2/17/2006

Lora. Jayne at 10:06 PM

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4 Comments

at Friday, February 17, 2006  Anonymous said...

Lora!
That's Beautiful! Oh man, that is good. Anyway, you sound like you have hope in the second half of the poem. That's great! I know you are gonna come out of this. There is light peaking through your clouds of despair. Focus on the light and it will grow bigger and brighter. "Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path"-Psalm 119:105. God is the source of all Light, let it shine into your soul!

 

at Saturday, February 18, 2006  Anonymous said...

Hey lora. I agree with what everyone else said. That is a really great poem. Great descriptions, great rhyming, great emotion comming from it. You can feel it and that just makes your poems very beautiful. As you've told me, we all mess up. We always will. Until we get to heaven. Until then, everytime we fall, we have to pick ourselves back up and start again. And all of us are always here to help you. Thats why God put us here. I understand how you feel, and know its hard to trust and believe. But remember, if we didn't mess up, why would we need God? Its a part of life, and things will suck. God will never leave you, nor forsake you. Remember "The nails in your hands. The nail in your feet. Tell me how much you love me. The thorns on your brow, they tell me how. You bore so much shame to love me." " And forever they will say, how much you love me." I love you, so do soo many other people, and most of all God loves you. No matter what is going on, or what you're going through. Love you so much.

 

at Saturday, February 18, 2006  Rachel said...

Hey Lora. Where do I begin? There is so much I want to say to you. And, like Anna said, I want to let you know that I'm going to be completely and absolutely honest. I'm not going to exaggerate to make things sound better or soften my words, either one.

First off, I want to tell you that I love you, Lora, much more than you know. Just like so many others have said before me, you have had a huge impact on my life. I can see many of the fruits of the Spirit in you. You are one of the most loving and caring people I know, and YOU are a better friend than I deserve. You have so many gifts and beautiful, unique ways of serving God. You inspire me to be a better friend and a better person and I thank and praise God for placing you in my life. God has made you an amazing person and no matter how depressed you may be, I can ALWAYS see God shining through you. I am CONFIDENT that you are His child.

Again, I am being completely and absolutely honest.

This week I may not have had much of a chance to talk to you, but I have cried for you every day. I have been on my knees, I have been praying for you with everything I am. I would give up myself to see your pain and your sufferings go away. I have begged God sometimes that if He was going to let you hurt yourself, that He wouldn't let that happen and strike me dead instead. I would die for you Lora, and not just me. Look at the people who responded to your posts; who have reached out to you this week. We are your friends through the good times and the bad. And no, we are not your friends because you need help and we pity you. We are your friends because we love you for being Lora, for being a one-of-a-kind unique, beautiful masterpiece of God. I know I am certainly not the only one who would die for you.

Lora, I wish I could take all your pain myself and let you be free of it. But I know that I personally can't, no matter how much I want to... it would never work; I'm a sinful creature myself. It is not my place, but it isn't something that is needed now, because it has already been done... Jesus did it. He took on all the pain that you're going through, He suffered the full extent of it and much more than that, so that you wouldn't have to be a slave to it, so that you could be free of it. Jesus shed His blood so that you don't have to (and neither do I). The blood of Jesus never fails us. It is stronger than death; it is stronger than the power of Satan. It is much stronger than this sickness of sin that we all have. It is His blood that covers our weaknesses and our failures, every time we fall. Because we all fall all the time.

And that's the thing... we are weak. I know you don't want to be. And I think you believe that a lot of your friends aren't... or are at least not as weak as you... but that is another lie that you're being told by Satan. You are weak. I am weak. Everyone on this earth is completely weak and powerless to change themselves apart from the grace and power of God. I know it's such a frustrating thing for me to accept sometimes... I want so badly to be good, to be strong, to be perfect... I'm a perfectionist, Lora, and I think you are too. I try so hard, and when my efforts end up wasted or as failures, I start to hate myself and start believing that nothing I do amounts to anything. I start believing that I am less than nothing. But I want you to know that being weak and being less than nothing are not the same thing. God didn't create us as less than nothing. He created us to glorify Him, and how could something that is worth nothing, worth less than nothing, glorify Him? You are NOT less than nothing, Lora. You are His creation, a beautiful work of art created by God to give Him pleasure. You make Him sing for joy, Lora. Zephaniah 3:17 says that He takes great delight in you and that He rejoices over you with singing. You are not less than nothing, you are more than merely something... you are a child of God. Even the angels long to be able to know Him like you can.

However, you are weak. I am weak. Since the fall of mankind at the beginning, all creation has been flawed. The world is sunken in sin and death. None of us are capable of getting free of it; that's why it had to be done for us. That's why God suffered sin and death to its largest extreme; why it took the blood of a Perfect Man to save us from our own blood. Because He did that, it's alright to be weak. Read that again Lora: It's alright to be weak. The Bible says in 2 Cor. 12:10 that when we are weak, then we are strong. A few verses earlier, God says that "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Whatever weaknesses we have, for we all have so many, God will use for His glory. There's this song by Jars of Clay that you might know. It is one of my favorite songs ever because it reminds of this beautiful truth. The chorus goes,

If I were not so weak
If I were not so cold
If I were not so scared of being broken
Growing old
I would be...
Frail.

If we were not so weak, if we were "strong"... THAT is when we would really be weak. Do you see? If you weren't so weak, then how would God be glorified? Would His blood be shed for nothing? Lora, there is a purpose through all of this pain. It will bring you closer to Him. You WILL get through this; you will see the light at the end of the tunnel; the rainbow after the storm. God will not give up one of His own; and that is what you are. You are a child of God, and He will never give up on you. No matter how much you fall, that will not change the fact that He has saved you. Remember the dance verse we're learning this week... all the decrees against us, all the accusations of our weakness and our sinful flesh, all the debt that we owe (that we would have had to bleed for ourselves)—He took it all away from us, and nailed it on the cross. He put it on Himself and bled in our place. He suffered death and Hell so that you wouldn't have to. But He also rose again so that you could also rise again with Him... so that you can live and be free. We won't experience this fully until Heaven, when we will shed our worldly bodies of flesh, but even now His blood covers us and makes us as white as snow.

So all this to say, Lora, you don't have to try. Do you want to be free? You are. You are not condemned anymore; Romans 8:1 says that "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." He loves you, He has already saved you, He has already freed you from your sin and your weaknesses. Just like He has done for me. There is nothing that can separate you from His love; not death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.

So while this is a really horrible time for you right now, God is above it. Though none of us may be able to see how to find the rainbow at the end, God sees and knows, and He is guiding all of us even more surely than He guides the stars. Even when you can't see Him, even when you can't feel Him, He will never abandon you. Even when you feel like giving up, He will never give up on you. Lora, the battle has already been won. You are free.

I love you sooooo incredibly much Lora. I want to help you so much!!! I don't know if anything I can say can help but I know God can speak to you regardless of whether or not I say the right thing. If any of this helps you, it is going to have to be God. But Lora, please remember that your friends love you. And even more so, God loves you... His power is beyond anything we can ask or imagine, and He will be your help and your hope. He will not give up one of His sheep.

 

at Saturday, February 18, 2006  Rachel said...

Oh yes, I remember how I was going to start out all of ^ that with... YOUR POEM IS AWESOME. It is beautiful. You have an amazing gift, Lora.

 

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