Shalommm Hebrews
This blog has been a blessing to me. The space to create and share content full of The Word, venting, and education has not only enabled me to be a vessel, but also do seeking for myself.
In the short time this blog has been online, I’ve learned so much and I know I will keep learning because wisdom is the way of life.
Thank you for being a part of this blessing.
It’s been so cold and rainy and…grey lately. Temperatures below 45. Dead leaves covering every square inch of the ground. When this time of the year comes around, I usually end up experiencing the same great deal of emotion.
Hopelessness, helplessness, suspension, absence, longing, anger, fear, and excruciating loneliness. Especially since I no longer celebrate the feast days of the world. From the beginning of October, until about New Years, I am in the balance, being ostracized, excluded, critisized, and feeling like I have no family or friends.
It doesn’t help that I’m hundreds of miles from my husband, my daughter lives with her father, and I don’t really have any friends that I can be vulnerable with. Sometimes I hug myself tight as I curl up in my bed and daydream about a place where the hurt doesn’t feel so intense, or doesn’t impact at all. Doesn’t exist.
I close my eyes and imagine a perfect place. A perfect home. A perfect world. A perfect life. A garden like unto Eden, except with no temptation.
Sometimes this world would have me think there is no such place, and that I’ve got my work cut out for me if I believe such a thing.
So, I tend to ask myself quite frequently, is this Heaven? This idea of perfection? Not just to the eyes, but to the soul?
Yes streets of gold and days to no ending with the brilliance of a thousand suns and all beings worshipping Yahuah on one accord.
But no tilling, no stressing, no hunger, no broken relationships, no shame, no heartache, no isolation, and no death? No sin. No chance at all that one will even desire anything but Abba?
I won’t lie. I am not a perfect entity in any terms, whether we speak of my humanity or my beastly nature. So this should come as no surprise. But, sometimes, I wonder if Heaven is real. I mean, I know that imaginations come from somewhere. Even when I was a little babe and had no knowledge of what was hidden in The Scripture, I would close my eyes and picture a perfect place that was far from what I knew.
Someone would make sure I had clean clothes for school, and food when I came home. Helped me with my homework. Show me how to take care of and love myself, groom myself like a little lady. Reassure me. Rebuke my insecurities. Protect me and make me feel secure. Give me some sense of hope. As a fourth grader, that was my idea of Heaven. Like I had seen in movies.
A world with decent food, clean clothes, and a day without being taunted for experiencing extreme poverty well beyond my own control.
I held on to that hope for so long, hearing the preacher tell me Jesus was coming for His people. I waited. I waited for You, Jesus. I did. Just like I waited for my dad. Neither of you showed up.
That’s how it feels, anyway.
Now that I’m 21, my intimate idea of a perfect world is different in appearance, but maybe it’s a replica in nature.
Clean clothes. Spiritual garments of course. I want the new body promised to me in The Resurrection. I hate this flesh. It is filthy and tainted and perverted and disgusting and I wish I could rip it off because it feels like a coat of fire ants covering my skin.
Decent food. I want to just sit and eat The Bread of Life all day with no care. I want to hear Abba say He loves me, share wisdom with me, and have even the idea of ‘problems’ be not. They will be not. They are not.
A day– just one day–free of suicidal shame. The shame that makes you want to hide every second of the day. Yeah, that. I want to feel His glory on my skin like sunbeams, and bask in the light with a smile and my head high. I want to be in the embrace of The One Who Does Saving, and actually enjoy it without feeling like I don’t deserve it.
When I close my eyes, this manifests in different ways. Most of it in my picture perfect idea of what a home looks like. What a family looks like. But is that realistic? In this tainted, ugly world, is perfection realistic?
See, when I am hurting inside, I invert. I return to my most primitive nature as a dreamer, and I dream. But my dreamings aren’t as abstract as they feel. There is some reality to it. But will that reality be here? Will that reality manifest?
Reality is not good enough to me, because it will never be perfect. Perfection is not a reality. It will never be good enough for me. This plane is not sufficient, and I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.
I hang on to The Promised Land. It is promised, after all, right? Not a maybe. Not a contingent outcome. Not a possibility. Not a painting on the wall that I am to mimic and recreate. It is promised.
“But as it is written, That eye saw not, nor ear heard, neither it ascended into the heart of man, what things YHWH arrayed to them that love Him.”
1 Corinthians 2:9
That is my hope.
My hope is that the blessings and miracles that I’ve seen, heard, and experienced is nothing in respect to that which Yahuah has prepared for hearts who love Him.
“For lo! I make new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be in mind.”
Isaiah 65:17
Wouldn’t I sure love to forget things of old. The rebuke of my youth. The shame of my existence. The evil on this earth.
“And YHWH delivered me from all evil work, and shall make me safe into his heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory into worlds of worlds. Amen.”
2 Timothy 4:18
MOOD. Just MOOD. Something interesting is said here, too:
“Most dear brethren, now we be the sons of Hayah, and yet it appeared not, what we shall be. We know, that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
And each man that hath this hope in him, maketh himself holy, as He is holy. “
1 John 3:2-3
(I see why my husband says it’s time to dive into all the words of John(s))
And each man that hath this hope in him, maketh himself holy, as He is holy. What hope exactly? The hope that I will see Him? The hope the He will appear and take me in? The hope that the old shall pass and be not? The hope that I shall be perfect and blameless like Yahusha. and sit at my Abba’s right hand?
When I am hurting, I can only hope. It is the only thing left of me. As I sit in my nothingness of existential dread (lol yes I’m a little cynical), hope moves mountains in the dark for me. Faith in this ‘Place’ keeps me alive and striving and smiling and calm and soothed and comforted. Faith is my pacifier.
Faith really has kept me from cutting myself again. Kept me from tying anymore belts around my neck. Kept me from even thinking about going to sleep in the bathtub.
As I hurt even now with each word written, I put my hope in Hayah because He promises eternal rest from every single endeavor. Emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, mental, familial. Alllllllla dat.
He promised Abraham a child. He promised Israel redemption from Mitsrayim. He promised Noah a flood was surely coming. He promised David triumph over giants. He promised The Blood of The Lamb would make the angel of death Passover His Children. Each time, He delivered.
His Word is without flaw, in all truth, with transparency and perfect timing. Even when he promised rebuke would befall His children for their rebellion, He remained true to His word. I need but to keep faith. I choose to keep fast to the truth.
He hasn’t yet failed to keep His promises. So when it comes to my personal relief, He shall not fail. I trust that.
When I escape this place and hide away in my own little realm, I know it is not mine. The Realm of Hope does not belong to me. This substance of things hoped for, is His. The evidence of things not seen? All Yahuah. That itself is enough to cradle me.
In this Place all in my head in my darkest hour where I put my faith in Him, He shares with me a sliver of what’s to come. And yet, it is nothing compared to what is actually there waiting for me and for His Children.
“My brethren, deem ye all joy, when ye fall into diverse temptations, witting that the proving of your faith worketh patience; and patience hath a perfect work, that ye be perfect and whole, and fail in nothing.”
Yes. Yeeeeeessssssssssssssss. Perfect and whole and failing in no thing? I will count it all joy. May my faith be proved.
