i feel like...

Friday, April 06, 2007

this might get long and make no sense.

My friend Sean, gave my friend Dan a car when we were in college. On the windshield was this stuff called Rain-X. You put it on your windshield and supposedly it repels the rain and you don't need to use your wipers. I think I messed it up because I used the wipers when I was driving that non-power steering car. But you get the idea - Rain-X repels rain. The rain hits the windshield and bounces right off.

so, I think I have RainX on.

I'm not sure what it looks like, and I'm not sure how it got there, but it's there. I've had some pretty significant experiences in the last 8 months, specifically in the last 4. I've heard some amazing sermons. I've had some amazing conversations. I've went to some amazing conferences. I've been a part of a few meetings that just make me come alive. I've cried about a bunch of different things - some ligit and some because of the OnStar commercial on the radio in the morning.

But none of that has mattered. These experiences last with me for a day, a few days at most, and then I'm done with them. It's like I forget they even happened.

I surround my life with chaos. Chaos because my car insurance is tripling in a month. Chaos because I stress myself out continuously with the lives of my kids at school. Chaos because the way I handle money is ridiculous. Chaos because the way that I live allows "only jana" things to happen.
It's like I am in self-destruct mode. My life forces me to deal with all the here and now instead of the heart of the matter.

I hear something or talk with someone about things that make my heart ache. I feel a little bit of something that I used to feel, and then it's gone again. I turn off my radio and really think through what I just heard, but I don't allow it to permeate my soul.

I don't think it's coincidental that the quote "The glory of God is man fully alive" keeps coming in my brain. It's like God is whispering it to me every second of every day. But I keep drowning it out with the chaos of life. I keep everything so noisy, so I dont really have to deal.

The RainX comes out in full force.

I need some windshield wipers to come and start messing up the RainX. It needs to get off me. I want to experience life the way that it was meant to be experienced. I want be fully alive and glorify God with everything that's in me.

I'm just crazy scared to see what that looks like. I feel like the implications of that are huge and its going to cause me to work through things that I've worked so hard at avoiding. And the thing that is crazy is I dont even really know what those things are!

God, show me you, show me myself...but only give it to me in bite size pieces that I can handle.

I hate today because of what our sin and crap did to Jesus. I love today because of the freedom that we get to have in our lives. I love Sunday because it represents new life and defeating something that is so much bigger than me. The power that raised Jesus is exciting and scary as crap.

But that power is real and we get to see it. We get to experience it.

5 Comments:

  • At 3:13 PM, Blogger sheplaysamartin said…

    lovely jana, i think this is one of your best posts... i love the rain-x metaphor... just wanted to say that. missing you this weekend. :)

     
  • At 6:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I can definitely identify. I often feel hard-hearted because I don't internalize things the way that I used to, or experience things as deeply as in the past.

    Unfortunately, I think that it's part of getting older. Maybe we're not so much missing all this stuff as we are just learning to deal and live differently.

    Or maybe I'm just hard-hearted, like I suspect.

     
  • At 9:46 PM, Blogger stef shaffer said…

    its not an old age things for me... im more of a softy now than i EVER thought i could be... and i love it

     
  • At 10:12 PM, Blogger jmjana said…

    mike, i dont think it's as much an old age thing as it is that our hearts get hardened the more we get junk in our life. like the longer we live, the harder we get. I just REALLY want to figure out how to stop that process!

     
  • At 12:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    1) I didn't use the word "old" - I used the word "older". I'm awfully sensitive about being called "old." So watch it. ;)

    2) Yeah, I guess it's not so much just getting older. Maybe it's more about being too busy and too disconnected from people. When we're in school, we have all kinds of discretionary time and all kinds of people in our lives in significant ways. When we get out of school and into careers, unless we are very intentional about overcoming those things, it can be easy to be disconnected and busy, especially for single folks. There is always something demanding our time and attention, and our contact with even our friends is limited by time constraints.

    That being said, though, I prefer to experience things deeply - both the good and the bad. So, I get what Jana is saying in this post.

     

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