This semester has been rough so far.
I don't know how to explain it. I guess I can't really. I have felt disconnected, withdrawn, quiet, selfish, short-tempered. Basically they're all the walls I am so apt at putting up when I don't understand my own heart.
I'm being rubbed raw. Stripped down. Broken. Exposed. My heart is in a place of deep, intense sadness that wells from something much deeper than circumstance. A lot of it, I think, doesn't actually have anything to do with me but with whatever it is God is teaching me to break for. But I don't know. I don't know much of anything these days.
The temptation I face every day is to hide. I have always been a runner at heart, and this is no different. I do not understand what is going on in my own heart, and it makes me want to pull the covers up over my head and shut out the noise, the ache, the mystery.
Thankfully, God is bigger than my cowardice and confusion. He teaches even when I try not to learn, speaks even when I try not to listen, loves even when I am running away. Is patient even when I am trying to love him with half my heart, and keep the other half for myself.
Thanks to some insight from a friend, I know what I am: lost. But not in the sense that I don't know where I'm going. I don't care where I'm going and I don't care about the plan. I just want Jesus and to know him more fully and to share his love more and more effectively with the people around me. It's not that I don't know where I'm going next. It's that I don't know where I am right now.
It's that I'm lost in my own brokenness. Lost in nursing an aching heart that breaks for something I'm not aware of. I'm lost and wandering, because I don't understand a single thing about my own heart at the moment. And yet, there is no escaping it.
What I do know is that God is good. That he loves me more than anything, and that there is a good reason that I am where I am at the moment. And that if my instinct is to run away, then what I should probably do is walk closer. That tends to be the way it works. If I am afraid, do it. If it makes my heart beat faster at the thought of it and I am instantly tempted to walk away or make excuses, then say yes and do it anyway.
What I do know is that beneath it all is my ever-present desire to love Jesus and love people. To know Jesus, and to know people. And I am comforted by God's promise that he will never stop doing good for me, and that he is stripping away the things that keep me from Jesus and from people. So, I may not understand it, and I may be broken for reasons I don't understand, but I thank God for it. He is doing me more good and showing me more of himself than I know.
I realized in class today that what my heart longs for is comfort. Because my heart is uncomfortable, and it longs to be otherwise. But that's a lie. Because all the comfort in the world won't satisfy. And the amazing thing about God is that he can rub your very soul raw, and still overwhelm you with peace and comfort.
And I feel an invitation in my soul at that. To intentionally leave comfort, to walk away from familiarity and convenience. To let the brokenness I don't understand encourage me to lay down my life for the people God has given me such a heart for. Because I am not the only one in the world who is broken for reasons unknown. I feel that stirring in my heart, to stop hiding and let this brokenness fuel actions and love.
Oh. I get it now.
This brokenness is not mine. It's a gift. To teach me to step beyond my own white picket fence and love well, love radically, love unexpectedly. And probably a hundred other things I don't know about just yet. But the point is, my humanity wants to shut out everything until I can shut up the brokenness enough to ignore it. But God's been inviting me to step towards it, step into it. He's inviting me to experience the depth of Himself found in loving out of a place of deep, Godly brokenness.
God is so good.
I don't know how to explain it. I guess I can't really. I have felt disconnected, withdrawn, quiet, selfish, short-tempered. Basically they're all the walls I am so apt at putting up when I don't understand my own heart.
I'm being rubbed raw. Stripped down. Broken. Exposed. My heart is in a place of deep, intense sadness that wells from something much deeper than circumstance. A lot of it, I think, doesn't actually have anything to do with me but with whatever it is God is teaching me to break for. But I don't know. I don't know much of anything these days.
The temptation I face every day is to hide. I have always been a runner at heart, and this is no different. I do not understand what is going on in my own heart, and it makes me want to pull the covers up over my head and shut out the noise, the ache, the mystery.
Thankfully, God is bigger than my cowardice and confusion. He teaches even when I try not to learn, speaks even when I try not to listen, loves even when I am running away. Is patient even when I am trying to love him with half my heart, and keep the other half for myself.
Thanks to some insight from a friend, I know what I am: lost. But not in the sense that I don't know where I'm going. I don't care where I'm going and I don't care about the plan. I just want Jesus and to know him more fully and to share his love more and more effectively with the people around me. It's not that I don't know where I'm going next. It's that I don't know where I am right now.
It's that I'm lost in my own brokenness. Lost in nursing an aching heart that breaks for something I'm not aware of. I'm lost and wandering, because I don't understand a single thing about my own heart at the moment. And yet, there is no escaping it.
What I do know is that God is good. That he loves me more than anything, and that there is a good reason that I am where I am at the moment. And that if my instinct is to run away, then what I should probably do is walk closer. That tends to be the way it works. If I am afraid, do it. If it makes my heart beat faster at the thought of it and I am instantly tempted to walk away or make excuses, then say yes and do it anyway.
What I do know is that beneath it all is my ever-present desire to love Jesus and love people. To know Jesus, and to know people. And I am comforted by God's promise that he will never stop doing good for me, and that he is stripping away the things that keep me from Jesus and from people. So, I may not understand it, and I may be broken for reasons I don't understand, but I thank God for it. He is doing me more good and showing me more of himself than I know.
I realized in class today that what my heart longs for is comfort. Because my heart is uncomfortable, and it longs to be otherwise. But that's a lie. Because all the comfort in the world won't satisfy. And the amazing thing about God is that he can rub your very soul raw, and still overwhelm you with peace and comfort.
And I feel an invitation in my soul at that. To intentionally leave comfort, to walk away from familiarity and convenience. To let the brokenness I don't understand encourage me to lay down my life for the people God has given me such a heart for. Because I am not the only one in the world who is broken for reasons unknown. I feel that stirring in my heart, to stop hiding and let this brokenness fuel actions and love.
Oh. I get it now.
This brokenness is not mine. It's a gift. To teach me to step beyond my own white picket fence and love well, love radically, love unexpectedly. And probably a hundred other things I don't know about just yet. But the point is, my humanity wants to shut out everything until I can shut up the brokenness enough to ignore it. But God's been inviting me to step towards it, step into it. He's inviting me to experience the depth of Himself found in loving out of a place of deep, Godly brokenness.
God is so good.
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