The Soul Mirror

"I do not exist,
-------- My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.”-Rumi

  When I was little I used to do this thing. I would be in the back seat of a car or in front a mirror and I would lose myself inside of myself.

  You know when people say a word too many times and then all of the sudden it loses meaning? It sounds weird? Foreign? Wrong? Or it just dissolves entirely.. I used to do that with my identity.

   If I was looking in a mirror I would look into the reflection of my pupils until I completely dissolved in them.. my mind would go blank. My origin would become vague... I would cease to exist.

  If I was in the backseat of the car.. I would close my eyes and I would repeat to myself "I am me" "I am me" until the entire idea became obsolete. I would sort of feel myself... outside of myself.. like a out of body experience.. I would be floating in space in a sense.. but that's all I can remember... That's all my mind has lived to tell.

  I don't why I started doing this... Maybe it was my brewing anxiety disorder manifesting itself in this way to isolate myself from whatever I was feeling for a moment.. a self-medication...a placebo.

 There's a lot about my childhood that I can't really discuss.. and a lot I have repressed and there are a lot of people involved that I want to spare. Suffice it to say.. I have always felt like an old soul.. trapped in a younger body. Someone who had to adapt to things a lot in a way that was best for survival... I emotionally displaced myself.. whenever I had to, and confided in nobody but God and my journals.

  My grandmother's death  when I was 19 was as most of you know, a major turning point in my life.. I stopped running from things.. from my past, from my memories, from the hurt caused by friends, and family... I stopped trying to numb myself with the abuse of worldly things and I started running towards the only thing that ever mattered.

Him.

  I was on the way to my grandmother's funeral when my dad said something that surprised me. "You know" he said, choking back tears in that coarse sort of sense where you can tell he has been controlling his emotions for too long. "Your grandmother always said you had a lot of Faith" The words sounded so strange.. as if I had dreamt them... I was in this half awake half asleep emotional stupor for 2 days at this point and I had to discern what was fictitious or reality.. I don't remember how I responded.. or if I did at all.. but I wept silently into my reflection of the car window, watching my tears fall on my face from a distant perspective. How could she know? How did she know? What was it about me that made her feel I had a lot of Faith? I didn't know it. Not even when I chose to get baptized at 15... I felt like a sham.. like a piece of the puzzle was missing and I was forcing it together... The Piece that was missing?

Him.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

-Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)

 I can't explain to anyone how I know God is real. I can't make anyone believe or feel how I feel when I just KNOW that GOD IS REAL. 

How can something so magnificent as you, or me... or anything or anyone be not of divine design?

How is science a contradiction to intelligent design? Science was created... Who created it?

Nothing is random. EVERYTHING is Fate. 110%

if the Universe was created out of nothing.. then who created the nothing?? GO back further... Who created THAT? Everything is the brain child of a master creator.. we are spirit breathed creatures that walk around the Earth for one purpose.. WE were created by an almighty creator.. and we are not random... we are part of a master plan.. we are in this together... We will not know the answers but we need to KNOW and ACCEPT.. God is REAL.

There is a Plan.

I can make my identity obsolete because I do not exist.. Only God exists... 

(now I know what you're thinking oh Erin is mumbling some hobo-hippy mumbo jumbo.. she has completely lost it.. but I haven't... )

Who I am.. the energy that I was created to be.. is here. She is found.

  My identity is not in myself.. It is in Christ.. The creator.. The divine Father.. who before I was even conceived on Earth knew who I was going to be.. inside and out... Whom before the world was ever conceived; before the universe was ever conceived.. knew my favorite color. Knew my dreams, my aspirations, all my heartaches, all my greatest loves, all my soul's desires... 

It's like looking into a mirror in your soul when you find out that God is real. 

You see God's image.. because you were created in it.. and you realize your identity is not in you.. but in... Him.


TIME OUT! As I wrote that last sentence a song popped into my head that I haven't heard in probably 9 years... A line from it was "I do not exist".. I knew no other lyrics and I googled it.. It's the song "Messes of Men" by the band mewithoutYou.... and just look what the last lyrics of the song are:

Oh, my God!

"I do not exist," we faithfully insist

While watching sink the heavy ship of everything we knew

If ever you come near I'll hold up high a mirror

Lord, I could never show you anything as beautiful as You"

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TELL ME GOD IS NOT REAL!
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*Cough* NOW BACK TO THE REGULAR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING:

 The other day I was driving Katarina home from school and she was telling me how one of her friends lives in a different suburb than us and was commenting on how it was strange that he lived there but went to school here. So I explained to her that there was a thing called a transfer (interdistrict I believe) And I told her the story of how her friend from a neighboring suburb (like her current friend) was able to get such a transfer to stay at the elementary school where they both took TK. I then told her the story of how I tried to get an INTRA district transfer to stay at that school but because the principle at the time had a vendetta against me we were denied our transfer and now she attends the school she does now... I told her when we got denied the transfer I was very distraught... I didn't want Katarina to have to start all over again.. make new friends.. get used to new surroundings... in the previous couple years she had gotten a new sibling, had to move away from the town/school/church/people she knew and that was a lot of changes for her in a short period of time so I wanted things here to be consistent. I told her I felt I had failed her, and having her change schools so often was not the "plan" I had....

But we soon discovered it was the plan God had.

  If things had went down the way I thought was ideal I wouldn't have met some of my best friends.. I would never have probably applied for the job at the Starbucks across the street, I would have never started up girl scouts, Katarina would not have met some of her current best friends, I would not have gotten the opportunity to be art docent for a teacher who had just moved her from out of state and become her new California friend...  XYZ wouldn't have happened I wouldn't Have Met ABC.. and so on and so forth, as we started listing all the things in our life that we enjoy that became a part of our life because of this denied transfer and after awhile we started seeing that it wasn't random... it was Fate.

  A friend of mine was telling me a story. I won't go into the details.. and to spare her I will omit any personal details.. names changed and everything.. we will call her Karen and her friend will be Samantha (are those characters from Sex in the City? I feel like they are.. anywayyyyy) Karen had just had her heart broken.. and was in a place of loneliness and confusion and despair.. she had in the past had this very vivid dream that she believed to be prophetic about the man she was to marry.. and as it turns out, even though most of the things in her dream did play out in her life very prophetically the outcome was not what she had thought. She started doubting herself.. wondering if she even knew God anymore, she was so certain of His plan and then she wasn't so sure He had one at all.. she was just... Lost. Then one day on a whim Karen decided to go to a restaurant for lunch.. by herself.. on the opposite side of town than where she was originally going to go.. and as she waited for her food, in walked Samantha.. one of the girls that was a main player in her dream... she hadn't even seen Samantha in several years.. and In she walked... Samantha wasn't even originally supposed to go to that restaurant.. she was actually quite tired of eating at it and it was her husband's choice to drag her there... several other plans for both parties were disrupted, or changed so that this fateful reunion could take place.. After Karen told Samantha of her woes.. Samantha told Karen" I don't know God's plan for your life... but look at ALL He did for you..today" God orchestrated this  reunion.. and after that conversation Karen was a little bit more hopeful, and it started her on her path to healing... it was not random.. there was a plan.


God's got a plan.

  When I was 21 years old and 9 months pregnant.. weeks away from birth.. and my ex who was going to be parenting with me told me he was moving to Massachusetts in a week and that I should give my daughter up for adoption... My world as I knew it came crashing down on me.

  It was not my plan to be a single mom, hundreds of miles away from family, starving, taking food donations from random strangers while my food stamps kicked in.. living off Milk and cheese and bread from WIC... (bless that organization btw)... Not sure of how I was going to give my child the best life possible and actually having people (Including my ex and his mom) telling me I would be an unfit mother and I should give my daughter up for adoption so that she could chance at happiness.. This was not the fight I thought I would have too fight. THIS was NOT MY PLAN... I was going to graduate college... work my ass off find a good job working as a producer.. and by 30 I was gonna probably be married.. but also a successful filmmaker (Yea I know.. the dream is BIG)..

I was not gonna get knocked up young and end up like my mother... part of the time doting.. part of the time resentful to a child that didn't choose to be born in the first place.


  How did things get so messed up? I thought to myself.. I made a choice and there was a consequence, and I must surely have strayed from God's plan for me.. because He couldn't possibly want me to feel so lost and alone...

 But all things are for good.

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose"- Romans 8:28

  If this storm (to be ever so colorful) in my life had not happened during this season.... I would not have had my daughter..(inarguably one of the best blessings in my life)  I would not have sunken to so deep a depression that I would be persuaded to go to a stranger's family's cabin in a town I have never been to before and upon that visit meet the man that was to be my husband.. the adopted father of my baby, and the Birth father of my sweet little boy. and the other men that were to be some of my greatest lifelong friends.

I owe all that I have to God.

WE were created to share the love of God with the world, We have His spirit inside of us, He is the Mirror in our soul, that reflects our identity, our purpose; our existence..

Do everything to glorify Him. Be blessed ALWAYS.

I leave you with my favorite bible verse (also incidentally from Hebrews):

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" -Hebrews 12:1

AMEN!