i do see Him

:: For in subjecting all things to Him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him. But now we do not yet see all the things subjected to Him but we do see Him...:: Hebrews 2:8b-9a

we do see Him...so much of this sentiment encapsulates the position of my heart right now.
So much of what's ahead is unknown. There are plenty of possibilities that go on living in my head but I have been made deeply aware to the vast unknowed-ness of the future.

possibilities are not truth...Fantasies, dreams and hopes, not a reality. All I know, is that God has the stunning ability to work sorrow and suffering and the dirty garments of this world into something miraculous and amazing. I always end up coming out of these times, Hinds Feet on High Places. My heart sprung open, colors and hymns and songs of praise spilling out to the Lord who has captured my gaze. My lover, my loving Shepherd.

i know not what is ahead, but I see Him.

i see Him. I see how He has deftly, as only God can, orchestrated my life. How many fingerprints, indentions made for remembrance are those scattered about the story of my life.

i know not what's ahead, but I do see Him. He is here, amongst the downy covers of my patio hide-a-way, in the sky to which I glance to so often now. The hazy blue a reminder that life is so much bigger than my current preoccupations and He is here, in me.

the warmth of His nearness, His nowness brings pain-filled tears to my eyes. The romancer lives and dwells within me.

i know not what is ahead but I do See Him. He has been all over this season since the very beginning...back in May when depression assailed me and my season of helplessness began....

trust. trust.trust. trust

trust me nichole, when you have no where to live, trust me when you have no source of income. Trust me when a man is brought into your life and when he is taken away. Trust me that your pain will soon give way to peace, strength, endurance and wisdom.

trust.

i have been granted a gift. My own eyes opened to my true state: A helpless, wretched babe, deeply, greatly in need of a Savior. A fearful seedling, not an oak as I so often have seen myself to be. I am weak. I have always been this way.

Now, as broken and raw and taken to the end of me, I realize this: I can do nothing apart from Christ. I have nothing apart from Christ. This is life, truly as it is: utter dependence on God.

more than simply knowing that... I am living it. I am experiencing it.

Perspective

Perspective.

So much depends on it.

I am quick to point out the absurdity of an elephant's fear of a mouse, less speedy to recognize the same lack of rational in myself.

I am quick to name my trials as such, to claim them as problematic, as tests. Rarer, to call them gifts, though gifts they are entirely.

A prayer of mine recently: "Though being made like you, Jesus, pains me, stay not your hand, stay not your hand."

The thought that the Lord would remove his refiners fire from my life, leaving me to my own depravity is terrifying. As acute as it is to be faced with the mirror image of my sin each day, much more profound is seeing Christ's face staring back at me.

.::...and we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.::.

I am being made like Him.

Offering Up Your Isaac

Friends,

I come to you honestly; bearing my heart. This current season of my life has been one where the Lord has taken me to the very end of myself. It has been a season where He has proven Himself to be all I will ever need and shown me how I will never stop needing Him. I am being called to share what the Lord has been teaching me because I know I am not alone in this and I know the breath of life that is poured out when we bear one another's burdens.

As some of you know, since last April I had been struggling with depression. It has been the best thing that has ever happened to me and has served as a catalyst for growth and depth in the Lord. Since November, I have been walking victorious out of that miry pit but since being delivered I have been asked this question on a second my second basis: How much do you love me? Through unemployment, house-less-ness( I have been staying with dear friends till I find a place), and some other deep trials, He is testing and trying my heart. I pray He never stops. I am utterly broken and utterly joyful. He has taught me the joy found in suffering and it is this that I desire to share with you. I pray you hear my heart but more importantly, I pray you hear the Lord's.

To suffer.

This practice does not come easy to me. I am, at my core, a rebellious child flailing against the arms of my Father. Wanting my way, claiming my own knowledge as best and my desires as satisying. I believe I know better than God on a regular basis.

::Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same purpose, because He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. So as to live the rest of time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God...:: 1 Peter 4:1-2

What was Jesus' suffering? I had often heard that we were to partake in the suffering of the Lord. I had not quite understood that in it's entirety and to be sure, there is so much more weight to that then I can comprehend now, but for this moment in my life, where the tinge of suffering is near, I realize that Christ's suffering was more than the physical torture of crucifixion. The depth of His suffering was revealed there in the Garden, where He bowed his head and prayed " My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." Matt 26: 39. His suffering was submission to the will of God despite his own desires.

This has been my current portion: to submit to the will of God despite my cries that this cup be passed from me.

He has left me waiting for a job, waiting for a relationship, waiting for a house...waiting. This is has been my cup of suffering.

How much do you love me? He asks. Nichole, do you love like me? Laying down your life for others? Are you willing to walk in submission because of the JOY that is set before you? Is your first thought, " Father, let your will be done?"

Yes, Lord. I want you.

More and more the Lord is revealing to me that He is not about making things easy . He is about His power, His might, His weight being proclaimed through making a rebellious sinner like myself like Him: humble, submitted, believing, patient, willing. I think of Nehemiah's prayer in the face of a huge, approaching army. He prayed not that the struggle be taken away, not that the army would evaporate "But now, oh God, strengthen my hands."( Neh 6:9b) Is that my rection to trial and tribulation? Do I not rail against it more often than not, lamenting my condition and pleading that the Lord remove the hardship?

In truth, many of us, like myself until recently, know not the joy of surrender.

Many of us have never allowed ourselves to relinquish what God truly requires: our best.

How long I have operated under the lie that sacrifice means giving that which is bad for me. That surrender looks like giving up my desires for sugar, my addiction to facebook, my vanity...no. I have skimmed the surface of surrender. I have settled for superficial faith and shallow ground. No. Surrender is giving up Isaac. It is living with open hands. It looks like tears, and anguish and sorrow but it's aroma is that of joy and peace, perseverance and character.

::The fair petals must fall, and for no visible reason. No one seems enriched by the stripping. And the first step into the realm of giving is like surrender- not manward but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to the renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning:that is not worthy of it's name for "no poluted thing can be offered.":: Lillias Trotter

I mourn for the fact that so many brothers and sisters do not smell of death( 2nd Cor 2:17-18) but of tight-fisted fear.

::For all things are for your sakes, that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the Glory of God. Therefore, we do not lose heart but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being revealed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of Glory far beyond comparison.":: 2nd Cor 4:15-17

Yet we contend with our flesh. Pursuing the will of God is no easy thing. It looks not like blithe delight but of brokenness. it smells of death. The fact is my flesh is not soft and malleable but icy, stiff and hard as rock. It responds only to fire and crushing. This is that state of my soul and so He breaks it and takes it through fire.

:: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart O God, thou wilt not despise.:: Psalm 51:7

:: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs the kingdom of God:: Matt 5:3

What are you pursuing? Might I be honest? Might I be impassioned for one moment friends and say that I am burdened with how few men and women I see suffering for the will of the Lord? Who are we pursuing yet weary?( Judges 8:4) I see far more people with closed fists rather than open hands; whose first reaction is not to submit their first loves to the fire but to wrap them in blankets and hold them close to their hearts. I know, I was one of them. No. Sisters, Brothers. You are acting in fear. You are believing the lie that the Lord will give you a stone when you ask for bread. He is in love with you. If you being parents know how to give good things for your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give you?( Matt 7) Please, be quick to surrender. I say this not because of some legalistic desire to self-torture myself but because of my longing for others to know how much one receives when things are relinquished. I mourn that others will never know the all sufficiency found in Jesus, of the joy we find when we climb that mountain and offer up our Isaac.

I am walking through a valley of suffering, surrender, relinquishment and I have never felt more joy, satisfaction and peace in my life.

:: I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.:: e.elliot

the discipline of silence

"...the things we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God..." e. elliot

So much to say and so much I cannot.

I dare say how thankful I am for journals and I must apologize before hand at how irritatingly vague this post may be. There is inside me a clamoring cry to share my current disposition; an almost insatiable call to verbalization. My journal would attest to this, as it is nearly finished; I write incessantly now. More so than usual. Why? For I simply cannot go anywhere else. I dare not speak some things into existence; they simply must remain written there. The words of my heart scribbled on pages and pages and pages.

Such an odd feeling. To have so much to say; to feel your insides being pulled this way and that and prudence prevents it's declaration. Do you ever feel like there is so much feeling in you that you'll burst? So many thoughts and emotions; Each, simultaneously, demanding a stage and an audience; all rushing the gates, all clogging up the drain, all attempting escape through a door ten times too small?

Now I find myself thanking the Lord for Himself. For if it weren't for Him and His listening ear I simply would die in misery. The trembling burden of silence set to crush me.

It is not a mournful thing. Though I feel something very close to sadness... it isn't sadness, is it really? It's more like, depth; weight; rawness and reality. I can't explain it. It's as though a deepness in me is being revealed. It makes me nauseous as much as it thrills me.

"The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent." Exodus 14:14

derelict grander

I'm supposed to be studying. To be dedicating myself to Pythagorus and analytical argument. Give me credit, I have duitully returned to GRE review many times today, yes, with dispirsed breaks in between but only to serve as a reward for previous mental exertion; and all whilst ignoring the clamoring call to write! Routinely, my yearnings for literary exploration consistently occur at the most inconvient of times. Desire, don't you know I have other things more pressing to attend to?

Todays thought? "Am I going crazy?"

"Crazy people don't think they're crazy." I remember hearing a character in a movie say this once. Up until now I thought the sentiment brilliant and quite comforting ; I have often questioned my mental status. But, in fact, that thought is quite illogical. Even now it appears trite and un-weighty! I'm sure that many crazy people are very much aware of their delirium. So maybe I AM crazy.

What brings this to mind you wonder? What has caused my preoccupation with mental instability? To be completely candid, since April I have been wading through the very muddled world of depression. I say "wading" because it very rarely feels like walking. More often than not, like shuffling, knee-deep through muck, and as I have journeyed through my current disposition I have also been experiencing an array of physical ailments that in conjunction with my depression make my day-to-day doings...exhausting. I'll spare you the details, as some are far from appetizing and, might I add, WebMD has been far from helpful. In fact, the only thing I'm sure of now, after months of independent research, is that it has produced innumerable hypochondriacs who believe they suffer from everything to Hypothyroidism to Rheumatoid Arthritis. Perhaps even a mutant disease derived from both! As this has been my experience.

A current thread of thought has interwoven itself into my psyche. That perhaps this despressive state has been of my own doing. My life, truly, hasn't been that horrible. I wasn't sold to a slave trader at twelve, my father didn't burn up in a house fire and my mother didn't leave me. My life, I have thought, has been quite devoid of the tragic, but then my grandfather died and suddenly I found myself crying all the time. Not just about my grandfather but about other things. Past things. Things I committed to forgetting long ago. The accepted occurrences of my past suddenly appeared unacceptable and all that is crazy, yes? Why should the things that have been okay with me for all these years suddenly become not okay? I must be crazy.

However, there is another thought. Perhaps I am not insane but simply, awakened. Awakened to every hurt and injury that I have repressed for so long. That all of me is moving through that pain. Even my bones are aching with the realization. In this option, there is no immediate relief to be found. No pill or prescription. Simply, a process. A process where I am being taken to the end of me, in all of my derelict grander.

So no. Perhaps I'm not crazy. Perhaps, I'm just like everybody else.

Website Launch!

Hello dearest friends and followers,

Today is quite the momentous day.

Today nicholeporrata.com launched!

As some of you may be aware of I am a singer/songwriter/Starbucks barista extraordinaire. The first two you might gather from my website the third I just felt like throwing in there as I do also very much enjoy making drinks for people. Most people. Most people that don't use Starbucks coffee as an identity of self. But anyways, I digress.

I finally have something to show for my summer of recording and photo-shooting and web designing. I'm still kinda bummed that my songs aren't up there yet but my web designer friend is off on retreat for a couple of months and communicating long distance has been very frustrating. Thus, things have gone a lot slower than I had desired. Patience is a virtue, or so I've heard and I've been forced to live within that virtue for the past three months.

As frustrating as this whole process has been I've been assured that this is whole slow-mo, turtl'es pace-ness is normal in this biz and not to worry about it and to be fair, I can't hold a grudge against a process that my own pursuit of excellence has impeded at times. I simply want to present to you all something that I can be proud of and something that you all will enjoy and want to share with your friends. I think that is respectable.

I met with my gal Jordan a couple weeks ago. She is currently working on my myspace music page and design for the album and I'm super stoked about it! The album artwork on the website is more like a formality till she's done putting the concept together. I'm very excited. She's extremely talented.

Hopefully, the album will be on itunes, the songs will be on my website, my myspace page will be finished and the design of the album complete in November. Here's hoping and here's to sooner than later.

Recommendation #7

#7 Bake the Day Away

Though I know it's been a while since we have shared the same bit of cyberspace, my absence marked by various important and momentous events such as the recording of my first e.p., a mental breakdown and my new job at Starbucks, all of which ought to be elaborated upon at a later time my friends. But today! No. Today I am going to be talking about duckies, rubber duckies, rubber ducky cupcakes to be exact!

Tuesday was my day off and I had marvelous plans to drive to Dallas and sample various organic veggies and peruse thrift stores, but of course, Mother Nature had other plans and I was rendered immobile by thunder storms. Though saddened as I was to have not made the trip I had quickly set myself down to recover my day when a thought struck me. Cupcakes! I would spend the my day indoors baking up yummy treats for no particular reason except that I could and I would, and it would be lovely. Is there a better way to spend a rainy day? I think not.

So armed with my umbrella and adorned with comfy sweatpants and slippers I drove to my local Barnes and Nobles to buy a cupcake cookbook. I was thinking my two lone cookbooks, Puerto Rican Cocina and Autumn with the Thornberry's were looking a bit lonely on their shelf and I was lacking inspiration. I drove around the parking lot three or four times trying to find a parking spot because, of course, everyone was at Barnes and Nobles. But finally, I relented and parked so far away that by the time I walked through the doors I was a soggy mess; my rain saturated sweat pants bottoms trailing a yard behind behind me and my eyes glancing from side to side searching for the "Cupcake" sign. Surely a delight that grand had to have it's own section. After trodging through the calenders and Bargain Books I finally found what I was looking for in the isle labeled " Cookbooks," and quickly plopped myself down. Thinking about it now, I can't imagine how ridiculous I looked. There I sat, surrounded by baked good compilations, wet, mascara streaking my normally rosy cheeks, my soaked panted legs streched out in front of me creating a growing puddle. I didn't care. I had hit the Jackpot!

"What's New Cupcake?"

See above.

Not only did the cupcakes in this book looked yummy but they were cute to boot! I had to have it! It didn't take me long to decide that Ruber Duckies was by far the most fitting of the cakes to make since I deemed the current weather suitable only for ducks. I rushed to the checkout, purchased my first ever Cupcake Cookbook and once I had purchased all the ingredients required, I set to making these adorable little duckies.

Step 1) Buy Cupcakes! Okay, to be honest, I could have made the cupcakes but hey! I was strapped for time, as it was already 5 p.m. and I didn't want to be baking till 3 in the morning. Here's a nifty little bit of advice. If you find yourself a little short of the tiempo, no need to panic, simply make your way to your local grocery and pick up some plain cupcakes from their bakery. Just ask the lady or gent behind the displays, they're usually stocked with bulk cupcakes.

Major Step #2) Ice Cupcakes

Major Step# 3) Squish on the donut head

Major Step #4) Ice again

Major Step #5) Freeze

Major Step #6) Melt frosting, die yellow.

Major Step#7) Dip frozen duck into yellow, melted frosting

Major Step #8) kjnffawdjlqndfq

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Okay, you get the picture. I'm sure neither you or I want to sit here and read all these steps. If you really want to know how to make them just buy the book! You won't regret it.

I gotta say, though my duckies weren't going to be winning any Cupcake War competitions they were adorable and although they kind of looked liked a kindergartner made them but I'd say it was an admirable attempt by a novice confectionist. These weren't your garden variety cupcakes; these were molded, and mushed and iced within an inch of their lives and they came out nicely.

I crashed on my couch, starving(!) because when I had been drowning in a sea of creative juices and sugar I had forgotten to eat dinner, oops!

But, I felt accomplished. My freezer a wave of yellow waddlings and my kitchen amassed in bits of dried frosting and vanilla cake crumbs I couldn't have been happier.