God Breath Days

New Jersey gets a lot of flack from everyone; my husband calls it the armpit of the United States. So there it is, the place where I was most influenced and most effected, for better or worse. I remember a perfect day from my childhood, and even though I would not say there were few of these perfect, flawless days, I wonder sometimes if I fused several of them together in my mind, making the day brighter, longer, happier than it was actually. It was to be the first of what I like to call my God breath days. I have lived in four states on the east coast and have visited half a dozen more. There are some days even moments which come close to this atmospheric anomaly of which I write, but none have matched it. Perhaps because I experienced them in my youth, while fresh and free from the harness of practised, purposed sin, both mine and other's. Or perhaps they truly are the way I remember them, inherent only to the Jersey coastline in a broken little town called Bayville.

Regardless, I know them and I carry the thought of my God breath days at the end of every spring and the beginning of every autumn, wondering if hiding somewhere between the leaving warm winds and the coming cool breezes will there settle a place of complete balance between the two when the temperatures in that moment do not match my temperature but compliment it with mute grace. These are the days of my childhood when in a moment of running, and I was always running, I felt neither the cool wind against my arms or the warmth of the sun on my face. When, as I look back, I feel I could have been naked and completely comfortable being so, and not ashamed. As such, to me, these were the days of Adam and Eve, times when they walked in the wake of God's breath and knew neither mortality nor immorality. They knew life and loved it, having not the quiet, yet insistant, sensation of air against their flesh.

I have drempt of heaven, my heaven, the place where God will land me, once it's all over. It was full of green foilage and wood, foreign and strange, smelling of earth and strawberries. It was my heaven...at least on earth. For as His word says, Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has entered into the hearts of man, the things which God as set aside for them who love God. With that in mind, I tread very carefully. My dreams...my dreams are another matter entirely. ;)

aside~~~I was talking with my daughter the other day about clothes and Adam and Eve and them realizing they were naked after sinning and I didn't realize there was an assumption about the first man and woman in my daughter's mind until I corrected her about her own clothing. She said she was naked in a situation...and I thought about it and said, no you had on your underclothes. She crinkled up her nose and said, So when you say Adam and Eve were naked...you mean they weren't wearing anything at ALL? Not even socks? Oh that made me laugh~~~

Is This How God Feels...

when we love Him?

Last night, I watched "The Cape" for the first time with my family in Richmond. Got the gist of the good guy, but the storyline focused on his nemesis the incredibly attractive Peter Fleming. Apparently, he is your bad guys' bad guy with a psychopathic split personality. Well, he falls for a lady whose talent is predicting ratio probability to such an extent it seems like she can predict the future. There's a slight complication, he killed her Father and now she wants to kill him. And she almost succeeds each of the THREE times she tries. (It is TV, after all)

Anyway, as unbelievable the premise, the characters and the occasional cheesy lines (ex: I killed your father, can't we push past that?"), and ever the romantic, I found myself caught up in the idea of someone being so evil and yet putting himself in harms way each time he met his beautiful assassin just so he could see her again. He praised her, her beauty of course, her talents, treated her gently, could have had her killed instantly, but instead provided a wide girth, giving her room to move, to plan, to retaliate. At first there was nothing between them except his interest and her father's death, but by the end of this 45 minute show there was a believable twist of truth between them, he exposed her for the "science experiment" she was while still offering her a place with him in his evil plans, not really sure what those evil plans were. The lady in question made an acceptable attitude change when she answered the obvious growing attraction between them...right before she tries to blow him up...again. Truly, it was FABULOUS FUN!

Well, I like to write and one of the ways I can learn to write better is to think on, dissect and manipulate story lines that work. This "bad guy falling for his beautiful enemy" formula is done to DEATH. And why not...there is something tantalizing and seductive about it (I don't only mean that in a sexual way).  Okay, I'm not naive. I don't think the bad guy is after marriage in the burbs and 1.5 children.(and who said that was "Happily Ever After" anyway?) But if the possibility isn't there that their "love" might bring about such utter transformation, then it's not believable and will not invite the watcher/reader to suspend reality for a while and hope that "YES, we CAN get beyond you killing her father!"

Next is a hypothesis which breaks down here and there, but I think the point valid and worth making. What is that irresistible urge to get drawn into the heart of someone so evil as a sacrificial, put-me-in-harms-way love overcomes the natural self-preserving instincts of said villain? Perhaps, one might argue the love doesn't originate with the evil one at all, rather it is an obvious, almost compulsory, response to the person who is the object of his affection. He can't help it and this love will inevitable do one of two things depending on the authors intent to make a comedy or a tragedy in the classic sense of both words. (Comedies have happy endings and Tragedies, well, don't) It will change him or destroy him. Either way it will effect him forever.

Whose relationship does that shout out to you!!! God said, "While you were my enemies, Christ died for you!" Correctly seen, Christ is irresistible, his person evokes response not in a general way, but a personal, I have touched your life and by my power you draw your next breath kind of way. He shows us beauty beyond the physical, he knows our horrors and loves as through them. Make no mistake, we are the villains of our stories. In truth, there is not an instant where I am not the most vile of sinners...it's okay because my companion in villainy is you, dear friend. For those who yield, we are the comedies of Christ's love. To those who don't, they become Christ's tragedies...either way, he is the author and we are his story lines!