I've posted about the Tenth Avenue North song "By Your Side" previously (1st By Your Side post) but God has been really laying it on my heart to write again but in a different way. Previously I was more looking at the first verse of the song rather than the chorus. Now the chorus is really stuck in my head... day after day.

CHORUS:
And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Confession: I have been having a terrible time sleeping lately. I know there are many reasons why this could be happening from depression to anxiety to stress to hormones and beyond. It is probably mostly stress but still... it's really hard when you've moved back into insomnia and it won't release you for one full 8-hour peacefulness. I have been fighting it and it keeps winning. One morning the radio woke me up with By Your Side playing and when I couldn't get it out of my head, I found it on YouTube and played it again. Then I turned on Pandora and typed in Tenth Avenue North and it was the first thing that came up. This morning when I turned on Pandora, By Your Side started playing again... and then again tonight, after an incredible Bible Study, I turned on my radio in my car and guess what was playing... yup, By Your Side. This song keeps coming out of nowhere and it's not the first verse, as I said, this time. It's that chorus. The words that stand out are 'please don't fight these hands that are holding you.' His hands are holding me. He has 'hemmed' me in.

This evening in Bible Study we did the Lectio Divina (divine reading) with Psalm 139. I must make another confession, I do not sit still very well nor can I focus on one task at a time normally. The first time she read this passage the words that stood out to me were 'hemmed me in' and 'anxious thoughts'. I started meditating on anxious thoughts. I then heard 'fearfully and wonderfully made' and kept thinking of those three phrases. The last time, I really listened to the whole passage and found myself amazed that God really knew me and knew EVERY day that I had - every miniscule thing that I did. He knew how badly I'd mess up in life and still, He created me. He knew that I would fall away from Him time and time again but STILL created me. He allowed me to be on this earth and now that I really truly see that with honestly open eyes, I want to make sure the rest of my life blesses Him as much as He has allowed me the right to walk this earth.

He is by my side wherever I am. He knows when I get up and when I lay down. He knows my words before I even THINK them. As much as I strive for something great, I can never even understand who He is. I will never 'get it'. He is with me no matter where I am, what I am doing, who I am with, what I am thinking or speaking. He is there. He loves me that much.

One of the women in the study said: "All of us want someone to understand us and to love us... how incredible that He knows us inside and out and still loves us!" He is with us throughout every day, even when we do bad things. It says "If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go to hell, you are there." I don't think I ever thought of that. He is wherever we go. We're told this as children to shame us into not doing anything bad but as we grow older, we realize that it's a comfort not something to be ashamed of. He knows all the things we do and loves us anyway. We can't always say that about ourselves or those who love us. We find out that someone has done bad things and cast judgment on them. We hurt other people and they stop loving us.

This has really shown me that if a God who knows EVERYTHING about us can love us, why... WHY can't we just love other people without judgment, blame, hatred or anger? Why do we feel that we can judge others when the God that is by our sides at all times doesn't judge us? It goes back to removing the plank from our own eye before helping someone else with the sawdust in theirs. Do we have any right to do that when we are just as much to blame for private sins? Nothing is private to God. It's always scared me but now I need to learn that it's really a comfort. He loves us enough to 'hem us in' on all sides. He loves us enough to be with us in hell and sing praises with us in heaven.

He is God. He is God alone. Let's just start being human and let God take care of judgment. Love as He loves and live as He has asked.

Lying in bed reading Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes while 'listening' to her recount a breakfast she had, a black woman, with a German family, German neighbors and a Jew and hearing of her innocent question that started a horrible ending to the meal made me start thinking. I remembered The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the horrendous ending to that and Schindler's List that my father didn't allow us to listen to due to the F-bomb being used too much. I live with a German man who can be the most thoughtful person I know and I realize that so many people have so many prejudice(s?) against those who are not like them. I thank my stars that all the women before me fought for rights so that I might own a business and not be married at almost 29 without people looking at me funny.

This evening, I also watched the movie Doubt about the Catholic priest accused by a nun of being innappropriate with a black 12-year-old. So many dynamics in that movie - gay, black/white, Catholic, nuns, priests, fathers who beat their children, a mother's love, unfounded accusations, trust, disbelief, etc. The fact that the movie is dedicated to the sweet young nun makes you realize that the story is most likely true. The prejudice in that movie was haunting, even between nun and priest. Heartwrenching stuff.

Before reading Ms. Angelou's book this evening, I flipped through In the Grip of Grace by Max Lucado to see if I wanted to read a little deeper and found that I was too tired to get really deep opting for what I thought would be a lighter read. Lucado's words caught my eye before I shut it and stuck with me through my other reading. "What separates us from God is sin." and Paul says: "There is no one who always does what is right, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who looks to God for help. All have turned away. Together, everyone has become useless. There is no one who does anything good; there is not even one." (Romans 3:10-11)

Every single one of us has blown it. We've all done everything wrong. At least we have a faithful God who allows us to come to Him, even when everyone else points their fingers, and He will forgive us. Let me repeat "every single one of us has blown it." I have, you have, we all have. In Doubt, the priest looked at the nun and said "have you never committed a mortal sin?" She starts to get teary and says she has. He said "then we are the same." She disagrees greatly. But it's true! Ms. Angelou recounts the German telling a story about a man who puts a bird in warm poo to keep it alive in the dead of winter, when the bird wakes up from thawing out he starts making noise and a wolf comes by and eats it. The morals ring true: 1. He who puts you in the sh*t is not necessarily your enemy. 2. He who takes you out is not necessarily your friend. 3. Once you find yourself in the sh*t, learn to keep your big mouth shut.

In my beliefs, every sin is equal. A white lie is equal to that of cheating on your spouse. The cheating might hurt another person much more but both must be apologized for and asked of God for forgiveness. Being that all of us have committed sins and caused harm to ourselves and others, we have hurt God more times than we want to know. His pain is not something we physically feel all the time but the burden gets very heavy until we ask for forgiveness. Why is that we feel the need to be the man on the hill judging others for sinning? My pastor just spoke about removing the plank from our own eye before trying to point out the sawdust in anothers.

I have had a really rough few years learning by making mistakes and growing. because of it. Growing is painful. I was told recently that God doesn't allow us to go through things that we won't learn from. He doesn't allow us to make mistakes for no reason. I feel that my mistakes have led me to a place of deep reflection and have given me a quiet sort of peace about where my life will lead from her on out. This doesn't mean that I will not continue daily to make mistakes and hurt Him but at least I know that God is in control, not me. I am only asked to obey Him and to praise Him. He needs my full attention. He is my father, my savior and my comforter. What more could I want?