Cheating with another life

I realized tonight that I was beginning to settle for something. I was beginning to settle for less freedom, because I sense others around me not being as free, and I was letting it affect me. I thought, "Well, that is okay, I'll just change for them so I'll fit in more. I'll be accepted in their lives."

NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dear Lord, please, don't let me do that ever again. I believe it needed to happen though, so I could see for myself what was going down, deep inside of me.

Jenny, let yourself be crazy and free. Let yourself be different. Let yourself be me, or you...Let Jesus shine through you. When I act like that, I'm holding Jesus back. I'm holding Him deep inside. I'm hiding Him away from others, from myself. I'm so sorry.

When I realized what I had been doing I remembered a blog I wrote in February 2008. I had just been through a LONG (it felt long anyway) season of allowing myself to settle for less than I craved. Here is what I wrote. It is just as true today if now more so.

"So, I have decided that no matter what, I want to act weird and crazy. I want to be fat and ugly...pregnant and dressed poorly. Standing out among thousands and offensive in so many ways. Never fitting in and being set aside time after time. Never agreeing and constantly being blamed for everything. Being stared at and being judged wrongly. Never being seen at all perhaps and being ignored forever and ever. Spoken unkindly to and cursed in so many ways (but they can never stick). Constantly misunderstood and hopelessly awkward. Standing in an empty field in the middle of a storm. I have decided this because in all these ways, doing all of these things, just being completely incomplete, being me...in all these ways I have You. I keep You here with me...and You in turn keep me."

I will hold myself back no more. I'm refusing to settle. Doing so is being disobedient, it is holding Jesus back in my life. I feel like I cheated on Jesus with this other life I was suddenly thinking about living. That life would have been SO different than living life with Him FULLY!

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse



I feel like I'm waking up from a deep sleep of sorts.

It's like the devil tries to control me, to put in a box. And he does it so discretely! He comes at me sideways, pats my back, offers a compliment. Smiles and then WHAM! He has me fooled and I am basking in what I think is something better than I have with Jesus, because I actually think it is Jesus. But do you know what came with this? Confusion. Confusion is not of God. So if you find yourself confused about something...stop and ask God about it.

current song on repeat. my love for sad songs runs DEEP.

I close my eyes for a while
And force from the world a patient smile

But I gave you all

But you rip it from my hands
And you swear it's all gone
And you rip out all I have
Just to say that you've won