My last post was 6 years ago, before I was actually married.
I write this now, 5.5 years into my incredible marriage, to a man who is far beyond all that I could have ever imagined, hoped for, expected or prayed for.
And in this juncture of our journey, we find ourselves in mystery.
Waiting on a promise, praying for clarity, hoping for strength.
New writing here from now on;
https://lettersfornathanael.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Monday, May 13, 2013
Fear
My greatest weakness is fear.
Fear
It pervades everything. It pervades the way I talk, the depth of my breathing, the speed in which I reply to emails, the shallow nature of my sleep, the brightness of the night light with which I sleep.
It pervades my underlying anger, sadness, confusion, doubt.
Fear
It feeds my worry, my anxiety. Fattening it up, fulfilling its very destructive nature.
Fear
It pushes me further and further from the very things I want. It's the grip with which I clench those I love, the nature in which I check my phone messages every few minutes, the frequency of checking my inbox.
Fear
Makes my planner, my inbox, my to-do-list, my loved ones, my job = God
Fear
Takes all that should be in its place, and makes it secondary.
It's fear that pushes me to be the opposite of the person I want to be. It's fear. Fear FEar FEAr FEAR
Only a God can set me free. Because only PERFECT love drives out fear.
Isn't it interesting, that fear has to be driven out? Like it has to be chased out. As if to say, that wherever it lay, fear is comfortable, at home, made a neat little place for itself.
As if to say, fear is relentless, constantly trying to make its home in relationships, work places, callings, ministries.
But I can't drive it out alone. I'm not meant to shoo it way like some incessant fly.
It must be OVERCOME with love. Perfect love. A love that pervades so deeply that it changes me from the inside out.
A love that grounds me, RESTORES my identity, my belonging, my rest.
RESTORATION
I pray Lord Jesus that you would restore in a way only a God can restore. In the ways fear has stolen, has caused loss beyond repair, I pray that you, the God of abundance would restore beyond compare so that the robbery would no longer reign.
All I know and All I have ever wanted is to be restored.
Fear
It pervades everything. It pervades the way I talk, the depth of my breathing, the speed in which I reply to emails, the shallow nature of my sleep, the brightness of the night light with which I sleep.
It pervades my underlying anger, sadness, confusion, doubt.
Fear
It feeds my worry, my anxiety. Fattening it up, fulfilling its very destructive nature.
Fear
It pushes me further and further from the very things I want. It's the grip with which I clench those I love, the nature in which I check my phone messages every few minutes, the frequency of checking my inbox.
Fear
Makes my planner, my inbox, my to-do-list, my loved ones, my job = God
Fear
Takes all that should be in its place, and makes it secondary.
It's fear that pushes me to be the opposite of the person I want to be. It's fear. Fear FEar FEAr FEAR
Only a God can set me free. Because only PERFECT love drives out fear.
Isn't it interesting, that fear has to be driven out? Like it has to be chased out. As if to say, that wherever it lay, fear is comfortable, at home, made a neat little place for itself.
As if to say, fear is relentless, constantly trying to make its home in relationships, work places, callings, ministries.
But I can't drive it out alone. I'm not meant to shoo it way like some incessant fly.
It must be OVERCOME with love. Perfect love. A love that pervades so deeply that it changes me from the inside out.
A love that grounds me, RESTORES my identity, my belonging, my rest.
RESTORATION
I pray Lord Jesus that you would restore in a way only a God can restore. In the ways fear has stolen, has caused loss beyond repair, I pray that you, the God of abundance would restore beyond compare so that the robbery would no longer reign.
All I know and All I have ever wanted is to be restored.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Beautiful, true, incredible words...
A Poem by Rachel McKibbens (shared with me by a dear friend)
"To my daughters, I need to say:
Go with the one who loves you biblically.
The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck.
Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle,
the way old grief is gentle.
Love the love that is messy in all its too much,
the body that rides best your body, whose mouth
saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips
whose tongue translates the rock language
of all your elegant scars, whose skin triggers
your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.
Go with the one who resembles most your father.
Not the father you can point out on a map, but the father
who is here. Is your home. Is the key to your front door.
Know that your first love will only be the first.
And the second and third and even fourth
will unprepare you for the most important:
The Blessed. The Beast. The Last love.
Which is, of course, the most terrifying kind.
Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us?
Can reveal to us our true heart’s end and its thirty years
spent in poverty? Can mimic the sound of our birdthroated mothers,
replicate the warmth of our brothers’ tempers?
Can pull us out of ourselves until we are no longer sisters
or daughters or sword swallowers but women.
Who give. And lead. And take and want
and want
and want
and want
because there is no shame in wanting.
And you will hear yourself say:
Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you
new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours.
And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you
and tuck them deep inside myself until they are ready
to be the children of such a royal and staggering love.
Or you will say: Last Love,
I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless,
have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself
at the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet.
Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you.
Let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end.
Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you.
Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you.
Let the wrong beds find me if it brings me to you.
Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you.
Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you.
Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you.
Last love, I let other men borrow your children. Forgive me.
Last love, I vowed my heart to another. Forgive me.
Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room
and come out empty. Forgive me.
Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me.
Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me.
Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me.
Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me.
Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen.
Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen.
Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.
I am all that is left.
Amen."
A.R.R., you are all of this to me. My Last Love.
"To my daughters, I need to say:
Go with the one who loves you biblically.
The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck.
Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle,
the way old grief is gentle.
Love the love that is messy in all its too much,
the body that rides best your body, whose mouth
saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips
whose tongue translates the rock language
of all your elegant scars, whose skin triggers
your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.
Go with the one who resembles most your father.
Not the father you can point out on a map, but the father
who is here. Is your home. Is the key to your front door.
Know that your first love will only be the first.
And the second and third and even fourth
will unprepare you for the most important:
The Blessed. The Beast. The Last love.
Which is, of course, the most terrifying kind.
Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us?
Can reveal to us our true heart’s end and its thirty years
spent in poverty? Can mimic the sound of our birdthroated mothers,
replicate the warmth of our brothers’ tempers?
Can pull us out of ourselves until we are no longer sisters
or daughters or sword swallowers but women.
Who give. And lead. And take and want
and want
and want
and want
because there is no shame in wanting.
And you will hear yourself say:
Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you
new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours.
And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you
and tuck them deep inside myself until they are ready
to be the children of such a royal and staggering love.
Or you will say: Last Love,
I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless,
have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself
at the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet.
Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you.
Let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end.
Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you.
Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you.
Let the wrong beds find me if it brings me to you.
Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you.
Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you.
Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you.
Last love, I let other men borrow your children. Forgive me.
Last love, I vowed my heart to another. Forgive me.
Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room
and come out empty. Forgive me.
Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me.
Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me.
Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me.
Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me.
Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen.
Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen.
Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.
I am all that is left.
Amen."
A.R.R., you are all of this to me. My Last Love.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The answer
In 4 days, I will have been engaged for 1 month. For some reason, it feels much much longer.
It's hard to fully express what it's been like to be engaged so I thought maybe I'll try to blog about it. Who knows? Maybe this way all that my heart is feeling will be expressed in a manner that will ultimately free me to live even more fully in this new "state" of my life.
I look down at my perfect ring and think, finally, what I've always wanted. I have it. He's in my life. He loves me and wants to marry me. I love him and want to marry him.
But the truth is, it's hard. Being in a committed, engaged, loving, respectful relationship leading to marriage is a full-time job.
It's hard because inherently within me, etched in my bones and in the recesses of my soul, I'm so very broken. I'm so scared. And I don't fully trust anyone. Not even myself some times.
It's hard because in this man, my other half, the man whom in 8 months I will publicly vow to spend eternity with, this man is beautiful inside and out. He's generous, loving, faithful, patient. So very patient. But he's not the answer.
He's not the answer to that burning question that defines almost every hour of my existence, "Will he stop loving me? He's not the answer to the fear that rises with every beat of my heart, "Will he change?"
He is not the answer. He can do any amount of wonderful things. Shower me with gifts, allow me to yell and be dramatic, openly flog him with my type A, anal, control freak personality. And he does, with grace and humility, he loves me. It's surreal still really. The way he knows how to love me so well, having known me only 6 months out of my 28 years on earth.
And yet, these amazing gestures still aren't the answer. He is simply not enough to still the battle that rages in my thoughts, the memories of my past, the fear that too often binds me.
I need something so much bigger. A Love so powerful that it transcends itself. Transcends me and even transcends the lover.
What I am realizing as an engaged woman learning to love outside herself is this: I need God more than ever. I need God to love me and teach me how to love in a way that frees me and the object of my love to be better and run faster after the purposes God has on our lives - individually and as a couple.
What I am learning is that I inherently am selfish. Self-centered. Want my needs to be met above his. And it is only through active intercession that God brings me to a higher place, to a place where I can treat and love this man, my future husband, with the respect and love he deserves in every moment. Even when he hasn't met my needs or expectations.
See, the relationship is not the answer. It's the next season in the story of my life. The next level in the video game. Two instead one. But the old battles remain. The inherent need for the love of a Father, a Lover, a God REMAINS the same, if not increased.
And see the great thing is this: this is what gives me permission to continue. Is that in every instance, this relationship, this partnership, draws me more fully and intimately to the heart of the only Man that can ever fully love me and care for me beyond every darkness and crack in my being.
The most excellent of men. Psalm 45.
Yes, my earthly man, is the best and most amazing thing that has ever happened to me on this planet.
But he's not the answer.
His place will always and forever be secondary, to the Man I have loved while I was being knit in my mother's womb.
And I know that ultimately it is this Love for my Maker and His love for me that brought my earthly husband and I together, that allowed him to fall in love with me, and is what will sustain us through thick and thin. Through the many unanswered prayers, the misunderstandings, and the ultimate realization that we will NEVER be eachother's answer.
Only Him.
Only Him.
It's hard to fully express what it's been like to be engaged so I thought maybe I'll try to blog about it. Who knows? Maybe this way all that my heart is feeling will be expressed in a manner that will ultimately free me to live even more fully in this new "state" of my life.
I look down at my perfect ring and think, finally, what I've always wanted. I have it. He's in my life. He loves me and wants to marry me. I love him and want to marry him.
But the truth is, it's hard. Being in a committed, engaged, loving, respectful relationship leading to marriage is a full-time job.
It's hard because inherently within me, etched in my bones and in the recesses of my soul, I'm so very broken. I'm so scared. And I don't fully trust anyone. Not even myself some times.
It's hard because in this man, my other half, the man whom in 8 months I will publicly vow to spend eternity with, this man is beautiful inside and out. He's generous, loving, faithful, patient. So very patient. But he's not the answer.
He's not the answer to that burning question that defines almost every hour of my existence, "Will he stop loving me? He's not the answer to the fear that rises with every beat of my heart, "Will he change?"
He is not the answer. He can do any amount of wonderful things. Shower me with gifts, allow me to yell and be dramatic, openly flog him with my type A, anal, control freak personality. And he does, with grace and humility, he loves me. It's surreal still really. The way he knows how to love me so well, having known me only 6 months out of my 28 years on earth.
And yet, these amazing gestures still aren't the answer. He is simply not enough to still the battle that rages in my thoughts, the memories of my past, the fear that too often binds me.
I need something so much bigger. A Love so powerful that it transcends itself. Transcends me and even transcends the lover.
What I am realizing as an engaged woman learning to love outside herself is this: I need God more than ever. I need God to love me and teach me how to love in a way that frees me and the object of my love to be better and run faster after the purposes God has on our lives - individually and as a couple.
What I am learning is that I inherently am selfish. Self-centered. Want my needs to be met above his. And it is only through active intercession that God brings me to a higher place, to a place where I can treat and love this man, my future husband, with the respect and love he deserves in every moment. Even when he hasn't met my needs or expectations.
See, the relationship is not the answer. It's the next season in the story of my life. The next level in the video game. Two instead one. But the old battles remain. The inherent need for the love of a Father, a Lover, a God REMAINS the same, if not increased.
And see the great thing is this: this is what gives me permission to continue. Is that in every instance, this relationship, this partnership, draws me more fully and intimately to the heart of the only Man that can ever fully love me and care for me beyond every darkness and crack in my being.
The most excellent of men. Psalm 45.
Yes, my earthly man, is the best and most amazing thing that has ever happened to me on this planet.
But he's not the answer.
His place will always and forever be secondary, to the Man I have loved while I was being knit in my mother's womb.
And I know that ultimately it is this Love for my Maker and His love for me that brought my earthly husband and I together, that allowed him to fall in love with me, and is what will sustain us through thick and thin. Through the many unanswered prayers, the misunderstandings, and the ultimate realization that we will NEVER be eachother's answer.
Only Him.
Only Him.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
No longer one
It's still so very surreal to me that exactly two weeks ago, the most amazing man I've ever known got down on one knee and asked my permission to spend the rest of my life with him.
I had dreamt of that specific moment for years, since I was a child really. The look on his face, the time of day, the words he would say, my reaction, the ring.
And now looking back, the truth is,
It was more than I had ever dreamed.
It was more because it was REAL. It REALLY happened. Sometimes I have to look at pictures to convince myself it wasn't just another dream.
In that moment on March 1, 2013 at 5:58pm, as the sun was setting across Malibu Beach, I stood before this man, my fourth finger no longer empty, and thought to myself, could it be true? That after everything I have experienced and everything I have seen, God's grace has brought me to this very place?
Where a man wants to spend his life with me. Join his heart with mine. Call me family.
The word love doesn't fully encompass all I feel because it's simply so much more than that.
It's redemption.
It's grace.
When I pray and thank God for this moment and the future I have with this man, "thank you," just simply isn't enough.
And frankly, I'm still grasping the full truth and depth of this gift. But I guess that's ok. I have the rest of my life to experience this gift.
And to this man, my other half, the man that no longer makes me one, but has made me more:
I love you truly and deeply and always will.
I had dreamt of that specific moment for years, since I was a child really. The look on his face, the time of day, the words he would say, my reaction, the ring.
And now looking back, the truth is,
It was more than I had ever dreamed.
It was more because it was REAL. It REALLY happened. Sometimes I have to look at pictures to convince myself it wasn't just another dream.
In that moment on March 1, 2013 at 5:58pm, as the sun was setting across Malibu Beach, I stood before this man, my fourth finger no longer empty, and thought to myself, could it be true? That after everything I have experienced and everything I have seen, God's grace has brought me to this very place?
Where a man wants to spend his life with me. Join his heart with mine. Call me family.
The word love doesn't fully encompass all I feel because it's simply so much more than that.
It's redemption.
It's grace.
When I pray and thank God for this moment and the future I have with this man, "thank you," just simply isn't enough.
And frankly, I'm still grasping the full truth and depth of this gift. But I guess that's ok. I have the rest of my life to experience this gift.
And to this man, my other half, the man that no longer makes me one, but has made me more:
I love you truly and deeply and always will.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Overcame
There's a God, in whose name, all your fears are swept away.
There is a God, through whom, every unanswered prayer, every disappointment, every broken heart is mended.
Every hurt you endured, every insecurity that ate away at you, every betrayal you felt,
There is a God who died and rose again just for you. Just for that specific pain.
There is a God in whom there is no condemnation, no punishment. But acceptance, hope, life.
There is a God in which all you have faced is overcome. Ever defeat, every loss, every heartache, every wound...healed, renewed, transformed.
Daughter, son, cry no more. You have been healed. Every tear you have cried, He has cried with you. He has felt the sting with you. He has struck the ground with you no matter the futile outcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
Take heart, lift your head daughter. Rise up, son. You shall fear no more. Shame shall no longer be your cloak, desolate shall no longer be your name.
You have been renewed, redeemed, ransomed.
He loves you....He loves you.
There is a God, through whom, every unanswered prayer, every disappointment, every broken heart is mended.
Every hurt you endured, every insecurity that ate away at you, every betrayal you felt,
There is a God who died and rose again just for you. Just for that specific pain.
There is a God in whom there is no condemnation, no punishment. But acceptance, hope, life.
There is a God in which all you have faced is overcome. Ever defeat, every loss, every heartache, every wound...healed, renewed, transformed.
Daughter, son, cry no more. You have been healed. Every tear you have cried, He has cried with you. He has felt the sting with you. He has struck the ground with you no matter the futile outcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
He has overcome.
Take heart, lift your head daughter. Rise up, son. You shall fear no more. Shame shall no longer be your cloak, desolate shall no longer be your name.
You have been renewed, redeemed, ransomed.
He loves you....He loves you.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Because God is just this faithful
BOARD OF REGISTERED NURSING
| Licensee Name: | FERNANDO SHANNON MELANIA |
| License Type: | Nurse Practitioner |
| License Number: | 22760 |
| License Status: | ACTIVE Definition |
| Expiration Date: | December 31, 2014 |
| Issue Date: | January 28, 2013 |
| County: | LOS ANGELES |
| Actions: | No |
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