Psalms of Nat

Maybe you feel so unwanted, unloved that you crave for the feeling of being wanted. So you lure them boys, spin them round your finger, have them at your beck and call. Maybe that is why you feel sad when they move on, even though they mean nothing to you. You want their attention, their affection, but not them.

You don’t need somebody to love, you need to learn to love others. You love and hate yourself in equal measures, until you realise that is messed up, you are messed up, you will be stuck in a rut.

You need to know that you are loved. And being loved is not always about happy, mushy feelings. It is about the honest truth, the pushing through hard stuff, the boring, the tolerating, the understanding.

You are beautiful. You are enough. But until you realise that, until you learn to treat boys. and yourself with respect, you will never believe that.

Don’t congratulate me when I get a boyfriend.

Don’t congratulate me when I get married.

I have done nothing tough or worthy of praise.

Congratulate me on my first wedding anniversary.

Congratulate me on my fiftieth.

Marriage is a piece of work, and we made it work.

After some friendship drama last year, I still feel too wounded to make friends and to love.

It hit me today that God had been betrayed and backstabbed so many times. Lucifer betrayed him and took a group who turned their backs on God. But yet, God didn’t give up and made mankind. Mankind killed His Son which He sent to save them, yet He didn’t give up.

It is just crazy. How can He still continue to love despite the hurt?

Oh Daddy God, teach me how to love like you.

“All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Naval Treaty

It is so true. Reminds me of how much God loves us to create so many things to reflect His love. And how sad it is when we are more enamoured by the gifts than the giver.

I believe that the act of grace is a touch of love. 

I have this innate ability to mess things up. I’m also anal, obsessively worried and get stressed easily. Add all these things together and I am a walking recipe for disaster. It is a miracle that I am alive today.

For the past few days, I have been in a bit of a pickle. Unsure how to resolve a sticky issue so as to remain status quo. I tried avoiding it and then lying about it. 

Well, the problem clung onto me like a shadow, adding unneeded stress into my already stressed up life. 

And then today, I received a text. And without doing much, my issue was resolved. Not in the most ideal way, but given the mess I had created, it was a relief. 

There, I just felt so loved. So loved because there is always grace for a sinner, grace for a destroyer.

If there was ever a moment where I felt like my hands were turning everything into dung, this was it. Messed up at work, messed up in church, going to mess up other parts of my life soon too? 

But God came and loved me. He met me where I was fallen and gave me a way out. Where pride and self-effort tried to conquer, Grace won. 

It was this grace - a non-judging mercy that made me never want to live my life my way. Of course, God and I know that will never happen in an instant. But each day, I’m slowly making a decision to have less of me and more of God. 

Not that I am no longer an individual, but rather to not obsessively be an adult and fix my life with what little knowledge I have. God is my daddy, and I can just be a kid and chill. 

And it was then when I truly understand that grace is not a license to sin. It makes you unable to sin. How can I when I have experienced such love and acceptance? And this confrontation doesn’t drive me to despair, but rather gives me hope, because I know that I have my Daddy God on my side.

(via theheartsdelight)

Maybe at some point in time, you will be taken for granted and neglected. Maybe you’ll be “loved” by someone who thinks they love you when they have nothing to show for it. Maybe you’ll be that trophy friend that people keep to show off, but no-one wants to care for you.

Forget those people. Treat them with politeness and respect. And that’s it. Stop wasting emotions and filling your aching hearts with bitterness.

Here’s the deal. They don’t care. Maybe they did once, but not now. Let them go. Let the pain go.

There are others who love you and cherish you. Spend those painful, aching moments loving them back. Treat them with an extra special dose of love.

You see, when you need a friend, it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality. And these people who love you, chances are, they’ll always be there for you.

Whilst talking to J about bedtime stories, I told him that happily ever after doesn’t exist, well, not here on earth. Not that we are cynics, but we agreed that it was because happily ever after happens when we die and go to heaven. Happily ever after doesn’t exist right here, right now, because nothing has ended. Even after the last kiss, after the movie fades to black and credits roll, the story doesn’t end there. Life still goes on. Love is not a destination, it’s a process. Ditto for marriage.

I loved reading as a kid. I loved endings where they lived happily ever after. As I grew up, I got jaded. I began to prefer endings with closure, rather than just contrived happy endings. Not all of us are lucky, I reasoned. Not everyone gets to live happily ever after.

But as I grew even older, I learnt that life is a very long road trip. There may be rest stops and detours along the way, but each stop is never an ending. I learnt to have a kingdom mindset, to have a more realistic understanding of life. Life is never about endings, it’s always about going to the next level. Love is never about that moment when we say “I do” and share that kiss as a married couple, it is about constantly choosing to love each other. No one writes about the squabbles of living habits and in-laws, or about how they work together to make things work out. 

As an inexperienced young adult who has never been in love, I learn about love through the relationships of my friends. Where they fall and hurt, I learn things, and I see how false notions of love can break a heart. I guess, I’m learning to have an open mind about things.

Dear future husband, where ever you are, Daddy God’s preparing your future wife. We’ll have a relationship centered on Jesus, and we’ll always work things out (or thrash things out over ice cream). Keep me in prayer. Until we meet, your Natalie.

(via abiding-love)