... to date myself

 

It has been a crazy summer. First, went and played Army to become a branch qualified Army Engineer Officer; secondly, Jesus began a work in me that has shook my world upside down. I normally prefer to wander in this world, not inside my own wandering heart, but I’m afraid that Jesus has different plans. This summer it is very clear that I am indeed a new creation in His eyes.

It all starts where I used to seek validation, seeking affirmation through people and their opinions. Nowhere did I involve God and His thoughts about me. How quickly I am to discount Him! Oh how amazing are His thoughts concerning me…

Psalm 139 (NLT) 

¹ O Lord, you have examined my heart
    and know everything about me...
³ You see me when I travel
    and when I rest at home.
    You know everything I do.
⁴ You know what I am going to say
    even before I say it, Lord.
⁵ You go before me and follow me.
    You place your hand of blessing on my head...
⁹ If I ride the wings of the morning,
    if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    and your strength will support me.
¹¹ I could ask the darkness to hide me
    and the light around me to become night—
¹²     but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
    Darkness and light are the same to you.

¹³ You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
    and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
    Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it...
¹⁶ You saw me before I was born.
    Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
    before a single day had passed.

¹⁷ How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
    They cannot be numbered!...
²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life. 

 

There are two themes that keep rising from the cracks in the foundation that I built where Jesus is jack hammering, and is He doing work!

1-      I rely on busyness to keep me preoccupied that I don’t have time to process anything. The notable phrase, “I’ll get to that later once I’m down with [insert busyness tasks here].” But what that actually does is prevent “me time,” and that time is VERY important for everyone. If we refuse to have “me time” then we are performing an injustice to the world. We have too many souls molding to the world; what the world needs are more souls who are thinking less, feeling more, choosing to trust their gut and overcome the fear of the unknown. Don’t be afraid to trust an unknown future with a known God.

 

This, too, I am guilty of. I have let my busyness take over connecting with myself daily, no longer in-touch with who I am. I know what I don’t want to be and that has been my guiding light for so long. But now…now there is this new Light, so bright, that it lures me as if I were a baby sea turtle rising out of the sand trying to make my way to the ocean for the first time. Ocean...that has been a keyword this summer – it rises from the quote, “I crave a love so deep the ocean would be jealous.” Again, the Big Man has made it clear that it is time to rebuild a relationship with myself.  How can someone who is wandering rebuild a bond? Why, that would mean I would have to sit in the mess, actively participating. Insert panic. You mean I have to be present through this entire ordeal?! Crazy talk, right?!   But I am curious how I'll be guided to walk through the rebuilding stages, to sit at His feet, to keenly participate with open ears and a receptive heart. 

 

2-      The mental game; I am my own worst enemy. The enemy has preyed on my old definition of what success means. That definition is warped, boggles me down with comparison, making me anxious for things that are not meant for me. What is meant for me? What is His desire for me?

His desire, I feel, is asking me to step up in life to invite change, an internal adjustment.  This change first starts with justifying who validates me. There is only One who validates me, whose wisdom I need to seek, thirsting for His Light; He is my good Shepherd who never leaves but always guides. Oh how He guides with receptive ears, hearing every beat of my heart, knowing what causes me joy, peace, happiness.

Change is always in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes it’s abrupt; sometimes it’s sluggish and drawn-out. But change is change and it requires a response, a choice. My choice in the invitation from Jesus is simply, “Yes.” I cannot say what it will look like because that would be me falsely changing into a new-being that I molded, making the process purposeless. There is only one Sculptor, who I have taken the carving tool from, and who I am gladly (somewhat hesitantly if I’m honest) giving the carving tool back and saying, “Lord, I have been trying to  occupy too much space at once, looking for short-circuit vacancies, continuing to feed my busyness to avoid You; but here I am, slowly (painfully) loosening my grip on attempting to control outcomes.”

I will be the first one to say that I won’t get all the answers correct in this new adventure with JC.  I do know that it is scary to look inside the dark crevices, naming the inner demons and fears, and truly owning the way I feel and the way I behave.  But the fear, anxiety that rises up, will be eradicated by my Prince of Peace.

Questions I need to ask myself daily:

       What validates me as a person?

       Rebuilding a relationship with the true me looks like what? Will I let her emerge or suppress?

       What makes me happy? Laugh? Smile?

As I continue to invest in my inner relationship, I ask that you do the same. Sit down with yourself daily, if only for a few minutes, and take time to hear you. Ask yourself what you want, what you really, really want. The fact is that you deserve to be happy; no one has the same happiness formula. Take time to find yours and enjoy the process.

Not all who wander are lost.

Much love,

Whit

 

scars = beautiful

Something happened to me last week, a bittersweet “ah-hah” moment.  Spring time calls for cleaning out my closet, something I try to regularly do at least three times a year. This is actually a hard process because I end up going through an emotional roller coaster ride of feeling blessed one second to be able to give away clothes to the next moment of feeling selfish that I can afford new clothes. Makes no sense, right? Seven bags of clothes and five pairs of shoes are dropped off and I still feel like I can give more.  Then the “ah-hah” moment happened that morning when I was donating blood: why can I continually give away clothes, possessions, blood, money… but I find it impossible to give my heart to my Romeo, my Beloved? Let me invite you into my darkness, my brokenness…

What if the things that are broken are actually beautiful? Let me explain.

I recently went on a couch surfing road trip with a sister from another mista. Yes, we coin that phrase. We were in San Diego walking along the pier, enjoying ice cream, street entertainment, taking random pictures, and just watched the sunset. On our walk back to the car we see a homeless man with a dog. We continue walking by and then as we took a couple of steps forward we looked at each other, stopped, silently agreed… we needed to go back. This man was sitting down, leaning against a light pole reading a book; very scrubby looking and had a pit bull by his side (beautiful pit bull!). There was something beautiful about him that I couldn’t look at. With one good right eye, his left eye was blatantly blind and scars traced along his left side of his face, he held a conversation with us talking about random topics. I remember smiling and laughing, not at him, but with him as his tone of voice gave way to his passions in life. There was a question I wanted to ask him but I didn’t know how without it seeming to demoralize him. It’s one of my favorite questions— tell me, what’s your story? I REALLY wanted to know his story, how he got to where he was, what major decisions affected his life… but I couldn’t ask. Why? Simply put—because of my brokenness and shame in myself.

I have a problem with brokenness and I finally figured out why.  The more I searched into it I became more aware that brokenness isn’t black and white. Brokenness is found in the gray area that we all pretend we don’t have. We try so hard to mask our scars that we forget pain is beautiful. You see, we have diligently come up with pre-planned answers to questions so people will think we are “fine” and “everything is okay” on the outside. What if we are not okay? What if our life is a mess? What if we are lost in this world? Pain has programmed us to be robots. Robots need guidelines, a set of rules. Guidelines remove love.  Without love, we cannot live. I’ve been told that one of my strengths in who I am is I offer a “no condemnation zone.” In all honesty, the main reason for this openness to love a complete stranger is I realized sin doesn’t define people; sin allows us to tell each other that something is springing from deep and unmet needs.

It’s ironic, really. God calls us to draw closer, nearer to know His face and not just His works. Yet, it’s our perception of our own darkness, our shame, our “past,” that keeps us stagnant. Stagnation causes us to take shelter in unknown realities that become white-lie-truths to us. This is a false shelter that I am guilty of, tenfold over. My false shelter allows me to seek God but to flee God at the same time; allows me to find it easier to believe that God exists before believing that same God could love me. As I venture into this gray area, I am continually reminded of Brennan  Manning’s words in the Furious Longing of God: for His love is never, never conditioned to our moods—of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.

Part of the reason why we struggle with relationships with one another is our own inability to know who we are and why we are here. Secretly, don’t we ask ourselves that question-- “What am I doing here? What is my purpose?”  

 

 

If there is one thing I can guarantee you in this world, it’s that this is a jaded world with jagged edges. Be careful what you feed in this world because you are what you feed; you are what you repeatedly do.  I wish I could say that I fell under the white wolf. That is something I want you to see or hear. But if I were to be honest with myself, and if God were to ask me which wolf inside me wins on a daily basis, it would be the black wolf-- hands down. Some battles the white wolf reigns victorious but in the ultimate scheme of things, I fall prey to anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and my ego. I hate these feelings so much that I noticed patterns in myself and the topics that cause these feelings to arise that I voluntarily try to avoid situations. I willingly attempt to choose the white wolf because I know what joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness and truth feels like. I have tasted both, experienced one more than the other, but I want to choose “Good.”

So starting today, I’m learning to accept that my scars are beautiful. Each and every one, no matter how painful they may have been. This isn’t a sign of weakness but rather a sign of purpose and a wanderlust future. Those scars made me who I am today and I’m finally okay with that. It took a long time but finally—let me repeat, FINALLY—my mentality has switched to being thankful for my bittersweet scars. I am no longer carrying around burdens and it is freeing. Very. Freeing. Indeed.

I’m leaving you with this thought: 

I’m beautiful because I have been broken. I know what defeat looks like. Darkness has been my best friend for so many years that I forgot what light can look like. I’ve been betrayed, heart shattered, only to glue back pieces that I could handle. I’ve felt half-alive for most of my life. But, I’m still beautiful. No matter how much this world tries to dirty me, I will not cave. I may take one step backwards but I will take two steps forward. Because in the end, I will claim victory.

Now it’s your turn—go claim your own victory!

Not all who wander are lost,

Whit