me without you

there are more tears than words
more grief than tears
at the loss of right intentions
and the motivation to love
because love means sacrifice
so my pain is as real as my selfishness
and my not-letting-go

one hundred per cent

one time i posted this as my facebook status: 100% yours. "yours" meaning God's. minutes after my status post, another friend of mine posted a similar status: 100% Yours too. yes, he opted to capitalize the first letter of the word "yours" to remove any obscurity. I have to admit, it made me laugh. I think that statement had some pretty cool impact because another friend of mine wanted to design a shirt using those words. everybody wants to be 100% huh?

i remember the first time i used that phrase. it was while praying on the stage during a JREV night. i was on my knees and i shouted those words on the microphone. "100% Yours God! we are 100% yours." and just like any prayer or statement we make (especially the ones we utter on the microphone, or before a great public for that matter), it is bound to be tested. for months now, God has been testing that profession of love. and just when i thought i was passing the test and the intensity of the fire is already about to cool down, i found myself mistaken. just yesterday, i realized that at the root of a stubble i've been going through is an un-surrendered right.

oh yes, i am not the kind of gal who will hold back anything from my Jesus. but just when i thought that i was running with 100%, my God exposes me, and shows me that there is something that has been gripping my heart with self-centeredness.

every time i am brought to a place like this one, a place of realization and wooing (being wooed by God), i remember God's words to his beloved people Israel, "your love is like the morning dew, it quickly disappears." how my 100 per cent has leaked out so rapidly is a mystery to me. i have guarded my heart, i have been careful, i have loved crazy. but my heart is ever unequipped to match the rigorous and radical love of a Savior who does not squint even in front of death. and yes, i am satisfied to admit that my heart, every now and then, needs re-calibration and refocusing. daily it needs to offer a sacrifice to keep that fire burning. daily it has to die.

so this is my 100%. a life embracing that my weakness proves his strength. a humbled heart accepting that my unfaithfulness ever proves his. and will that is broken for the sake of surrendering every part until i am truly 100% my Jesus'.

I will waste my life

i am in a really really important season in my life. i hear the Lord's call to pursue the 24-7 house of prayer stronger than ever. it has been quite a pain explaining the burden to those who understand very little the pain attached to carrying such a call. i think, it can be compared to a wife longing for her husband to come back. her husband who has been gone for as long as she can remember her days on earth ever began. or maybe the longing of a mother for her newborn child. or the child for his mother. it is a longing to cling and never let go. and it is as though every day that passes without it's being established here where we live, is another day of separation from a union that is really meant for the now.

i am not pushing for a "house" to be built today or anytime soon, or this year. all i am saying is that, please allow me to love God more by expressing freely this longing for his house of prayer to be built. let me be free to say, that if i only knew or have what it takes to "establish" it now, this very minute, that i will do. that is the kind of burden and intense desire that God is birthing in many others, i believe. until i heard God call me to this ministry, i have been longing day and night for something that i could not define or begin to describe. all i knew was i wanted God and i could not think of any other task that would satisfy me more than ministering worship and prayer in his very house. i could write for an hour or two. i can design or lay out for half a day. but there is only one occupation that i could imagine myself committing my time and life to, the ministry of 24-7 worship and intercession. from the time God spoke to me some 6 years ago, the word and desire has only intensified. everything else in my life points to this call and direction. everything is being invested for this ministry. even my days, i "waste" for the sake of a moment in his court. i simply know that this is the purpose for which i have been set apart and blessed with time in my hands.

this is a fearful thing to confess because i know that not many will comprehend. but there is a need to sound the call. let those who are called hear this sound and invitation. (we are all called to intimacy of course, but not all is called to the ministry of night and day prayer) there are those whom God has marked to spend their days in the house of prayer. some full time, others part time. definitely there will be those who are called to it as a lifetime vocation. those who are called to the paradox of wasting your life for God. the Bridegroom summons you to sing for his coming in lovesick worship and melodies. and He has placed such an intense longing in your spirit to summon others to the bridal call of the Church. rise up, lovesick worshipper, the King awaits the pleasure of hearing your abandoned worship.

morning

She rises from bed earlier than dawn
Her footsteps gentle but heart beating wild
A love not quenched, undaunted by time and waiting
puts on eternity today.

Her robe, radiant than shimmering stones,
pales beside her countenance
Eyes, face, and form steal the stage from the sunrise
as her hair romances with the breeze
Awake and ready before the sun yawned from the horizon
Her invitation has captured the morn.

Burst out sunlight
Shed rays on a banquet being set
The bride has put on the last pieces of her jewelry
The bridegroom is hurrying back from a year's journey
Longing has intensified and ripened through time
Witness this rite that seals together two destinies

Tomorrow she will rise up from bed
hair uncombed, tangled up, but gracefully falling
The scent of first morning

Frailty unclothed, unguarded before him but safe inside him
In love he has secured her uncertainties
He is the risk she has taken. In risk, she has secured his embrace.

Daddy's Last Dance

You were watching me from around the corner
as I clueless-ly peeked into the box wrapped in blue and silver
You sent me a gift with someone else's name on it
Is this a favor your are getting paid for?

You drive me crazy
You love me more than anyone
but now are you are giving me away?
A smile flashes from my eyes
and you are actually pleased
that I was looking into someone else's

You walk behind me
hiding in the sidelines
pretending to be a stranger
just to watch me look around for someone
you could have embraced me
as i twirled in pure excitement
but you stepped aside









And out of the corner of my eye
I see you beaming
from the shady corner
uncovering the face of your very protege

Whose hand is this, holding mine?
you seem to have taught him your ways of holding
Your hand that had once held me tight
now gracefully lets go
The gap we have called waiting
You've sucked away
into your blissful satisfaction
Whose hand is this I'm holding?
It reminds me of yours
Yours that once held me so tight
but now found enough confidence
to let go

dust, universe and love unrequited

the love he demonstrated could not be matched, not even by anything he would ever do; yet it has reaped only a love that had not even come close to how deep his affections are - a love that is it light years in distance from how far his love has gone. in this sense, i still see his love as unrequited.

yet his face is the epiphany of joy every time he gazes at her and her gestures, though they are too small to even be noticed by the universe. but woa! he is bigger than the universe; she is but a speck of dust. you must see how he gazes at her as if she were "the world" to him if he were but man. but then he is bigger than man and the universe. he is God.

his wedding day is near. but the waiting, i think could not be more joyous than painful. waiting is both pain and joy. it is tasting life one day at a time. it is rejoicing that time doesn't and will not stop until eternity comes to welcome the wedding of the Lamb.

is it foolishness to wait? ask him who 'til now is patiently gazing, at her who is still wearing her tattered rags. she is dark yet lovely. but until her wedding day, we have yet to understand a lover's wait's greatest reward.

---

if i may add, there is no one else who understands the pain of unrequited love better than God.