It's Your kindness, Lord, that leads us to repentance....

Your Love
Open up the skies of mercy
and rain down Your cleansing flood.
Healing waters rise around us.
Hear our cries, Lord, let them rise.

It's Your kindness, Lord, that leads us to repentance.
Your favor, Lord, is our desire.
Your beauty, Lord, makes us stand in silence
for Your love, Your love is better than life.

We can feel Your mercy falling,
You are turning our hearts back again.
Hear our praises rise to Heaven
and draw us near, Lord, and meet us here.

It's Your kindness, Lord, that leads us to repentance.
Your favor, Lord, is our desire.
Your beauty, Lord, makes us stand in silence
for Your love, Your love is better than life.

Open up the skies of mercy
and rain down Your cleansing flood.
Healing waters rise around us.
Hear our cries, Lord, and let them rise.

How Deep the Father's Love

How deep the Father's love for us!
How vast beyond all measure,
that He should give His only Son
to make a wretch His treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss!
The Father turns His face away
as wounds which mar the Chosen One
bring many sons to glory.

Behold the man upon a cross,
my sin upon His shoulders.
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life.
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything--
no gifts, no pow'r, no wisdom.
But I will boast in Jesus Christ,
His death, and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer.
But this I know with all my heart:
His wounds have paid my ransom.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer.
But this I know with all my heart:
His wounds have paid my ransom.

The first song spoke to me today while I was listening to it. Not really sure why, but it did. Lately I have felt myself connect with songs asking for God to rain down His mercies, His kindnesses, His love, and His grace. Essentially, asking God to rain down Himself.

Not really sure why...

Well, okay, I have an inkling. I'd rather not share it in this forum, though.

The second song is a hymn that really has spoken to me. Something in it connects to my heart and it makes me want to weep every time I hear it because God's love towards me overwhelms me so when I think about it. The person who wrote the song expressed in words (which can be so inadequate at times) the feeling of awe that comes with knowing what God sacrificed for all of us.

I've kind of entered into a mode where I don't really want to speak to anyone cuz I have so much on my mind right now.

I start work tomorrow, which somehow seems trivial while at the same time, so vastly important. I'm nervous, and then I'm not...it comes and goes.

My heart hurts...and I think I know why. Parts of it are simple: I miss my coworkers and the kids at Heritage. I also miss my friends in Pullman. Other parts are much more complex and perhaps that's why my heart weighs so much more heavily.

The Message of the Arrows, a chapter from the book The Sacred Romance is very much on my mind right now. A lot of the pain I feel stems from a place in my heart that I've chosen to close off because it was/is so painful. It's the part of me that chooses to love and give myself without abandon. Hurts that I have pushed too deep are surfacing again...confronting me not only in the wee hours of the morning, but in the broad light of day.

A friend of mine broke off our friendship in a rather callous way. I'd rather not go into details. Suffice it to say that I thought I was handling it pretty well...Until this weekend. I got the idea in my head to begin hanging pictures in my bedroom. I wanted to make my living space look much less bare and more like someone actually lives here. So I gathered a bunch of pictures, determined to put them in frames and hang them. As I went about the task of choosing which pictures to hang, I came across a picture of myself with this person. It was one of my favorite pictures, a memory that I cherish very much....

And it was all I could do to keep from tearing the picture into small pieces and throwing it away. I was confronted with an animosity I have never felt towards a person before. Very rarely have I been hurt so bad in the past that I wanted to erase all memory of that person. And yet, here I was, steeping in my anger and frustration. I couldn't even really look at the picture. I knew what it contained, and I quickly removed it. To give myself the benefit of the doubt and as an act of faith that God will help me to forgive, I kept the picture whole, but I hid it behind another picture as I was sliding it into one of my photo albums.

I gave my heart wholly to this person and they chose to throw it back to me. I knew we had grown apart, if we were even all that close to begin with. I knew that it was time for me to really let go...and I thought I had...until this person wrote to me and treated me so cruelly. It wasn't really mean-spirited, that wasn't the intent of their heart...it was more that they treated me as if I was so slow to understand that they had to repeat the same thing over and over again in order for me to truly comprehend what was going on.

Just for the record, I am not dense. I knew something was coming. I would have gotten the picture if you had chosen not to respond to my e-mail. And for me, that might have been a less painful way to go. But you chose not to go that route. And yet, at the same time, rather than being honest with me and keeping it short and to the point, you felt the need to expand upon your initial thought. And that was what hurt the most.

And my heart is now so tied up in knots that I don't know what to do. I normally don't have a problem forgiving others, but this is so hard. And add to it the loss of my job, the loss of kids I loved with all my heart, the loss of friends I invested so much in...my heart feels as though it has nothing left to give. I'm torn between wanting to give to those I'm around and not wanting to give because the pain has been so incredible.

And yet, oddly enough, the only times I feel less pained are the times when I'm starting to invest in people again.

Lord, my heart is so much in pain that it physically aches. I feel the pit in my stomach that says I'm not filled with love. Lord, now I understand why songs about You raining down Your love upon us click so well with my heart. Lord, I come before You tonight, asking You to step in and fill me with Your presence, with Your love so much that there isn't room for anything else. Give me the strength to overcome this pain, give me the strength to forgive. Lord, give me a compassionate heart, one that does forgive and offer grace. Give me peace.

Lord, most of all, give me...You.

The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
--Psalm 145:14