Irrelevant

Fidgeting with the keys in my hand, I felt the breeze sweep through my pink hair. Each step closer to my car dissolved the hard plastic covering of my frame, and the pulling of the handle of the car door dissipated it entirely. As I reversed out of the lot, I searched for a song on one of my many CD's to compel my thoughts onto another path.
"DO SOMETHING."
It's funny that those words always seem to be the ones I utter.
I didn't know where I was going, literally and figuratively, but I just drove. So done. My eyes welled with tears as a flimsy balloon does, filled with icy water from a summer's faucet. But as quickly as they appeared, I banished them away. Not a single tear fell.


My thoughts trip over the words of so many "church songs" I have sang all my life. "Lead me to the Cross," "heart abandoned," "all my life and nothing less." Mouth (figuratively) agape, I now wonder to myself if the singer of those songs seriously knows what they are saying. Do I? Because if I had known, every time I sung those songs, what I am actually "signing up for," I would have needed a lot more courage to sing them. Honestly, I don't know if I would have sang them at all.
Last night, I sat in my car with two of my best friends, talking and doing our best to align with the Divine. I had just finished crying (it really does amaze me that I have any tears left) and doing my best to expose my heart when one of my friends said something so profound it will probably always stick with me. In fact, I remember looking at her in the rear-view mirror thinking, "Wow. God personified." (Don't freak out. Don't take that for more than it is...)

"Sometimes, it's just about being used."
To paraphrase, she said that there will be, have been, and are times in life that I won't understand. That I may never see the reason/lesson behind the trials I endure. But more times than not, it's because I'm looking at what it did for ME. And it's not always bad to look at it that way. Sometimes I really am trying to see what lesson I can learn from it. But as my friend so beautifully exclaimed, God brings glory, for HIMSELF, out of every single situation. There are times that I get to benefit from it, but mostly, I am IRRELEVANT.
It doesn't take me out of the situation, it doesn't by any means take the pain away, and it doesn't always make me feel any better. But I can't count the times I have prayed to be used by Him. I have even said "whatever that means." Let me tell you, I didn't mean that. At the moment of utterance, yes, I was sincere. But it was the same type of misleading sincerity that says, "I will take a bullet for you." When the gun is on your forehead, will you still mean it?

I have traveled the road, hitting every bump along the way. And sometimes, if only for a minute, a day, a week, I am granted a look AT rather than a look THROUGH. And as I stand on the other side of the Cross, seeing what it feels like to embody ignorantly sincere words, I can't help but wonder if I would do it all again.

heart abandoned
all my life and nothing less...
Lead me to the Cross.


To Be Continued.