Sarah Anne I Am

So Father here’s my cry In the middle of the night While it’s raining on the city It’s also raining from her eyes And I know I don’t deserve Any sort of granted favors For I’m fallen far from grace Yet You promise that I’m heard So this is what I beg of You Not for myself this time Will Your strength fill all her weaknesses As You renew her life.

  God amazes me. Almost without fail, in the moments when I begin to feel that my efforts are of no consequence or that someone else could easily fill my place, He reminds me that He has given me a position of influence in the lives of those I love for a reason.    It is not senseless; it is with good reason that He has allowed me to be a shoulder to cry on and someone to run to for solace, direction, and unwavering love. I cannot provide any of those things- especially unwavering love- outside of Him. But with Him working in me and through me, I can be an arrow pointing ever upward for people He places in my life for very specific reasons.   It’s incredible, really.

A few months ago I found an alcove in a church and hid beneath a side table, laying down and cradling my head in my arms, hoping no one would find me there. I didn’t cry- I’d been forcing the tears back for too long, and now they refused to fall. So I just lay there, alone except for the only One that I didn’t mind being with me in that moment.   I found myself laying in the middle of an empty living room of an empty house tonight, feeling just the same as I had a few months ago- tears hid themselves, emotions had run around inside my head so many times that they had exhausted themselves into apathy. And I found myself alone, except of course for my Father.   In those moments God rarely gives me profound insight. He doesn’t give me any clear answers to the muddled assortment of questions I have. It’s simply as though He holds me for a while, and comforts me. He sits with me and we are quiet together.   2 Corinthians 3-4 says, “ Praise be to the God an...

20 THINGS I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING…based on personal experience. 1. Sometimes I DID stay in my pajamas all day. And yes, it was awesome. 2. My grasp of basic algebra is probably about that of a 3rd grader. Being home schooled did not automatically make me a genius, but it did give me opportunities to learn on a broader scale. 3. Almost every person I have ever talked to has asked me one of the two versions of this question upon learning that I was home schooled: “How do you make friends?” or “Do you have any friends?”   Throughout high school it grew increasingly more tempting to look at them very earnestly and answer in a tone of desperation, “No, I don’t…I’ve…I’ve never had a friend before. Will you- maybe, if you feel like it- be my friend?” I never did, but I still think about it. 4. When asked how I got any exercise without a PE class every day, I would answer that dancing with toddlers has proven to ...

  I am a remarkable human being in my ability to forget.   Remembering is something that is important to me. It’s something I value. "Thank You…for a life and a mind and a heart and a will to live, and to not forget, and a will to write it all down," I have sung to myself, yet I am so quick to forget the goodness of my God and so quick instead to remember only the things that surround me and threaten to tear me down.   We must be eternity-minded. Focusing only on temporal things will always depress me, it will always cause me to be terrified and make me want to run away or drive until I find the end of all the highways. When I try again and again to be who I am called to be using only my own feeble willpower, it always results in me curling up on the floor of a closet or a bathroom or a copy room to cry and hope I fall asleep and don’t wake up for days.   My boyfriend read me the second and third chapters of Colossians today, and in verse 2 of chapter 3 Paul says, "Set...

  Someday you will meet someone who will love you despite- maybe even in part BECAUSE OF- the strange, ridiculous, and generally weird things about you.   They will love how you arrange all of the dirty dishes into neat stacks before you wash them.   They will love the fact that in order to efficiently clean a room you need to put your hair up, have a beverage on hand, and be listening to Adam Lambert.   They will love the way you dance when there’s no music.   They will love that are mess you are when you first wake up in the morning.   They will love your habit of hearing an indistinct word and replacing it with something ridiculous, causing you to ask people things like, “Did you just say you’re craving Benadryl?”   They will love your total lack of ability to remember street names.   They will love your obscure knowledge about your favorite band.   They will love your feet, even when they’re calloused from going barefoot all summer…and part of the...

Step 1: Give them a little taste of something familiar. Perhaps use a scene so reminiscent of the year 1999 that it is practically the cover of the Backstreet Boys “Millenium” album come to life. Be sure to appear out of thin air and have some box fans built into the wall behind you for unneccesary effect. Step 2: Start slow. Begin the song by talking. It really doesn’t matter what you say, as long as your hair is a foot tall while you’re saying it, and it builds into actual singing while you use flashy hand motions at the exact same moment. Step 3: Wear lots of outfits. Make sure you give your audience an opportunity to see you wearing a white space suit, black leather with enough chains and grommets to build a chainsaw out of, and something you think the typical high school student would wear- just to be relatable. Step 4: Feature a nice car. It’s ok if the car has no bearing on the video whatsoever, just step out of it or sit in front of it for a few seconds here an...