Never Forget the New Song

"I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; many will see and fear, and I will trust in the Lord." -Psalm 40:1-3

To this day, I am still reminded that, by nature, I was an extremely happy child. However, when I was ten years old things started to get rough for my family. The worse things got, the more I held onto Jesus for dear life. The song “Hanging On” by Everyday Sunday soon became my anthem for getting by. 

We all have seeds of different emotions; we go through and feel each one from time to time. My seed of anger was so miniscule because of my strong inclination to be happy. My happy seed must have been enormous! And yet, as the years passed, and despite my determination to hold onto and follow Christ, my seed of anger was watered and I steadily became a very, very angry person. I did not experience the emotion of anger every moment of every day, but at my core I became a seether over many things. Most would have never known; I hid it well. Since I wasn’t naturally this way it took a few years to provoke this emotion out of me to such a large extent and it slowly made its way to the surface so that I could whip out fury at the snap of a finger in order to protect myself. A defense mechanism, I suppose.

Yes, I was angry. I was angry at my family, friends who rejected me, boys and occasionally God. I did not resort to everything under the sun to ease the pain. I really did try to give things to the Lord on a regular basis. However, I was still young and I did not behave perfectly by any means. I still made mistakes and I allowed my anger to get the best of me on countless occasions. Behavior of acting out that I am now ashamed of, although I don’t know that I would have done things differently with the way things were, being in the place I was at the time. And this anger, accompanied by some vividly foolish behavior, followed me well into college.

I look back now at who I was then, how I was. I can hardly believe that the girl I remember was really me. But then, I know that if I had looked forward in time to who I am now…I would not have been able to believe that either. I could not have imagined living in peace with my family. (I remember wondering how I was ever going to make it to my eighteenth birthday before moving out of my house.) I could not have fathomed living without the pain I felt everyday. And I could not have believed that I would ever know what it was like to live again without such anger. Living life according to my hurt.

The old blog from my freshmen year of college, which I included in my previous blog entry, was a milestone in my walk with God. I don’t think I had ever felt joy like that even when I was a child. I think that’s when the change really began in me, although the anger certainly did not go away overnight. It had been nurtured for too long and, therefore, had to be weeded and excavated out of me.

I have a label for each of my college years. Freshmen year was the most difficult year spiritually. Sophomore year was the most difficult year emotionally. Junior year was the most healing year for me. (Senior year was the biggest year for direction and self-discovery.) Over the course of junior year, it seems the majority of that underlying anger evaporated. By the year’s closing, I made final peace with my older brother who I hadn’t spoken with in almost a year. (This was not the first time we had gone so long without speaking. A few times we had gone longer.)

The Lord has done such an amazing work in me that I can literally mean it when I say that I am a different person. I am not who I was.

But here is the punch line…over the last year, the passion I found three and a half years ago, through my revelation, has waned. I have gotten to the point where I can talk about God, then come home at the end of the day and realize that I really have forgotten all about Him. I haven’t taken the time to consistently be in His Word, or even talk with Him, listen to Him and enjoy His presence. It’s been so off and on that it has lacked the depth I could have been experiencing with Him. I have gotten caught up with my days and become too lazy to devote my time to getting closer with Him one-on-one. I would feel guilty for neglecting Him and, therefore, neglect Him some more, doing the same thing over and over again without ever changing.

This last week, however, I have been getting this feeling…I’m just getting so tired of doing the same things. Living for myself. Reverting to bad attitudes. Repeating the same music over and over, the kind that only gets me down and takes my focus away from God. It’s true that whatever you put into your head goes down into your heart and comes out through your actions. I have gotten past the point of innocently listening to certain kinds of music. I got so addicted to drowning selfish and unhopeful music into my brain to the point where my uplifting music was not even appealing anymore. And that is saying a lot!

In addition, I have been thinking about my past self a lot lately and it really just hit me the other night. I remembered a story from the book Every Young Woman’s Battle. A woman had a dream that she was at her wedding reception. She went around the entire room seeing her friends and family, enjoying it all by herself. But then she realized, “Oh wait, where’s the groom?” She looked over and saw him standing in the corner in tears, looking down at the wedding ring on his finger. Forgotten. She had forgotten him. It was then that she realized that this is what she had done to God. He is our beloved whom we have forgotten.

The combination of growing weary from my empty behavior, remembering the change that God has made in my life, and thinking of this metaphorical dream…I was feeling troubled and I began looking for some verses to console me. But what I found instead were the verses above. Right then, the Lord really grabbed hold of my heart. I felt so ashamed. How could I have forgotten my God? How could I have neglected Him who has done so much for me? If I had not held onto Him as much as I did growing up, how much more angry would I have been or still be? How much more destructive would my behavior have been? Without Him the healing I know now would not have come. I would not be who I am today. The anger would not have decreased.

Today, it is so difficult for me to get angry anymore. It is not just waiting below the surface, waiting to snap up at any moment in self-defense. I feel how it has gone back down and shrunk, much closer to the way it used to be.

But how could I have lost my passion when I have this miracle to remember every day? I guess that brings me back to my problem of being too visual. I often forget what I do not see. I cannot see Him physically, but I can see the changes He has made in my life and remember them. I know that God wants all of me. Not bits and pieces, but my whole heart.

Please Lord, take all of my heart and don’t give it back. Help me to give You all of me everyday. Every moment of my life. Please don’t ever let me forget Your love or take You for granted. Guide my life in the way that will bring You the most glory. You deserve no less from me. Forgive me for my neglect of You, for my selfishness and misuse of the time You have given me. Make me faithful and continually deepen my gratitude for all Your blessings. Draw me close to You.

I know this is rather long and maybe tedious to read, but I hope and pray that we will not be satisfied with taking our God for granted. Who really wants to settle for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when we have been invited to a tremendous feast with our King?