Scones, Coffee, Jesus and Smokes

Today as I Sit in one of my favorite places in Shreveport, there is an enlightenment I feel processing through the Journey I have been on... It's been exhausting, liberating and beautiful. I realized that it all has purpose... Every step we take and every dream, we dream, there are beautiful parts of our lives that foster the identity we hope to one day find..

Several months ago I decided to forsake an identity I once had, I was done with "Christianity", I was done with the rigid bull crap and list of rules that I had set my life around.... Those boundaries hindered my ability to be free and love... I was so angry at God for everything, I put all the blame on His nature and on His demand for "righteousness".... I gave up on Him, I wanted to run from every ounce of all that I ever knew... 

Like Dolald Miller portrays in "Searching for God Knows What", leaving that god, a god that I had figured out was the best thing I could have done. 

I'm still journeying through all of this and trying to see with new eyes & I know the adventure will never be over, for that I am thankful.... But here is one thing that helped me take a few more steps into realizing that God wasn't to blame, his impostors however are the ones I needed to renounce!! 

"The Bible.... It's not a road map to show you the way to live; it's not a list of dos an don'ts; how to and how not to....

It is however a map to show you the character of the one true God! It's a journey of foundational stories that allow you to get to see the faithful one and how He loves: through discipline, obedience, honor, faith, kindness, harsh reality and soo much more!! Don't forsake scripture because you see the rigid lines people create with their expectations for you to live in a culture that's not your own; however you should see scripture as what it is, a story of truth about a faithful God who loves in his own way and chooses to love us within the culture that we live.. He doesn't require us to conform to a generation not our own... I want to choose to Believe this idea and have faith in a creator bigger than myself! Maybe it's crazy to believe in something unseen, but for whatever reason it may be, I'm gonna stand an run with the light of hope in something bigger than myself."

Most of my life I've held scripture as if it were a part of the "Trinity"... Ha sounds crazy, but I bet if you start thinking about it you just may relate.... But now I see scripture as a beautiful colorful Map that shows me a God that I may fear, because he is sooo much bigger than anything I can contain... There is a relevance in being able to read scripture as a love story and see how we were created to Need; created to need a relationship with an Intelligent Being who is more than we can contain..