Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Take the Lead

Brandon Heath said it well when he said, "I wish you could see me now/I wish I could show you how/I'm not who I was."

The longer I love Jesus, the more often I find myself saying these words. I'm not who I was. It is amazing and wonderful and freeing to know that you are never stuck just as you are. I am constantly, always a work-in-progress. Alleluia.

Over the last month or so, God has been targeting my greatest sin: pride. He is teaching me to be soft. And it is one of the hardest and greatest things I have ever learned.

I have spent the last 20 years of my life lying. To everyone. About everything. About who I am, where I come from, even stupid things like what I can do and what I can't. It stemmed from my desire to control the only thing I felt like I could: me. But really, they were just walls I put up so no one would really know me.

God is good and faithful and merciful. He has been breaking down the walls around my heart. He has been tearing down the ruins of the girl I tried to create in order to reveal the captivating heart he created for me. It is utterly amazing.

It really started last semester, when God began softening my heart for himself. For the God who captivates me, whose face I see every day, whose voice I hear called me "Beloved," who sweeps me off my feet. Who makes my heart beat faster. Whose very name I cannot hear without smiling. With whom I am falling ever more, utterly, wholeheartedly, irrevocably in love with.

And out of that, everything else has changed. The softer my heart is for God, the softer it is for those around me. The less I find myself trying to be something I am not. The more humbly I am willing to admit that I fail, fall short, mess up. The more gracefully I am able to accept advice and encouragement, because I admit that I need every bit of it, and I do not know everything. And even the things I do know, I still need to be reminded of.

And with that, the more willing I am to nurture the femininity of my heart. To see that this heart was designed to be the companion, the helper, the lover, the follower. It is not debilitating as I once believed it would be.

It is freeing.

May it be every day, ever more so. 

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