Isaiah 54:4-6 (Amplified Bible)
4Fear not, for you shall not be ashamed; neither be confounded and depressed, for you shall not be put to shame. For you shall forget the shame of your youth, and you shall not [seriously] remember the reproach of your widowhood any more.
5For your Maker is your Husband--the Lord of hosts is His name--and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; the God of the whole earth He is called.
6For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken, grieved in spirit, and heartsore--even a wife [wooed and won] in youth, when she is [later] refused and scorned, says your God.

Attributes of God from A-Z

Father, You are abounding in love for Your children.
You are beautiful beyond description.
You create in us clean hearts.
Your light is dazzling, blinding.
You are excellent.
You are funny.
You are gracious.
You are holy.
You are indescribable (why do I even try?)
You are just.
You are knowable.
You are love.
You are marvelous, magnificent, magnanimous.
Your mercies are new every morning.
You are outrageous!
You are phenomenal!
You are quite beyond my expections of who I imagine You to be
You are righteous.
You speak truth.
You are unyielding in Your love.
You are victorious.
You are wonderful.
You are exalted above all others.
You are yearning for Your children to come home!
You are zealous in Your love.

Rest

According to Mark Twain, the worst loneliness is not being comfortable with oneself.

I often wonder, sometimes aloud, to my friends, how they can possibly stand being around me for more than two minutes at a time, and why on earth would they possibly want to be my friend? What could they (you, if anybody reads this) possibly see in me? I swear, they must just tolerate me. They're stuck with me.

So, a thought.

Really, I'm projecting these feelings of inadequacy onto my friends. I'm just not comfortable with myself. I don't like myself. Period.

Borrowing from the wisdom of a good friend:
as my long-suffering friends are simply there...willing to sit and simply be with me, very strongly...how much more does our Father desire to just sit with us, to just be there, among us and between us?
And in that being there, loving me silently and persistently, loving me out of my self-hatred, desiring nothing more than to dwell among me, to communicate with me, my spirit to His.

To place my entire ravaged restless heart into His care and keeping. To enter His rest.

London letters

So, I decided to write my first church visit paper on Holy Trinity Brompton, the church I attended in London. Which required me to dig out my London archives, so to speak. Which is, to be perfectly honest, extremely painful. I have all of the maps of all of the galleries we went to on a regular basis. When just picking them up and glancing through them, I can recall almost every step, every scramble to write down the information on the placard, every laugh at something ridiculous, every near tear shed over something excruciatingly beautiful. And then, of course, there are little things that bring great delight to my heart over the sheer silliness of it all. For instance, the Winnie-the-Pooh shop I stumbled across in Canterbury, the Mexican restaurant in Angel Carolyn and I braved over break, and the Tea Rooms some of us gals went to while in Canterbury. Then...my very first paper topic, and advice from Londoners in years past. Then there are the MAG assignments. Then there are concert programs. I even still have a train ticket from our trip to Bath! Also, also, also, the LICC's Summary of Vision & Activities. And then a map of the Imperial War Museum, which contained exhibitions regarding Crimes Against Humanity and The Holocaust. Papers I have neglected to look at. My plane ticket from Newark to London, of course. And, this makes me chuckle: actual menu items at the National Gallery cafe: smoked mackerel pate with apple, chicken liver mousse with roasted garlic, and Potted Old Spot pork with prunes. Blech! All these things bring me great joy in remembering, but also great sadness in knowing I'm not there! I felt oh so alive in London. I don't want to not live and not inhabit my time wisely here in Houghton, but I miss it oh so much. Oh so much.
I'm heart sick for the city. I realize this sounds a bit pathetic, sentimental, and perhaps like an idealization of London, but I swear that's not the case. It was not all bliss and beauty. It was flat out hard. And of course, I can't forget being pickpocketed, and my computer dying the Sunday before a paper was due.

From a relatively recent journal entry:

So what, in fact, was it that made me feel so alive in London? Was it the exchange of ideas, or the just right foggy chill? Was it the people I suffered and rejoiced alongside with? Was it the interaction with the professors, wells of brilliance, and You--spouting the wisdom of this world you deem as foolishness, yet which still defines the West today, and subconsciously works its way into us? Was it You? Learning what it is to depend on You much more radically than I think I had before? Seeing Your very active presence in the small percentage of British/international Christians? Seeing You as much bigger than I had conceived before? Being among so many people, so many beautiful reflections of You--both in number and ethnicity and language? Was it the romance of the whole thing? Was it the sheer impossibility and blessing of the whole thing? the sense of connectedness to Western history? the aesthetic architectural beauty of the city?

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

Joshua Abraham Heschel

Snow...

What could this snow mean? Perhaps it means nothing more than just that. Winter has come a bit early this year. I feel asleep last night at around 6 o' clock. It was just supposed to be a nap before dinner. But apparently, my body (or mind--or spirit) really needed that rest. I just woke up from this extended sleep, and saw some white resting casually upon the still-orange deciduous leaves, looked out the window and saw the picnic table below lambein covered in a perfect sheet of snow. What could this mean? Could this mean that I've begun or am in the process of being purified? And that in this purification, there will be a dark night of the soul, so to speak? And that afterwards, wholly unexpected, will come untouched beauty? not cold or rigid beauty--not some beauty that I've created? But beauty falling out of the sky--or, in this case, rushing into me slowly, steadily, chilling away any unruly and excess heat or passion--rushing into me like the Spirit, like the wind, like the snowflakes carried upon the wind? Like the patterns of snowflakes we're never quite allowed to see, except under the crucial examination of a microscope.

St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul

He strips their faculties, affections and feelings, both spiritual and sensual, both outward and inward, leaving the understanding dark, the will dry, the memory empty and the affections in the deepest affliction, bitterness and constraint, taking from the soul the pleasure and experience of spiritual blessings which it had aforetime, in order to make of this privation one of the principles which are requisite in the spirit so that there may be introduced into it and united with it the spiritual form of the spirit, which the union of love.