My Crescent Noon

What we fail to remember when we’re knee deep in the muck of our loneliness is that we can only love another person to the degree that we love ourselves.

And, as I victimized myself and claimed stake in the garden of the unlovables, it was clear only through perfectly crisp retrospection that the amount of love in which I was capable of giving was the smallest amount, because I loved myself only the smallest amount.

It’ll be your story when you decided that, instead of waiting for someone else to love you, you’d just go ahead and love yourself and give yourself everything you wanted.

Believe me, you want the kind of love that doesn’t fill a part of you that needs to be filled by yourself. You don’t want the kind of love that wrongly assures you that the love that can sustain you is given to you by someone else. You don’t want to patch your heart up with the fragments of love you’ve collected across the landscape of your life.

Meeting and letting go of the love of your life doesn’t have to be your life’s single greatest tragedy.

If you let it, it can be your greatest blessing.

After all, some people never get to meet them at all.

“And that was when I knew I lost someone far more valuable than you: myself.

You were never the right person for me, because that person would never make me question the value of the love and loyalty I have to offer. I lost you the second I met you, because you were never mine to have. You didn’t want me because I wanted more. There was nothing I could’ve done to make you see who I was and now that I think about it, I’m glad you didn’t. We weren’t meant to last forever, just for that moment, and that’s the beauty of it.

The coldness of how you left shook me, but your absence empowered me. I understand now that you didn’t like the way my eyes shined when I talked about something that mattered to me – enough, you didn’t like the chemistry between us – enough, you didn’t like how willing I was to like you – enough. And that’s okay, because you were not enough. We were not enough.

You were a toxicity I confused for thrill, but now I can breathe better.”

I got red!

Worship is a weapon. I don’t mean that in a figurative, “ah that’s a nice concept” kind of way. I mean quite literally, when we praise God in song, the enemy cowers. He has to. If God inhabits the praises of His people, there is no place for the enemy. At Hillsong Conference, Pastor Louie Giglio reminded us that we have a great adversary on this planet. He wants the worst for us and lies to us to try to wreck God’s best for our lives. (Well, thanks for the uplifting blog, Mallory.) Oh, hold on. There’s good news! We’re armed. The way we combat our enemy is worship.

When Jehoshaphat went into battle, he didn’t hand Gerard Butler a spear and send him to the front of the line. He didn’t ask Mel Gibson to lead the way. No, instead he said, (paraphrased) “Where’s my choir? Come on, get me some singers.” The Bible says their battle cry was “Give thanks to the Lord. His love endures forever.”

Wow. What if we approached worship that way? What if we replied to the devil’s lies with “Let me just sing you a song.” If you check the score at the end of Jehoshaphat’s battle, you’ll notice it was a shutout. Not because his guys put any points on the board. It actually ended up like a 1st grade soccer game- the other team scored on theirown goal. The Moabites and Ammonites ended up fighting each other, so Jehoshaphat rose victorious without having to raise a sword. That’s what God wants to do for you. He wants to fight for you. In combat, He’ll do the heavy lifting, and you offer an assault of praise. Pastor Giglio put it this way:” When you start singing to the devil, he doesn’t sing along. He moves along.”