The Threads Blog

This week I have been listening to two songs on repeat… “All Will Be Well” and “Displaced.” My heart tends to cling to music that tells the truth about what I am feeling and the title of these two pretty well sum me up. This is my first week back after a very quick mission trip to Eastern Europe. I’m in that post mission trip space where I can’t decide if anything really matters. The space where I want to get rid of all my stuff whilst eating all my favorite foods. The place where I keep questions like “how do people walk away from the most loving children I have ever met.”

Right now I’m just struggling with being lonely. I’m just deep-down, bone-deep, achingly lonely. It’s not that I don’t have good friends. It’s not that I’m not cared for and loved. I know that I am. I’ve been made more aware of it in the past weeks than I probably ever have been. It’s that I feel very alone. I miss being held. I miss having a companion. It’s more than disconcerting when something that you think is forever ends. It’s destructive. I’m stronger than I look, but that doesn’t keep this from being difficult. I’m well into recovery. I’m ready to move toward the future, toward more, toward the direction that God leads… but sometimes… and sometimes it’s just for a minute… I miss having a hand to hold.

There is nothing I love more than old friends. The ones that love and accept you with all your imperfections and they don’t think your crazy ability to quote the television show “Friends” is weird because they do it too.

I was listening to North Point Ministries’ new podcast series, “Pause” this weekend. Andy Stanley is sharing about temptations and why it’s so important to resist temptation. I found the message extremely encouraging to me as I work on having a healthier lifestyle. I hope you enjoy it!

Life is not always easy. God never said it would be. Sometimes things happen that we don’t understand… things we don’t want… things we never planned on being a part of our lives… things that break our hearts. God is always there. Always watching. Always loving. Always reaching out.

Reach back. Take the embrace. Take the love. Take the comfort. Give your life, and let God heal it. God will give you beauty for ashes. You’ve never seen anything so beautiful…

If you’re like me you place a high value on relationships in your life. Friends are family, and we couldn’t & really don’t want to pursue life on our own. And yet, if we’re honest, we look around ourselves and our lives (in spite of how much we talk about community) are really void of very many truly meaningful relationships. Sometimes the few that we can count on have come from work relationships, sports/hobbies we pursue, and even friendships we’ve managed to hold onto through the years from our past.

How would we rate the importance of the relationships we have within the Body of Christ?

I swore off of the character and the franchise after the debacle that was Rocky 5. In fact, I have worked hard at removing “Tommy Gunn” and Rocky sweeping the leg in the middle of a Philly street from my memory. I was quite content to have the enduring image of maybe the best known American film icon, Rocky Balboa, be the Italian Stallion wrapped in the American flag in the middle of a Russian boxing ring after beating the unbeatable Siberian Express, Ivan Drago. I felt personally betrayed when the fifth movie ruined everything about the franchise for me, so you can understand why I was skeptical when I heard that Rocky was climbing back into the ring one more time. I fought it and I fought it because I was afraid that once again my feelings would be trampled under the weight of a truly bad movie, but finally the siren call of Sylvester Stallone was too much for me, and I went to see “Rocky Balboa.”

Loved it. Not just liked, friends, but loved it. I think the reason I loved it is because this Rocky, like the very first one in 1976, was alot more about the man than about the fight.