This little light of mine

Love is unmistakable. It changes everything. You wake up in the morning and your alarm upsets the perfect motions of your sleepy dreams. You roll over and collect your consciousness. What day is it? Oh yeah... gotta do that... gotta go there... gotta do this... Oh wait! He loves me:)

That day don't seem so bad no more.

I've been going through my days lately, just walking. Class to class. Walking out of the DC (dining commons), on to the practice rooms. Stop at the Union because I just realized I'm hungry. And I'll get that feeling. Like I'm forgetting something. Like I know I was excited about something. A vague memory. Like it was a dream I had the night before. I'll wait for the nagging feeling to unmask itself. Then I remember. I have his love. Mmmm:)

I wrote a song a while ago called "Once We Loved" about how love is like lighting a candle. I'd always thought of love through the metaphor that my love lights a candle that he carries around wherever he goes. And his love lights a candle in me that I take with me everywhere.



It may sound cliché, but the love of God has freaking freaked me out to the point that it is all I can think about. He is the love I've wanted all my life. The love I've looked for in other people, finding the search fruitless at best. The endless searches for it that leave me frustrated, hurt, and angry. And I've known Christ all this while, too.

Do you realize what it means to say we are created by God and for God? That we have an innate desire for God? I never realized the fullness of these statements. Until this week.

"God, I just want to love someone. Someone who will let me love him, too."

And He says, "Oh, hey!"

And I keep going...

"I want someone to talk to and collect my thoughts for during the day so I can enjoy even the lousy parts of my day because I know I'll get to talk about them to him."

And He says, "Yeah, wouldn't that be cool..."

"I just want to wake up in the morning and have all frustrated and annoyed thoughts for the day ahead completely dissipate when I remember I'm holding his candle, lit well in the hands of my heart."

And He says, "You think you're the first one to think of it that way... You're cute Shai."

And I ramble on and on.

And yes. Sometimes the Voice of God is quite sarcastic in my head.

So if that dialogue confused you... let me break it down.

I'm single. I'm not really into being upset about stuff like singleness. I love life, and living no matter who I'm with or without. But there are times that I get frustrated. Didn't God make me with specific desires? Like the desire to freaking not be single? Haha... oh I miss the point so often!! So so soooooo often!

Get this. Drill it into yourself like sandpaper grinding your skin. That's a kinda uncomfortable visual, but I mean it.

We are genetically, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, everything-ly programmed to desire God. He made us FOR HIMSELF. We're like magnets. No matter what we will draw to the opposite property. We will attract. We will be pulled, and torn towards the opposite. Magnets.

So in the times I go to God with my "wants and desires" or what I call a "need," basically His response could always be,

"Yup. That's because you want ME. I'M what you want Shaina Joy. It's ME."

The things we desire in life are miniatures of what We're programmed to crave. What we're made to want. WHO we're made for.

It came to me while I was babbling to God. I stopped for a second. I held my hands, one cupped around the other, my left thumb crossed over my right. Sitting on a piano bench.

"God? I want you."

Daaaaaang. The reason I want to love someone is because I want God. The reason I want someone to love me is because I want God. The reason I want a family is because I want God. The reason I want to play music is because I want God. The reason I want to write a thousand songs a day is because I want God. The reason I love to sing is because I want God. The reason I love to be with people is because I want God.

Every single answer is because I want God. Every reason. Because I am made BY God FOR God. It fuels everything in and about me. And then I wonder why I get disappointed sometimes with other things... because of my innate desire for God. Nothing else will freaking do.

There are times I come to God with tears tying up my throat in a hot fist as I break to say, "Look God, it's broken." My expectations shattered. In my disappointment, I can't even see that the reason I'm disappointed is because I subconsciously compare everything to Him.

Everything ends up the same way... everything I want and desire is summed up in God. Everything I say I "want" is an earthly imitation of what I really want. God.

And so... I want God. And I even get to carry around His candle, lit by His love.

John 1:9 says that the true Light came into the world who gives light to every man. And He gave us His light. And now we're the Light of the world.

So I want Him. And I hold His candle. And I wake up in the morning and remember I have His love. And everything I do that gets me excited, and everything I see that makes me sad because I don't have something, makes me overwhelmed with how much I just want God. Hmmm...

He's got my candle, too.