I had the most wonderfully unexpected experience while reading a book called "A Slave Across the Street" by Theresa Flores.  It was probably not the best time for me to be reading a book with such graphic detail of the life of an American sex slave, keeping in mind this is a true story. 
     Of course for any who have even the tiniest window of insight into sexual abuse, this would be a challenge to read.  But as I thumbed through the pages I started to feel a bit of sneaking compassion for the abusers in the story.  Of course the things they did were awful, but if we only focus on their actions toward the protagonist, we miss the bigger picture.  These kids (truly high school age boys) were victims themselves to cultural expectations handed down by their families.  The idea that in order to be a man, you must dominate and humiliate a woman.  They believed that role was the only role they had.
      This brought clarity to my own past (though I have never been trafficked or made to suffer anything like this woman).  I started to realize that in my darkest hour, I was acting in a role given to me by someone else.  And the person that gave me that role was acting in a role that someone else gave him.  The twisted chain of victims who become someone elses abuser.  We manipulate because we have been manipulated.  We hate because we have been hated.  We resent because we have been resented. 
     How powerful then is Christ's interruption to this cycle that all people come to know at one point or another.  When Jesus enters the scene he says, "Love for you ARE loved."  "Forgive for you have received forgiveness."  "Comfort out of the comfort that God gives you." 
     I'm convinced this is the only cure.  The only thing to break that chain of abuse and victimization.  When you are victimized, remember that Jesus was abused, and to the point of death.  But HE laid down His life freely so that you could have the power through Him to forgive, and to show compassion to your abuser who is really, just another slave across the street. 
     This doesn't mean you must continue to be a doormat.  Nor does it mean you give in to the title or role you've been given by your abuser.  But it means that you don't have to carry that title.  It means that title, that role holds no power over you, no matter what your abuser tells you.  If you are being taken advantage of in any way seek help, get out!  There are lots of online resources to help you, but here's one- www.rainn.org- the which is the "nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization".  Here is the number for their hotline- 1.800.656.HOPE.
     On their website you can look up any local center all over the U.S. to find a local hotline or place to seek refuge.  There are 21 locations in Michigan alone that have hotlines to call or places to go to find help.  You don't have to suffer this role any longer.  Remember your real name, who you were before this abuse, before this cycle swept you up. Get Help.  Get Out.  And learn with time to see your abusers as fellow victims who have forgotten their own names, and break the chain of abuse by forgiving them with God's help.

Sometimes I play songs in my Kitchen.   At times it's cathartic to perform for my appliances, my kitchen windows and bird curtains.

            The two shall become one.  This was always an assumed miracle in my mind.  To think of two separate lives becoming one life, one schedule, one bank account, one income, one care giver... it is, despite all our attempts, impossible. I have a friend who once confided in me that he no longer believed that two people could love each other for the rest of their lives, and was convinced that marriage was simply a hoax.  They could stay married, but that didn't mean they were in love.  He took the example, as most of us do, of his parents, and his brother, and his friends, and came up empty and broken. 
            I think there is an element of truth to my friend's belief, but I don't think it stops there.  I do think it is humanly impossible to love with unselfish, gentle, considerate love that we find expressed in Corinthians 13, the oh so familiar wedding passage, "love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast...".  Throughout our courtship, I was continually reminded that I could not love James the way I was called to love him unless I received God's love first, and let that overflow into my relationship with him.  And when I did that, it always renewed my feelings for him and made them even stronger.  The Hebrew word "Hesed" is closest to the meaning "the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Lord."  But this word carries an assumption that this kind of love is the Love God has for his people, and can only be shared from person to person if it comes from the Lord Himself.  Like a cup tipped from the faucet, pouring into another cup below it, we pour into each other, only if we are filled. 
            I'm starting to look at this "becoming one" much more as Jesus turning water into wine.  He needs to make a new substance out of us, that we can be changed completely; starting with our inner most parts, our secret places.  He invades, and brings his light to our darkness, so that we may be a light to each other, and beam together with the same light.  The two parts as one whole.  Two sparks with one light.  It doesn't just happen because of a ceremony, and it doesn't just happen because we have sex.  It is only the power of God building us together like one house.  "Unless the lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.  Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." Psalm 127: 1.
           
May you seek and find Hesed, and may He never let you go.
Kelsey

            I've been working on some new songs recently, and no, none of them are ready for performance.  It took all the courage I could muster to play them for my husband... then I cried because they were not nearly as good as I thought they were.  He was completely neutral too, he didn't judge me or tell me they sucked.  There is nothing more sobering than playing a new song your unsure of for ears that are not your own.  I instantly hear mistakes I was oblivious to before, and wish I had kept it to myself. 
            As scary as this process is, it's necessary.  I make my songs work for their survival.  The ideas that work the best stay, the ones that embarrass me  gotta go.  This can feel like killing off one of my own children (please keep in mind I'm not actually a mother, so this comparison may in fact be an exaggeration).  I probably wouldn't kill off one of my own offspring simply because they embarrassed me.  No, I'm sure I wouldn't.  I'm just saying it's tough to let go of ideas that tickled your fancy when they were dreamed up, but fit nowhere in a usable context. 
            I thought of this because I keep seeing people staring at my house as they walk by.  I have a suspicion they're staring at the spider webs that are taking over some of my flowers and bushes.  Maybe they're noticing that our grass is longer than all of our neighbors', or we haven't picked up the twigs that fell from the last storm. 
            Upon the third gawk-er I spied from my living room window this morning I stared writing a song about the spider webs in my garden and the great spiritual analogy it could turn into.  I guess we'll see if it survives.  I'm sure the song will last longer than the webs in my garden.  Don't worry. 

            Why does it always feel more productive to check things off a list than it does to write a song?  I don't know if you've ever attempted to write a song, but many times it involves hours of staring at the same line, or trying out dozens of different words to find the best rhythm, and flow.  The trouble is, this could take days, weeks,  I have songs that were not finished for a couple of years.  Some days (a lot of days) laundry feels more productive.  Some days laundry IS more productive, but that's not the point, I guess. 
            When a song is finished, really finished and it's ready to be performed to a fresh crowd, or just to one other person, there is this feeling that surpasses words.  I know that I've done what I'm here to do, and that obedience is feeding the hearts and minds of people around me (I know I said it surpasses words, but this doesn't even begin to sum it up).  All that work of swapping words and scratching out lines is suddenly worth it's weight in gold (accurate pay grade for a song writer).  And the experiences I needed to go through to write that song, are like spinning straw into gold. 
            Well, today is one of those, "I'd rather be doing laundry" kind of days just so I can feel productive about something since I am not feeling productive about the songs I've working on. 
            May your Monday be filled with productive tasks that make you feel accomplished so that you can get down to the real work of living your life. 

            Occasionally I get hooked on tv shows (don't judge me).  At the beginning of the month it was Lie to Me, a show about deception expert Cal Lightman who has developed a way to interpret microexpressions (tiny involuntary expressions made in the height of raw emotion).  This week, it's been Medium, a show about psychic, Allison Dubois, who aids the district attorney in solving crime, mostly murders, with her special ability of dreaming and various phenominal abilities. 
            This week I watched the series finally of Medium (don't worry, no spoilers here), and decided to do some digging into the story behind the show.  I knew that Allison Dubois was a real person the show was based off of, however, beyond that I had no idea who she was and how she inspired the show.  Apparently she is a psychic who is a serial killer profiler in Pheonix, while somehow finding time to do private readings and tour all over the world due to her recent publicity.  I love the character Allison Dubois, played by Patricia Arquette, but for some reason when I was researching the real Allison, I "sensed" a bit of fakeness.  I don't know... something does not seem right to me and that's all I can say.  Maybe it's because the Patricia plays Allison as a pretty serious woman, who wouldn't know what to do with publicity.  She acts like any sane person would who really does have these dreams and visions, more concerned with the people she is helping than good publicity.  But I found the real Allison Dubois to be astonishingly camera friendly, really claims her role as a media personality, which makes me think that she's more concerned with publicity than helping people.  Maybe it's just the stark difference that turns me off. 
            Getting more curious, today I discovered that Lie to Me is also based off of a real person.  Cal Lightman and the Lightman group is based off of Dr. Paul Ekman and the Ekman group.  Ekman shares in his blog that the show is much more dramatized and succinct than real life, but the science is pretty true to life.  As opposed to Allison Dubois, Paul Ekman seemed MORE believable than Tim Roth's portrayal of Dr. Cal Lightman who is based off of Ekman.  As I watched the videos displaying Dr. Ekman's research, I was more and more convinced that this a reliable practice and that the real life stories are even better than those on the tv series, and that Dr. Ekman is an even more genuine and sincere man than what is portrayed on Lie to Me.   
            What if we put Paul Ekman in a room with Allison Dubois and see if she's lying about the whole thing.  If the show wasn't canceled (sad day), they could bring the real Allison on Lie to Me and try to interrogate her and discover whether or not her gift is real.

            So, yesterday a couple of friends and I went over to Wilcox Park for a free Yoga class.  I don't go for all of the transcendental, one with the earth, worship mother nature stuff, but I do go for low-impact exercise that doesn't make me want to die. 
            I was blessed by this experience, and I hope to do more things like this.  I need it.  I have been in such a transitional phase in my life, getting married, moving away from home, it's bound to clog up the writing juices.  Or at least make one (me) crabby... just ask my husband.  I have been walking around my neighborhood singing (in my head) along with Sara Groves (in my ipod), and it is like a night and day switch.  Hormones, lack of sleep, new environment, whatever the reason, I am feeling the need for physical activity more than ever before.  Those endorphins are like magic!
            Back to being blessed.  During the Yoga class, there was the usual "Mother earth is always beneath you, here to support you..." and I started tuning out and just getting into the workout.  But then... to my surprise, I heard the instructor yell, "Let go of your schedule!  Let go of your expectations for this class!  Let go of the idea that you have to be perfect!  If you fall over you just get back up, there are new beginnings every day." and without warning (there's never warning) I started to cry.  Not sobs... I can control myself a little, but there were tears, and it was nice. 
            I brought the girls home to see my new house, and James made us some mint slushies that were the perfect refreshing drink after a 75min workout.  I was in a much better mood, and it even motivated me to get up early this morning and walk for an hour!  Thank you, Lord, for this encouragement with a side of motivation and mint slushies. 

Cheers,
- K