Life in Reality

I’ve wanted to write this entry since Christmas Day, but have not been able to find the words. I don’t think my words could ever do justice to the great things Elyon is teaching, so I am writing now, not because I believe I’ve reached some favored time to publish these thoughts, but because I do not think, no matter how long I wait, a better time will come to exist.

I am beside myself with joy these days. Traditionally, the holidays have not been my favorite time of year so I was pleasantly surprised to find my spirits soar so high as we rolled into December. A lot of people are stressed during the holiday season, and understandably so, but we also get to see incredible, if not unusual, acts of kindness and a general aura of happiness this time of year. I love that.

I think this change in attitude regarding Christmas came about for a couple of different reasons. First, a few weeks ago, I read a web comic’s comments on people who hate Christmas, and they basically boiled down to this: people who hate Christmas hate to see people who are happy. We might make an exception for those who have lived through a tragedy which the holidays could highlight, but as I have no Christmas trauma of which to speak, I was forced to ask myself if this funnyman’s claim was true of me. Since I couldn’t think of a another reason for hating the season that brought others so much joy, I was left with nothing to do but learn to enjoy it myself.

The second factor in my newfound love for the holidays cannot be pinpointed to a single moment. Rather, it has been the process of discovering Elyon’s great love for me (or at least a fraction of it) that has lead me to grow a greater fondness for others and thus yearn for their happiness. Anyone that knows me personally knows that I fall far short of loving people perfectly, but the more I learn about Elyon’s love for even those who have not accepted it, the easier it is, I find, to see past the sin that marks us all to the person He created. So I long to see my Love’s creation brimming with happiness and I also have a new appreciation for the great love behind Elyon’s incarnation.

So it was with these new understandings that I boarded a plane back to Texas on Christmas Day, and it is here that I begin telling the real, albeit the much-more-difficult-to-put-into-words purpose for this entry. You see, I’ve always had a very active imagination (this is probably a result of being home-schooled for the first years of my educated life and thus being forced to come up with ways to entertain myself as a substitute for playmates—in short, home-school made me your pretty stereotypical freak).  I have all these worlds in my mind to which I often retreat. They’re different from one another in a lot of ways, but at the core, they’re pretty much the same. The general fabric is this: I have a close, loving relationship with God, and I have a close, loving relationship with a few others who have dedicated their lives to fighting an obvious evil (I’m aware that my secret inner-nerd is now shining more brightly than ever—that’s okay). In these fictional realms, I can be exactly who I want to be without the pesky notions of sin and reality getting in my way. And there, while looking down on the Potomac, it suddenly hit me that my fantasies are such because I was created to be exactly that—a great lover of Elyon and of people, especially His people, and a warrior in the battle against evil, albeit one that is much less obvious in reality.

What’s more is the realization (I’ve always known, but with less clarity somehow) that the New Earth God has planned for me is strikingly similar to the ones I’ve dreamed up. They’re filled with a love and profound loyalty among those who share my love for Elyon. They’re filled with a love that makes people lay themselves down for the sake of others, that causes one to be elated at the fortune of their brother or sister. My words never do these sort of epiphanies justice, but I swear, I was giddy like a child. I looked like a lunatic walking through wearing such a goofy, inexplicable grin.

Elyon is all He ever promised He is, all I could ever hope He could be Even now, I realize He is so much more than I can imagine and light years beyond what I could ever deserve. Yet He loves me. He chose me, and all others, as His bride; He wooed me, and now he waits with even more excitement than I for our marriage ceremony. There is no life better than this.