Here I Am

Another music video :) hope you enjoy share and stuff if you do...

I Got Fired!

Re: Science Mike

I guess I talk too much... but Science Mike is writing a book and he asked for help from his fans and facebook didn't like my comment so I am putting it on here in hopes that it will reach him,  so here goes... he asked us to reply to him with the following:

1. A time you felt like God answered your prayer.

There was a time, probably three years ago now, my mom had a last minute procedure that needed to be done it was supposed to be an ambulatory type surgery, we all expected her to go home later that day. First, (I have no license) it was hard for me to find someone to take her to the hospital because she wasn’t supposed to drive for two weeks after the surgery. Out of a whim we ran into a friend who was asking how we were and she offered to drive us to the hospital for the, it was a prayer in the back of my mind that we find help… later after the surgery Mom had a terrible reaction to the anesthesia, turns out she is probably allergic or just has a bad time with it, seems she had a bad reaction when I was a toddler or new born back in Cayman Islands so there was no medical history to point back to it (she told me about it after the surgery, saying something like “Oh yeah last time I had anesthesia I was throwing up”) needless to say I had no idea about this bad reaction or the danger of it, and since the doctors in Cayman Islands didn’t seem to communicate that to Mom… well let me tell you this way…

I got called back to the recovery area before she was fully conscious, the nurse said Mom was screaming in pain. She was simply praying in English (her second language) and the nurse didn’t understand her or whatever. I am not sure if it was the combination of like three pain pills the nurse gave her and the anesthesia but Mom kept falling asleep and when she would fall asleep she would stop breathing, her BP (which she had hypertension) would drop and her heart would almost stop completely. I was alone, with my sibling refusing to answer the phone (or couldn’t cause of work in my mind it was different) and I had no one to turn to… Mom was steps away from death and I wasn’t ready to lose her. Who is ever ready to lose a parent, right? But Mom is young and had so much more wisdom and beauty to offer the world. Anyway, I prayed because it was all I knew to do… soon enough Mom pulled through just fine and had barely any pain in healing from the surgery. So I think that was answered prayer.

2. A time you felt like God did not answer your prayer.

Oh, this is hard, and I guess more personal…? Maybe I don’t wanna answer this one, ha ha… Um, well, maybe something smaller, I prayed many times for my dad to stop smoking, especially after he got emphysema, but I am pretty sure he is still a smoker. I never hear from him now so it kinda became a pointless prayer and I stopped asking God to lead him away from tobacco.

3. A time prayer made you feel closer to God.

So… I have spent years feeling like an odd duck, when I was younger and knew God but had no “community” I felt like I couldn’t understand people in or out the church. Later I ended up joining a church and felt like no one understood a lot of things about me and the things I liked making… Soon enough I was going from church to church then I was really close to losing my faith, with so many things that didn’t add up, to so many people letting me down, misunderstanding me, and then not fitting in with people who don’t care about God, yet understanding a lot of their world… I don’t even know how to explain it now really… but I really longer for clarity, for security in my identity, all of it not in fragments. I longed for a home. I just wanted to abide in Christ, and have Him abide in me. Artists understood me as an artist, Christians as a Christ-follower trying to be a “little Christ”, intellectuals as a person in search of answers, and being okay with not knowing all, or having any clear but definition to what I “believe” except what I have witnessed and that knowing only part of what I think God is, is okay, and finding Him in everything… anyway… I felt misunderstood and unwanted, wandering in an endless sea, with no anchor except that I believe. I believe God is…

By some sort of chance, researching music and how music is not “worship” and my deep frustration and isolation because of what I see as a lack of community for people who think like me, I was checking up on Gungor with no internet access of my own and I ran into The Liturgist, a blog or something explaining who the Liturgists were and why it all came about. A little time passed, (earlier this year I suppose) and I was at my wits end, ready to turn away from everything I loved and believed. Suddenly I had internet access and remembered the Liturgists and now there was a pod cast and I listened to every episode all summer. Suddenly my heart found its home again, suddenly a constant conversation with, who I call God, what I consider prayer, made sense. Suddenly my whole life started making sense again, and I found Him again, listening to strangers (who now feel closer and more tangible than many in my physical life), suddenly the body of Christ and everything I have known Him to be made sense again, and I wept in my cubicle listening to a simple repetition of “My God loves me… My God loves me… My God loves me…” Suddenly, my prayer for community led me to find His feet again, and everything that didn’t make sense in my faith was wiped away.

4. Any combination of the above.

The very first time I spoke to God was when I was a teen or child or somewhere in between maybe twelve, thirteen…? I was listening to a song by Jaci Velasquez called Speak for me and the words “Speak for me this my plea. Say the words I can't express. Sing for me a heavenly melody that the people will be blessed, speak for me” hit me somehow, deeply a way I could never explain then but later I would come to understand as the presence of God, or what I like to call His presence. Because of all the pain and hurt I had seen and learned about in the world, then, even as a child, I asked this of Him “in my heart.” I wanted my words to bring life to others, I wanted my life to bring about love and joy and peace to those around me, as much as possible, knowing somehow I would fail but to do my utmost best and try my hardest to so do… So I asked for that without even knowing what I was asking. I suppose it was like a wish at the pit of my psyche, at the very back of my mind and I never thought about it again… Within two years I was writing stories, songs and poetry just out of the things I was learning in school and seemed to love to do and soon enough it was all I could think about. I would go to bed thinking of my stories, come home from school rush through my homework to write the next scene, sing a melody over and over and over in the shower or wherever else I was alone until I could write down the words to remember it forever. Soon enough the drawings I did for just fun became another way of communication, another way to give life to others, but I didn’t know it then, or call it that. It’s been whatever amount of years since then (I am 31 now) and really, that is all I know to do that I can say are my “talents” and somehow I have grown to be a person that hears many tell her “you have a big heart,” so I feel like (even as this feels so prideful to say) God taught me much about love, and giving love and particularly communicating about love and that is how I feel I best give love to others, so I think it was answered, in a very long and roundabout way. Now I just got fired and have no way to feed my family (my mother and I) so I am freaking out, but I have a lot of time to invest in these things that I love that I asked for years ago, and I think kinda molded my mind to SUCK at normal jobs, so I became what I asked for, even despite what that means, but I did ask multiple times for God to help me provide for my family and being less than three weeks away from probably being homeless isn’t very much looking like answered prayer… however, answers come in many forms and not always the way we expect them to, so I am not discouraged, just scared out of my mind. Hope this helps, sorry I am so long winded.