Tuesday, February 17, 2009

For my love

I am not damaged.
I am beautiful.
I am worthy of the love God has set aside for me, by grace.

That has become a sort of mantra for me in the last 2 days. In that time I have truly been blown away by how God works out even the smallest details to get the attention of those He loves. He is not a distant figurehead, keeping time like an uncaring conductor. No, He is loving, compassionate, jealous, real, ever present, and the orchestrator watching over each and every member of His great orchestra and every note and marking written on the score of eternity. (I'm a violinist, so that's where the orchestra stuff is coming from, haha)

In the last 3 years of my life I have heard the call of Jesus calling me back to Him. It is humbling and intense, yet I would not trade those moments for anything. He pulled me out of an incredibly toxic relationship, leaving me broken hearted on the floor looking upwards. He stopped my attempts to fill the void in my life with another man, and instead filled my heart with His ever present love. It was difficult. I fought it for a while. But God was more stubborn than I was. He won...He has a tendency of doing that.

So I began walking closely with Him. The problem was that instead of dealing with my feelings towards romantic relationships, I stuffed them deep down and pretended they did not exist. I locked down my heart and assumed that every sort of longing I had for love was wrong. It absolutely ate away at my heart. I would get feelings for a guy, bottle them up, and watch them explode months later instead of prayerfully considering them and finding a healthy way to deal with them. I almost destroyed 2 very good friendships that way because I was too stubborn to be honest about how I felt.

I would go through these phases of feeling depressed that no one was pursuing me in the least. It has been 3 years since the last time I went on a date (let's just go ahead and put that out there). And part of it truly has been God winning me back to Him. I needed to be completely in love with Him before anyone else. For that I am grateful. I never want to feel the way I did when I was immersed in the cycle of toxic relationships. But part of it has been the lock down of my heart from even the possibility of being pursued. I tried so hard to keep my relationships with guys "appropriate" while fighting off the feelings I had. Again, I tried to hide my feelings instead of dealing with them.

The thing about the salvation process that seems to get overlooked is this idea of being transformed. It is very true that when you accept Jesus as Lord you are no longer the same. But that doesn't mean that you become this perfect person who looks nothing like the person you were. You still have issues and scars that need to be dealt with rather than hidden. It hurts much more to have them yanked out of you from the deep dark corner of your heart than to be open and honest about them.
Think of them like a splinter...when it is close to the surface you can see it and get it out pretty easily and painlessly with a pair of tweezers. But if it goes deeper to the point where you can't see it but you feel it with every move you make, then getting it out is going to involve cutting in with a knife and it will hurt a heck of a lot more.

Two days ago God had to get out the knife and cut into a wound I had been ignoring for 3 years. It hurt...I think I burst into tears about 10 times. But afterwards...I have never felt so free. I made the decision to open up my heart again, but this time it was on His terms. I gave Him control over my love life. And I know He has a beautiful story for me. The difference is that now I am open to it. I am not called to be single, and it feels liberating to be able to say that.


"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.""
-Jeremiah 29:11-14 NIV


I am not damaged.
I am beautiful.
I am worthy of the love God has set aside for me, by grace.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Authentic

I really like Shawn McDonald's music. It's raw and real and beautiful. Pretty much anything that combines honest lyrics, well-played acoustic guitar and real strings is amazing to my ears.
Well...that or a band like Judgement Day who combines 3 of my favorite things: metal, strings, and epic music. :)

This weekend I'm leading an 8th grade ski trip (oooooh snap). We're talking to them about identity and who they appear to be versus who God created them to be. We all wear masks, some positive and most negative. Anywho, Scott and I have to be able to get up and talk about some of the masks we wear. Nothing better than spilling all of your insecurities and weaknesses out on the floor in front of 28 kids who barely know...

I realized tonight that I have grown so used to one of my masks that it fades into my own likeness. It's name is "shallow." I wear it a lot, around everyone, close friends and new people. It smiles and laughs at all times. It makes jokes and avoids deep conversation topics, because that would require it to come off. Now my own personality smiles, laughs, and makes jokes, but I love deep conversation and sharing with those I trust. So what's with shallow?

I was talking to a friend about life and relationships. We both feel like we don't fit any of the molds out there and agreed that it must mean that God has something really wonderful laid out for us. It's the following without getting distracted that can be difficult. But we talked about relationships, and immediately my shallow mask jumped on...but this time I noticed it. Why is it that the topics we need to talk about are the ones that make us put up our guard the fastest?

I think we make the mistake of carrying our past relationship blunders around with us. It's almost as if we have a separate resume of relationships and what happened and what went wrong and why it still haunts us. We're walking around with this list of flaws our previous loves have pointed out to us, and for whatever reason this keeps us from feeling worthy of anyone ever again. I know I felt like that for a very long time. After my last relationship blew up in my face, I walked around for almost a year feeling like damaged goods. You've seen those cans on the grocery store shelves...the ones with dents or discolored labels...who wants to buy a dented can of soup? Who wants to fall in love with a girl carrying so many wounds and insecurities?

The beautiful thing about this is that God loves us as we are and He knows how much more lovely we will be when we follow His will. He has not called the perfect and squeaky clean, but the lost sheep and sinners. He pours out His love on us without hesitation - the written code and all of our shortcomings are cancelled. He loves us as we are. That really gives me hope.


"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."
-Colossians 2:13-14 NIV

Those two verses changed my life about a year and a half ago. I am changed; I am free from my sins in the past. I am a new creation in Christ. I need to learn to recognize my masks and keep the negative ones, like shallow, far from my face.
I've adopted the attitude that if you're going to be anything, be authentic. Not shallow; Authentic.