting on his desk, full of razorblades. On Sunday morning. "each one represents one person who came to me & said: [something like] 'I felt like I should tell you. I cut myself...on purpose."
I enjoyed Person of Interest's last new episode. Though it went through me listening, again, to Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt". A very dark song, though I still love the line: "...& you can have it all...my empire, of dirt...." I'm not sure I should link to this. For some, especially if you are a self-injurer, it might not be safe. I, myself, don't watch just the song part of the episode.

on a lighter side...
Close friends are like ornaments on the tree of life. [with a man from Nazareth as the gift under it]
Be safe, gotta go, pills to take food to eat, and a beautiful drive to take...

May His grace drip from your fingers,
B

I don't know how often I'll blog over the course of the rest of this year. I just do not know how crazy things will get for me. This week is quite busy. I have a lot of places to go. [I thought about printing tour shirts, but it seems a bit excessive]
I think I really need the Christmas series we are on this year, Hope has come. It can be so easy to loose hope. To misplace it, to not believe that it still has any meaning, to feel that it is extinct. Sometimes I just get to writing from talks like this.
I shared this on facebook, & probably here at some point.
"When Pastor Steve mentioned us "wanting God to act yesterday" I couldn't help but smile. [I didn't think Pastor Steve knew me that well] My thing with that was always: "God, I don't have all the time in the world." His answer has always been: "I know, child, but I still do."
Some other things I wrote today, inspired by the talk:
We are not controlled by the problem, we can be controlled by who holds the answer.
Jesus offers to never be changed, himself... but he changes everything else.

Of course this is easier to say/type than to really hold onto when times get tough.
However... as I type that I think of a song from 2 of The Call's albums. [to Heaven & back, & Into the Woods] All You Hold Onto.
Well, I'm going to go for now. I'm thinking of posting on lines from Christmas songs that have really been grabbing me lately.

Take care all,
May His grace drip from your fingers,
B