I’m always late. I really do try to be on time and when it’s achieved I’m way too overzealous like I might as well have won the Olympics. “I’m here!” Like it’s a gift I’m giving you, you are welcome. I got a hall pass today, this day is the end of a forty day habit breaker between me and social media and more importantly, social media stalking. We all do it so don’t make that face, those portals made it way too easy tempting us with those magnifying glass icons just waiting to ‘Search’.
I heard my alarm, but being up late last night looking for that song… Ugh, what is that song? I hit snooze. Three times. Why am I dreaming of that one time at Equis when I crashed a rehearsal dinner and danced with my cousin’s friends like they do in my Big Fat Greek Wedding? Am I going to have a Big Fat Greek Wedding!?! I mean my family is half the state of California so it could very well turn out to be fat, but we’re not Greek so it’s more likely it will be just “phat”. I instantly remembered a song by Alan Walker, Faded.
I’m up! I want to dance with my phat husband, at our phat wedding, and have phat baby carrots. I also like EDM music, “Where are you now? Was it all in my fantasy? Where are you now? Were you only imaginary?”
Anyone who knows me can tell you that when it comes to me believing in my future husband, it’s more like a watermelon on steroids than a mustard seed. During adolescence, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the water, do you know what I mean? I was the girl with the crush that all the horror movies made us out to be crazier than we actually are. I genuinely loved too much, but that much confused praise towards another person makes it uncomfortable and awkward.
For example, one evening in my senior year of high school I tagged this boy’s car with washable paint. Ironically, my mother and I were scrapbooking together last week and I came across a photo from that very night. The intent was to show how much I liked him by way of playful teasing and because he was kind of a big deal in the sports arena… call it spirit pride, if you will. The friends along with me encouraged the thought and together we left notes, painted the windows, and if memory serves, even a present? Nothing too bad to be construed as bullying only he didn’t think the same way. Recalling my memory again, he also had just washed his car that day. Yikes. He was so upset and I was blind sighted coming from a family where all we do is level our pride with teasing, games, tagging for special events, and embarrassing one another.
If by chance that guy catches this blog, I’m truly sorry for misunderstanding you and the entire situation due to my own prideful ego being the biggest Jericho wall between our friendship, swimming in two completely different pools of thought. We were friends until I ruined it by being selfish, controlling maybe, definitely by gossiping at the end. I wasn't allowed to watch Dawson’s Creek so I didn’t see that playing out like it did, that’s for sure! Anyway, we were kids and I’m sorry. Last I heard, life is going pretty great for you and I couldn’t be happier!
Okay, church! I was about 5 or 10 minutes late to my first church this morning. I’m a church hopper now so I go to the Promise Center at 8:30am and then to the Bridge by 10am and I have to say, it’s the perfect prayer crawl. Ha, that like a pub crawl? I found where my aunt and uncle were sitting and right as I took my seat, they showed a woman's testimony of her baptism.
“Atlantis. Under the sea, under the sea, Where are you now? Another dream…The monsters running wild inside of me. I’m Faded, so lost, I’m Faded.”
Sitting in the water about to be dipped, she reads her testimony about how she overcame some hardships and prayed for her earthly husband and he was delivered along with three sons.
Had I not been at the park yesterday where I heard the name of my first born being yelled across the field as they played catch, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about her statement. I believe the Lord is preparing me for some sons, three to be exact. Call it intuition, a vision, ready prepared-ness survival skills, but I know how many, the order, the names, the father, it’s bananas. I love bananas. Right after her extremely joyous baptism commitment to the Lord, the church band sings “Welcome Home” and I get a little teary eyed at this moment. It’s my graduation day, I wasn’t going to go to this one today, I hit snooze, I was dreaming of Greek wedding dances, and yet…. I am HOME.
The day gets weirder… Discernment Alert: Weird is one of my favorite words and it’s a term of endearment. I love me some weirdos and hope Carrot comes with some quirkiness. I sit there wondering why YHWH chose baptism to be the symbolism of born again Christian or contract binding promise for his followers. Ok, because it’s a cleanse, it’s a fresh start, it’s wet, it’s water, it’s life, it’s re-fresh-ing, ha. Jordan as in Jordan River means to flow down, descend.
“These shallow waters, never met What I needed. I'm letting go, A deeper dive. Eternal silence of the sea, I'm breathing. Alive - Where are you now?”
I’m still in reverie thinking about my Carrot and how he is a God fearing man. Still crushing… safely, of course.
I’m pulled back into the message about our wants over purpose like our ego over our hearts, not all things are instantaneous, and then the speaker mentions his irritability about needing to find the song immediately like Shazam is necessary in his life. What?! That was my literal frustration last night up until 1am trying to find a song I still haven’t found and the church service I was going to skip is talking about it? That’s weird. Then he comments about always having to move furniture for the other pastor there and my sister and I just joked about how I’ve redecorated at least a dozen times this summer. Just filling my time with nothing to get by.
Okay, I am listening intently, Lord! The think tank is brewing. The message is all about how ‘we are a product of our own environment’. Where are my former employee’s at and how many times did I use that very quote to describe our sales floor? Why are plants used all the time in metaphors throughout Christianity? Why did the blind man say we look like trees? Well life needs water so you maintain your environment with water, great we’re in a drought, no? Wait, our physical environment or our spiritual one or our mental one?
Boom. Egg.
In the Power of Love, I wrote about how I believe that the Spirit of Wisdom is water, literally water. Since we’re made up of 75% of water that would make sense so being baptized isn’t just about washing our bodies, our sins, but our… ignorance?
“You were the shadow to my light, Did you feel us? Another start, You fade away. Afraid our aim is out of sight, Wanna see us? Alive, where are you now? Atlantis, under the sea - another dream. The monsters running wild inside of me. I’m Faded.”
Oh My Atlanta.
Matthew 3:11-12 says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I. I am not worthy to remove his sandals. He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn. But the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.”
Winnowing: To get rid of undesirable parts. To examine closely in order to separate the good from the bad, sift. Eliminate. To sort or select, extract. To separate the chaff from grain by means of current of air. To blow chaff off or away. To blow on, fan. To blow away, to scatter.
Chaff: Thin dry bracts or scales. The scales enclosing mature grains of wheat. The scales borne on the receptacle among the flowers of many plants in the composite family. Finely cut straw used to fodder (coarsely chopped, raw material, as for artistic creation - a consumable often inferior item or resource that is in demand and abundant supply). Trivial or worthless matter. Strips of metal, foil, or glass fiber with a metal content that are used to reflect electromagnetic energy as a radar countermeasure.
Boom. Egg! Chaff also means to make fun of in a good natured way; tease - to tease playfully. I was ignorant when I tagged that boy’s car. I wasn’t thinking, I lacked wisdom, I was dehydrated. So Yeshua spoke in parables and metaphors, no? Is it possible that the act of baptism is to represent eliminating our scales that we’re born into simply by allowing him to blow them away? In order to allow him to do that, I wonder if that’s why the first commandment is to put no other gods before him including ourselves and then commit, to trust, and believe he can eliminate our trivial and worthless influence with our faith, mustard seeds.
Hey, look at that! The Holy Spirit and Fire. Tongues of fire? Well, I am learning Greek. Spirit of fire? I am a fire sign being born in August. I did just repent for publicly tearing down my egotistical wall for being a teenage prick. Isn’t there a parable about thorns?
Photo: "ροζ γυαλιά"
Taken 3/28/2018 @7:24pm in Sonoma