cupcakes

I scratch my head and look at the tiles along the bottoms of the shelves. My hand twitches and I scratch the surface with my torn fingernails. It's like the dried toothpaste that crawls around the rim of your sink. Shuddering as I recoil my fingers, I continue to spin, and finally stop at what I'm looking for.

Cupcakes. It's a Martha Stewart book – filled with cupcakes. I flip through pages of pumpkin ginger, fourth of July, Crème Brule, and my mouth is watering.

I want a cupcake right this second.

I try not to think too hard. Focusing on the cupcakes should be easy enough. Wrappers, frosting, cake, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Should I buy it?

It would probably just end up sitting on a shelf somewhere, like my other cookbooks.

The ceiling fan is still burring. So I zip up my jacket and frantically continue to search.

Maybe I would finally put my pots and pans to use. Maybe I would stop being lazy and apathetic and just start baking already.

The science/fantasy fiction is over my shoulder, and my eye catches an older man with brown, rumpled curls and a gray blazer. His glasses are crooked. I wonder if his wife makes him cupcakes. Suddenly his glance shifts towards me and my reflexes sink back into the sweet pages of confection. I feel pathetic.

The shoes on my feet are old and comfortable. They rock back and forth from heel to toe as I am pensive.

Twenty-five dollars. Cupcakes. Shelves and crusted toothpaste. I have no kitchen of my own. The only ones who would eat them would be my little brothers.

Maybe it isn't worth it. Maybe none of it is.

My heel hits the carpet and I spin.

When I leave the cupcakes I feel sad, like they were all friends. And when I keep walking through aisles and aisles of pages I don't want to be found. I want to hide with my friends forever. We'd cook and laugh and bake cupcakes together. Sometimes we'd cry but in the end we would find peace because we would know each other.

For some odd reason leaving the book has made the night melancholy. But I ignore my insides and continue for the exit.

The sliding doors opened and the cold got worse. I would rather be home by the fire with my cupcakes.

rebirth

For a good nineteen years of my life I have perpetually heard the phrase, "God grabbed hold of my life"…in some form or another. I guess time and time again those words began to chip away at me, to a point where I would hear it and immediately brush it off. In all honestly I had no idea what it meant. I've grown up in the ministry and am very familiar with the things you say in order to make people believe you are super spiritual, and in turn became immune to those lines that were actually sincere, and meant something.

I had no idea what God grabbing hold of my life would look like. It was just a weird visual for me. I see everything in my mind and for God to be reaching down to me and taking my life and doing something with it on his OWN terms just did not calculate. I suppose I always figured that it was a wonderful thing. Something wonderful that seemed, to me, unattainable.

But I was wrong. I had no idea or could ever define what it's like. Not in exact terms, anyway.

See…God grabbing hold of my life had been pretty bloody. A messy, ugly thing. If you are a visual person, let me offer you this – My chest had been torn open, and everything has been exposed. This huge interrogation light is now shining into my core. And everyone can see why I suck at life….how sinful I am. Especially – especially
me! I have no place to hide.

Looking back (not very far back, but in retrospect nonetheless), I don't see how I thought I could get away with doing things my own way. However, this all stems from the fact that I never really got God "grabbing hold" of something – much less, me. I underestimated his ability to pull the carpet from underneath my feet. Once that happened, I began to grieve. I grieved for my life, for my desires, for all of the things I had wanted and planned for my life. But as days went by, I began to grieve in a different way. I grieved for time wasted, relationships withering away, for my purity.

Paul writes in Romans 7:13, "Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful."

The good that I should have been doing isn't what hurts, it's sin exposed by the good…that's what kills me. As the Holy Spirit draws nearer, it reveals more and more how dirty I am.

I don't know what happens next. I don't know what God has for me. As of now my plans and ideas for my life are slowing being thrown into the fire, and it feels like the worst thing ever. I feel like I'm starting over. All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning how to do them again. But it's all part of this thing called God grabbing a hold on my life, I guess.

pocket dictionary

I randomly found this poem I wrote a long time ago...and I was surprised that I still think it's funny. Maybe it's just me and I have a terrible sense of humor. Haha.

I need a dictionary,
One that's small.
It needs to fit in my purse, I mean.
So when I want to impress someone,
The wit is convenient.

He was tall and dark-haired
At the party
With his cocktail (I hate alcohol)
But his curls made me tipsy
And the word kitsch left me.

Usually I know my words.
You know, and how to use them.
I'm smart, I mean.
But I often see attractive people,
So I must take precautions.

it was for this

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth

Will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace

These words have not spoken so strongly to me until this night.