Musings on Love and Searching the Abyss.

Look at yourself in the mirror, what do you see? Who do you see? Do you see someone you used to know? Do you see someone whom you've yet to meet? Or whom you hope to meet? Or do you see someone who is right here? Right now? Everything, you were made to be.

What does that even mean? You are wondering to yourself.... maybe someday my hope is that you'll be able open your eyes wide enough and without a doubt be able to see what can only be explained as truth in it's whole capacity.

When I was a child I used to look in the mirror and stare at myself until everything went blank and I disappeared. Like I got sucked into my pupils into an endless abyss of nothingness... I disappeared. I did the same thing when I closed my eyes, I would think of my name over and over again until it was just some arbitrary word that had nothing to do with me and this idea of me would completely evaporate until I was just this dust in an abyss with no identity and I would think “who am I? Who am I?” until everything went black.

Who are we really though? Maybe we ARE just dust in an endless abyss searching for identity in the vast nothingness of what we perceive to be real and what actually is. Maybe we will never find ourselves... or maybe... just maybe... that isn't the point.

I was a common breed of child, nothing too special, nothing prodigal. I learned how to tie my shoes when I was 3, learned how to use a can opener when I was 5 and spent the majority of my time chasing boys around and fantisizing about love.

Often times I would sing out loud, stanzas of a song that came straight out of my mind and I would pause for just a moment so that someone somewhere could sing their stanza and complete my hearts duet.

I had it all planned out.. just like the movies, this person, this co-singer of my soul's song would be in a crowded room... When I walked in our eyes would meet, but only briefly..and we would know.. we'd just know.. and everything around us would melt away and all the people would part, and the only sounds we would be able to hear were those of our own beating hearts... and our eyes would never leave each other's sight....and for that moment on it would be happily ever after.

I grew up in a city. A popular city where romance didn't seem to be abounding. In fact the only exposure I had was in Disney Movies and we all know how that can poison a youthful mind and perception of the world around us...

 Every so often I would go visit my grandmother who lived in a more rural part of the state and as we would drive through the valley that marked the center of our great state I would watch as miles upon miles of agricultural orchards passed before my retinas... and I would get lost in them... fantasizing about a life separate from my own... a calmer life, a simpler life... a life that involved something along the line of running through orange orchards and falling in love. A life that wasn't poluted by the contemporary world.. a life that was just that, a life of love, and relationship, and each other... simple.. sweet... without longing of anything else.

Maybe I was an idealist, or maybe I was naïve, but I think it goes without saying that life is never really how we picture it. But oh how I wish I could bottle that hope. That hope that poured out of my pours like tropic rain whenever I even had the slightest glimmer of what my world could be.....if only in my mind.

I think it's only human, but I am pretty sure my greatest need has always been to be loved.

My need to be loved has always trumped everything else... even my need to love myself... this would reflect itself in my college years when I would throw my pearls to the pigs per say even if it meant I had to sacrifice my self respect.. to tarnish my own worth, it didn't matter.. because even for just a moment I felt like I could be one with someone else, that I was all they wanted.. but it was always just a moment.. and then it was gone... and then I was back to square one, in a dark broken world, lonely.. searching for and yearning for the next chance I could be loved again.

Sometimes it would feel like my world was in fast motion around me, like I was in the eye of the storm, still, silent, and this noise would swirl around me with swiftness and color and I would want to partake, I would want to jump in, and I would want to feel something, anything... but I was numb and without.

I imagine Adam and Eve felt the same way the moment they became separated from God after the fall. One moment They were one with God one with Love.. and then they weren't. They were left in this broken state of sin, and longing, and they felt everything at once, because the fruit they consumed had now consumed their hearts, their souls, their minds, and they were lost... so sooooo lost and scared, and alone, and without.

thus embarked the long hunt to find themselves again, to search for their identities and that's where it all went wrong.. that's where we all started to look to the wrong things for who we were. When once it was all too well known, when once it was a given, but then how easily it wasn't. How easy it was to forget.

I would like to say I have it all figured out, that I make the best choices that I've had brilliant epiphanies and revelations that can account for all the damage I have done to my own perception of myself and my own self worth over the years but that would be a lie.

Everyday I forget for what or for whom I am living for,
 every day I am my own worst critic,
 everyday I see myself in the mundane and don't see the beauty,
everyday I can only see the thread and not the tapestry (a little nod to “prince of Egypt”)...
How can I see myself through heaven's eyes and not my own (another nod)
How can I know what I live for?
Why I live?
What I am to do?

If I lived to impress God and not man, would I be happier?
Would all be right with my soul?
Would I be able to yet again see the beauty that is paradise given to us by the maker?
 Would I then be able to be one with He who created me?
Would I then be found?
Would my identity no longer be a journey but an arrived at destination?
 Would I be able to see with wide eyes, that truth that can only be... Me.. God's one and only ME?

I was meant to be here,
I've been a fighter since the beginning.
I was like the .000001% chance a child can be conceived when two forms of birth control are in use.
 I won the race,
 I fought against all odds to be here.
 I am the only person on this Earth that was and ever will be created when those two specific people combine cells to create life.
They never will again.

Think about that.

Think about how we all were eggs in our mother's body when she was still in her mother's body. The minute she was made female, the minute she had eggs, you were one of them. Think about how over time, a lot of those eggs died off, they ovulated and weren't fertilized and so they disintrigated and were flushed from the body.

Then think about how our father produced millions upon millions of sperms over years, a ton of which just died off or got absorbed into the body, or were released but never purposed. But then one fine day, at one perfect moment that egg that contained half our dna that had been in our mother since she became female was released..at just the perfect time, and at that time was met by millions of sperm that were created just for this, just to create life, but only one, yes only one was strong enough to penetrate the surface and carry the other half of your chromosomes into the egg to create you. YOU are ONE in a MILLION, YOU ARE ONE IN A ZILLION. There cannot ever be and will never be ANOTHER YOU, no matter how you spin it.

YOU WERE MEANT TO BE HERE.

So who are you?

Now that you were chosen, now that you know that you were meant to be, now that you have come this far, and fought this hard and now exist in this broken world, what will you do?

What will you desire?

Will it be to be loved???

that is mankinds greatest desire..

and ironically, or not so ironically it is the embodyment of our God.

He is Love

and we are made in His image

and We are to Love, and be loved, and to yearn for love just as He yearns for us to love Him.

It's right in front of our eyes,

We are God in the Bod... WE ARE cells of the body of Christ...

every single one of us is HIM incarnate.. with His Spirit within us, churning, yearning, to be loved... to love...

That is who we are, that is why we're here.

To love one another. God's greatest commandment.. written for centuries a zillion times over..

“9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.”- John 15: 9-17

So... Go look at yourself in the mirror, what do you see? Who do you see? Do you see someone you used to know? Do you see someone whom you've yet to meet? Or whom you hope to meet? Or do you see someone who is right here? Right now? Everything, you were made to be.