Redemption

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found,

I was blind, but now I see.

I see because of You.

You give me the clarity.

You give me understanding, 

and You never give me reprimanding. 

There’s a difference.

Your sweetness convicts my spirit,

You talk to me in the perfect way, the way you know I’ll hear it. 

Yeah, I used to be blind.

I used to hate myself, finding my worth in straight A’s and people’s satisfaction rates. 

I used to be hopeless, 

a girl who’s life was simply up to chance

cos what else was there?

I never gave God a second glance. 

I was beyond lost and clueless

clueless about how much I was hurting,

clueless that there was a God burning with passion for me,

clueless that life didn’t have to be the way everybody made it out to be. 

You see, when the masses are lost together,

lost camouflages. 

The truth gets masked by many birds of the same feathers. 

Ain’t nobody perfect, but when you lose yourself when the music blares

and you latch on to whoever looks like they equally don’t care, 

or you shoot up to bypass pain’s roots

which’ll only bear endless rotten fruit, 

there’s a glaring indicator of a life pining in lostness

attempting to pacify a state unknown

because the pain is too hard to consciously own. 

But, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found,

was blind but now I see.

Due to life circumstances,

a life I wished would put me out of my misery,

I woke up and realized God was waiting for me.

He was waiting for me to acknowledge His existence,

to abandon my earthly lostness 

to be eternally lost in His awesomeness. 

He made Psalm 18 my life story,

He overrode my broken heart with His glory. 

He overtook my pain,

He invaded my earthly plans, my selfish hopes, my empty dreams,

and cleansed me.

He took on my sorrows,

He took on the pain that defined my crippled state.

I cast my cares upon Him,

and He morphed my grim reality into

a reality nearly unreal,

comprised of an obnoxiously happy girl, overflowing with zeal

experiencing His love like it was for the first time,

every time.

A girl who can’t stop grinning, can’t stop singing, 

can’t stop from looking upwards

to thank the One who listened to her incessant hateful rants,

spewing words of bitterness for prayers she thought had gone without grant,

but picked her up anyway,

and gave her a life transplant.  

All it takes is willingness.

The ability to open your ears, open your eyes,

and open your heart,

to the possibility that maybe life’s not all about smarts and how many ladders

we can climb to prove our worth to a world filled with disaster and the personality of an adder.

Life humbled me,

I came before His throne with nothing left that could possibly crumble a life already in rubble,

All I did was cry out to a God I’d never met, with Type I desperation my heart condition 

and

a raw prayer for a life saver. 

The instant I repented for goin’ along with ways certainly wretched

The instant I voiced a desire for a King

He swooped in,

riding on the clouds,

picked His daughter up

and endlessly gave the refuge of His wings. 

He didn’t tip toe in.

He radically tore down my walls,

He destroyed the residence of the enemy inside of me,

and He did what no man could do,

He physically healed my dying body. 

That’s the power of the One living God. 

The world dumbs Him down to some guy who died thousands of years ago,

if they even decide to declare His existence to be more than a mythical flow. 

No. It’s not true. It’s never been true. 

If He didn’t exist,

neither would I.

Don’t tell me my God don’t exist, that we’re alone in this world

my life screams that God pleads with His children

He stands with arms wide open,

waiting for us to realize we’re broken.

He is a righteous God, 

a God biting at the bit 

waiting for us to forfeit our lame lives

so He can bring the monumental shift. 

So though the world is deaf to You, my God, I will never forget what You 

so generously bestowed upon Your daughter,

I can’t ever turn my back,

I can’t ever even turn my head to another

when I know You and how You captivate me with wonder.

Make my life a ballad to Your being, 

I’d ask You to make my life a daily testament to Your existence,

except oops, You already did that business that first time

I requested forgiveness.

Bottom line, I live every breath to glorify the name of the One True King,

to praise the One who restored me, to be living proof of HIS glory, not my glory, and 

to testify to a world in desperate need of His-story.

So give Him a chance.

He loves you more than anything,

You’re the apple of His eye,

He loves you completely,

individually, as if there was no other.

He yearns for you to acknowledge Him

He yearns to hear your voice

He yearns for you to realize

the ploys against you

and consequently ditch this world’s rat race

in favor of seeking His face, that face of Amazing Grace. 

Copyright 2011 ALL rights reserved Madeline K. Sarad

"In the Midst of Winter, I Finally Learned that There Was in Me an Invincible Summer" - Albert Camus

I'm only eighteen, but I feel that my life experiences caused me to grow up quickly and taught me more about life than most people learn in a lifetime. If you know me, (or even if you don't, here's a tidbit about me) you know that I'm really open about my life and am never opposed to sharing about the things that have occurred in my life - the things, however terrible or painful, that have made me a new being, that have shown me just how crappy circumstances can get so I can better appreciate every beautiful moment that God blesses me with. 


With that being said, I'm going to be honest about my life in this post, and in every post and every word that I ever say in the future. Recently, I've been going through one of the roughest seasons I've ever endured. Circumstances have been swirling around me, hurtful words spoken from the mouths of loved ones have tried to pierce me, and I have been stripped of all flotation devices other than my beloved Bible. It's been a mess lately. BUT GOD! Out of ashes arises beauty, the existence of current tough circumstances guarantees future joy, breakthroughs, and success, and it is in these hard times, whatever they may be, that God can shape us into who He wants us to be, into sons and daughters who's character is God's character, and into beings who know our Creator in a deeper way. 


What have I learned? I'd like to focus on just one area for now. Abuse. I feel like the word "abuse" can get thrown around freely, and people may not even recognize when they're being abused anymore. Does someone make you feel crappy about yourself on a regular basis? Does someone constantly criticize or ridicule you? Does someone hit you, beat you up emotionally, mentally, or physically, and then return to you for forgiveness? Feeling terrible about yourself isn't normal. Hating life isn't normal. Fearing for your safety isn't normal. Basking in self-condemnation and self-hatred isn't normal. In my life, a person who God created to love me, to protect me, and to support me, ended up being a person who spoke words of destruction over me, who could do nothing but hurt me, a person who knew no other way than the path of abuse, and a person who thought that loving someone meant hurting them in every way of the word. 


I have realized that there is nothing in this world worth the pain that abuse brings. Regardless of who the abuser is, there is never a justification for inflicting pain upon another. I've heard cultural excuses such as "this is how we do it in our culture, get used to it" and claims of the normalcy of abuse. No excuse will ever make abuse normal, and no excuse will ever validate abuse. I have also learned that no matter what has been done, forgiveness is key. Sometimes there may be a voice in our minds justifying and reasoning with us to condone holding bitterness and unforgiveness, but there will never be a circumstance that gives us the right to hold resentment towards another. However, forgiveness does NOT mean that we must repeatedly sign up for abuse in the name of forgiving the abuser. 


Life circumstances can kick you to the end of the rope, but that's where you usually find God's presence screaming out to you. It's where you begin to realize you are a priceless jewel who must rebuke abuse, who must consciously decide not to do to posterity what was done to you, and who must embrace the realization that God loves you, you should love you, and anyone else, ANYONE, who does not contribute to your life in a healthy way is perhaps not a person a relationship should be established with. Love yourself. That's what it comes down to. When I loved and respected myself enough to realize that I didn't need to depend on man to validate me or to continue on the merry-go-round of abuse, I was liberated. Find your worth in God, not man. 


Sometimes we have crappy earthly representations that lead us to view God in an inaccurate way, as if He's a judge poised and ready to strike us down with lightning and swinging a gavel 24/7. God's love doesn't hurt. God's love isn't abusive. God IS love. People in our lives should be people with hearts after the heart of God, with a yearning to love like God does. That doesn't mean we won't make mistakes. We  can't expect perfection out of our fellow man. But, we know what isn't right. We know that if a relationship hurts, if we are constantly emotionally or physically wounded, it probably isn't a healthy relationship that God wants us to be in. 


Think about it. We must take inventory of our lives. Do we have meaningful, loving relationships with people? Or are there people just floundering around, existing, but we don't really know why they are in our lives? Are there people who constantly bring strife, destruction, and pain? 


Sometimes, rough seasons in life can straight up suck. We don't want to be stretched, sometimes it's just easier and comfier to stay where we are. Let's use the tougher times to our advantage. Learn from them. Open your eyes -learn from the current circumstances to create better circumstances. Never compromise your wellbeing, and never settle for relationships riddled with abuse.  


http://www.fathersloveletter.com

Maddy