Month: January 2012

  • Lord, I Offer My Life to You

    I was remembering this song last night.  The Bible tells us to"sing a new song", but sometimes, there is something so profound about singing an old one.  The feelings and emotions, the struggle, the heart-wrenching surrender...all of the prayers that are linked with the song rise to the surface as I sing this song again with new thoughts and feelings becoming intertwined with all the old...and offer my whole life to him again.  Regrets... oh Lord, why would you want them?  Pain... can you really heal them?  Things in the past, things yet unseen...  will you take it all and redeem it?  I give you the best and the worst of me. 

    Here's the song as I remember it.

    Lord I Offer my Life to You

    All that I am, all that I have
    I lay them down before you, oh Lord
    All my regrets, all my acclaims
    The pain and the joy, I'm making them yours

    (Chorus)
    Lord, I offer my life to you
    Everything I've been through
    Use it for your glory
    Lord I offer my days to you
    Lifting my praise to you
    As a pleasing sacrifice
    Lord, I offer you my life

    Things in the past, things yet unseen
    Wishes and dreams that are yet to come true
    All of my hopes, all of my plans
    My heart and my hands are lifted to you

  • One Step, Two Steps

    I thought I was very self-aware, but it has only been recently that I’ve been able to recognize my battle with mild depression.  The tell-tale signs got swallowed up by continual changes and transitions in my life.  All this time, I just thought different life events were throwing my boat off kilter.  Looking back now, I see that the one constant in my life has been the up and down battle throughout it all.  I’ve articulated how it feels in a poem:

    A sense of dread.
    Burdened.  Overwhelmed.
    Can’t get out of bed. 

    Wanting to crawl into a hole. 
    Desire to quit everything. 
    Can’t be consoled. 

    Heavy weight dragging me down. 
    Can’t move forward. 
    Withdrawal from all around. 

    Battle rages every other day. 
    Can it be defeated? 
    Impossible to say.

    One step, two steps,
    three steps, four,
    progressing forward
    from the day before.

    Jesus, my lifeline,
    I grapple to hope.
    Choosing a way
    from the downward slope.

    I’ve been finding that I have to continue to choose to move forward.  The hard part is that sometimes I feel like I can’t choose it.  No, scratch that.  Depression is that I feel incapable of anything (I can’t even choose), but LIFE is continuing to walk in the way that God has already been leading me despite how I feel in this moment, because how I feel is not actually reality.  And as I put one foot in front of the other, I find life. 

    And I pray, “Lord, please fill me with joy in your presence.”  “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.  Mold me, melt me, fill me, use me.  Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.”