The Cure?

For better or for worse, each of you have musical ties to your past that are forever linked to who you were at that time. For me, the soundtrack for my first two years of college were the various albums by The Cure. Tonight I was feeling a little nostalgic and scanned through Itunes to see if we had kept any of their albums. Ahh, Disintegration... Summer,1994, working at a campground in Washington I listened to this album almost everyday. But tonight I realized something as I listened to the lyrics. If you hang with me, I am going to share with you a few of the songs and hopefully by the end of this journal you will understand.

DISINTEGRATION
Now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces.
I'll pull out my heart
And I'll feed it to anyone
Crying for sympathy
Crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd
And the three cheers from everyone
Dropping through sky
Through the glass of the roof
Through the roof of your mouth
Through the mouth of your eye
Through the eye of the needle
It's easier for me to get closer to heaven
Than ever feel whole again

UNTITLED
Hopelessly fighting the devil
Futility
Feeling the moster
Climb deeper inside of me
Feeling him gnawing my heart away
Hungrily
I'll never lose this pain
Never dream of you again

CLOSEDOWN
I'm running out of time
I'm out of step and
Closing down and
Never sleep for wanting hours
The empty hours of greed
And uselessly
Always the need
To feel again the real belief
Of something more than mockery
If only I could
Fill my heart with love

PRAYERS FOR RAIN
You shatter me
Your grip on me
A hold on me
So dull it kills
You stifle me
Infectious sense
Of hopelessness and
Prayers for rain
I suffocate
I breathe in dirt
And nowhere shines
But desolate
And drab the hours all spent
On killing time again
All waiting for
The rain

Hmmm...sometimes I forget how far I have come. Most of you probably did not know me then, but these were the cries of my heart. What I did not realize at that time, was that there was freedom from this monster that crawled inside my soul and devoured my hope and joy. Some will call it depression. For me, it was a battle for my soul. I was a Christian, but I did not really know victory. I did not know that I had to defend myself. I did not know that there was an enemy who wanted to destroy my life. I did not know I had a choice.

I did know that I desperately longed for something real. For a God that would invade my universe and rescue me from myself. "If only I could fill my heart with love."

"I know what the people want, because it is what we all want when we are suffering the most. We, in the West, have our hearts and senses temporarily dulled by our comforts and entertainment, and we don't realize how much we need companionship with our God. We don't understand where our deepest joy originates. But when we come to the end of ourselves, when our sins and past mistakes overtake us and overwhelm us with grief, when there is nothing more we can do to keep our hearts alive, we realize how much we need the intimate love of our God. We need to be lost in His heart, captivated by the One who will never leave us. We need His company, His comfort, His delights. We need to know Him, understand His feelings, comprehend how to relate to Him. Our relationship with Him is our life, our only life that survives. We love much because we have been forgiven much. We utterly, desperately need our Savior's love, a love that makes all things new, that redeems everything in our hearts, that lights us on fire with everlasting romance." -Rolland Baker

For me, I found this love laying on the floor. After college I started going to a church that invited you to come up and get prayer at the end of every service and encouraged you to stay there for as long as it took. For me, it took nearly three years. Week after week I ran to Jesus and He rained down his love, healed my broken heart, showed me who He was and gave me a hope and a future. I also found people who took the time to mentor and disciple me and help me trade the lies I had believed for truth. God's word (the Bible) should be your first source, but another book I would highly recommend to everyone, wherever you are in your walk with God, is Victory Over the Darkness by Neil T. Anderson.

I encourage you to find this place; this cure. To fall in love with Jesus and get rid of your cynicism.

Listening to this album helped me realize how much Jesus has done in me. What have I to complain about? I still want more of Jesus. But I should not despair. There is great hope in the one who has saved my soul.