Part 2

Wait!  Wait upon the LORD!

Everyone worth their salt has at one time waited upon Him.

Including the Lord himself!

The LORD, the LORD, slow to anger abounding in faithfulness, righteousness and love!

Do I know Him?

Do I just know of Him?  Is it true?

My heart sticks to my ribs

I am sick with dread

I am a wretched being, living in a dream, sleeping on purple.  I have wandered to the bus stop.  I choose a destination.

LORD, come get me, and do not be angry for long!

Do not leave me without a way to make amends.

My tongue can do no justice.

I do not trust my praise.

I will wait!  I will not move from here!

Though others say, “Come with me!  I will take you to Him!”

I will not move!  I will delay you no longer

I will wait for your loving arms!

9/10/11

No, it wasn’t Shakespeare but I wrote for the first time in a long time on Saturday.  That morning I got up and went to work, mindful of the last 24 hours.  At some point I had a similar directive hit me about some my writing:  get rid of some of those stories.  Alright, I thought.  I felt my mind had chosen it b/c I was supposedly “raising the stakes,” trying to show God that I didn’t love my Self more than Him.  I was willing to get rid of the things I had written, things I had created.  I had two erotic storied I’d written a few years back.  I kept them b/c they were good.  Like, “should I go into this genre really quick and make some bank?” good.  I erased them.  You’d think that’d be a no brainer but it was hard.  It represented some future time where somewhere, in some context they would finally be appropriate, and there would be someone I could share that side of me with without there being the threat of a pastor’s meeting.  Did I mention these stories were really good?  Anyways, they’re gone.  I also got rid of a story that I was quite fond of, that I had been starting to shop around and had gotten some good feedback on but it had a darker edge.  My mind couldn’t help but remind me, “I’m sure there’s another copy somewhere.  Your flash drive, perhaps.”  This happened with every single decision I made and honestly, the more I think about it, I don’t really know why my mind keeps doing this.  Is it genuinely trying to hide this information from my soul but ultimately can’t because it occupies the same space?  Is it daring me?  Telling me I don’t have the guts to do it more than once?  Is it me or is it the enemy?  Whatever it is, it only strengthens my resolve, and once I get the notion to follow through it then changes it’s tune and gets all “let’s not do anything drastic!”  Or “what will that prove?!”  That’s another fun one.  I get all exasperated like I’m dealing with a crazy person and I hear my Self say, “Think what you’re doing!  What will this prove?!”

It’s a very strange feeling b/c there are suddenly two opposite points of view tangibly occupying my mind or my…I don’t know.  It’s not so much like the angel and demon on each shoulder and me in the middle.  It’s just like two different people.  It’s a situation I’ve felt before but the Self used to win out a lot.  I can feel my Self getting fearful that its life is about to change, or that my…Spirit, I guess, or my will, is about to make a decision that it will only regret and that my Self will have to deal with this stupid decision that my Will has made for the both of us.  It’s like there’s a married couple inside myself:  Self and Will.  And my Self is like the wife.  It knows where everything is and controls everything that goes on, but my Will makes the ultimate decision, usually based on Self’s recommendation.  And every once and awhile there’d be a dispute.  Usually b/c my Will is like, “let’s follow God” and my Self is like, “that’s cool, we can follow God, but what about this and this and this?  You know after two days without this you’re gonna be messed up.  And I have to live with that.”  And I can feel my Self’s apprehension and doubt, which is being fed with information by a biased third party, I’m sure (this sounding familiar?)  And eventually my Will’s like, “the wife is right.  Sorry, God.”

But today was different.  Today I had a firm grasp on what I was doing and why.  I was not getting rid of things because God was telling me to.  He was silent on the matter.  Everything I was doing it was because I was now firmly convinced that this was the only way I could show God I loved Him more than these.  And anytime my Self began to flare up in defense her treasure, our life, it let me know that not only was I on the right track, but that I was giving God something of true value– because it was valuable to me, it was valuable to Him.  As David said, I’m not going to give God a sacrifice that cost me nothing.  That is not a real sacrifice.   I also thought of those places in the Old Testament where they would “dedicate” things to God, and there would be a footnote.  At the bottom it would say something like, “dedication often meant the destroying of something completely.”

So after I rid myself of the stories I started to get the hang of it.  What else can I get rid of?  I started to think it wasn’t enough.  A few tv shows and some stories?  I remember it being very hard but just now it seemed like child’s play.  I needed to slay the entire dragon of entertainment.  Even though the message was clear and I had no intentions of doing anything but waiting on God, I knew that if I kept digging I’d find more treasured things in my heart, although my Self kept trying to convince me that I was as empty as I was going to get.  ”What about my movies?”  dump ‘em!  Was the urge I heard in my spirit.  Or in my wherever.  The thought made my Self cringe.  It was also faintly about money, the amount I paid for them and the fraction of the cost I could get back for them.  I only had about a half dozen movies left, the absolute core must-haves left over from my many moves.  Self was incredulous.  ”That’s crazy talk.  Getting rid of the few movies  you have left?  Right now?  Okay, fine.  Just keep them in a plastic bag, you can take them up to Goodwill or something, but don’t just ‘throw them away.’  Where, in the garbage??  You’re just gonna throw perfectly working dvd’s in the garbage, where you put trash??!”  And on and on and on.  But I didn’t want to put them in a plastic bag and leave the gesture unfulfilled for the sake of an optimal plan.  I didn’t want to give them away, b/c I didn’t want them to take up someone else’s life and attention they way they did mine, I wanted to kill them.  I just wanted them to end.  And like all ceremonial moments, it needed to be the dramatic closing of a door.  As I grabbed each one, Self got increasingly aggravated about the thought of saying goodbye to these movies, most of which I hadn’t even looked in at least year.  Still, there was a finality to it that was abrupt and a little unjust.  ”Kill Bill 1 and 2 I can understand, but Corrina, Corrina?  Really?  Because this movie has just ruined soo many lives?  What’s wrong with poor little Ever After, it’s beautiful!  Oh Lord, Ocean’s 12?!  Not the jawline!  Can I just see the jawline one last time?? (that’s sort of an inside, Brad Pitt reference).  I put them in a plastic bag, tied it, went outside to our curbside garbage bin and threw it in.  I felt a tinge of emotion as I made my way back inside.

For a moment I felt satisfied, I had made some grand gestures.  I was still unsure of what to do with myself in the midst of all this.  I think I may have spent a bit more time lying on the ground, but I do remember getting up and starting to journal a bit.  At one point I looked up the word “entertain.”  In the etymology dictionary, not the regular one.  The etymology will tell you what the words are made up of, not just what they are supposed to mean, which could change over time.  Both definitions made me sick:

Entertainment: late 15c., “to keep up, maintain, to keep (someone) in a certain frame of mind,” from M.Fr. entretenir (12c.), from O.Fr. entretenir ”hold together, stick together, support,” fromentre- ”among” (from L. inter; see inter-) + tenir ”to hold” (from L. tenere; see tenet). Sense of “have a guest” is late 15c.; that of “amuse” is 1620s. Meaning “to allow (something) to consideration” (of opinions, notions, etc.) is 1610s.

Amuse:  late 15c., “to divert the attention, beguile, delude,” from M.Fr. amuser ”divert, cause to muse,” from a ”at, to” (but here probably a causal prefix) + muser ”ponder, stare fixedly.” Sense of “divert from serious business, tickle the fancy of” is recorded from 1630s, but through 18c. the primary meaning was “deceive, cheat” by first occupying the attention.Bemuse retains more of the original meaning. Related: Amused; amusing.

Notice there’s nothing in there about magic or wonder or genius or any of the things I’d long associated with “entertainment.”  No one lives– lived– for entertainment more than me.  Music, film, dance, the occasional theater, no one could watch a movie like me.  No one loved the darkening of a theater more than me.  When an album release date was settled on, no one felt the anticipation deeper than me.  There was no simpler joy, no greater thrill, there was nothing that could ruin a day that contained the promise of potent few hours of guaranteed, disappointment-free entertainment.  Nothing.  But this wasn’t the first time I’d encountered something that made me change my view of entertainment, and what it was doing to all of us.

This is getting a little longer than I’d anticipated it would.  To be continued.

End of part 2