I lived a lifetime this week, on a dime, just like that. I'm irritated to admit, but try as I might to avoid them, his incredibly insightful words kept echoing through the empty silences of my week... again.
"Do you ever wonder, is God in Control?" I had asked.
"He is, you just have to trust Him."
"What if I can't anymore?"
"You can, you just have to get over yourself first."
His response both soothed and cut me. What does he know about me? Besides "he" is just someone-I-used-to-know now anyway. I've deliberately worked very hard at dismissing everything else he said in our short friendship, both the pleasant and the unpleasant things. However, those specific words still haunt me. Between you and me, the good news is that we won't ever have to tell him he was right, or that he had me figured out in more ways than one.
Tonight, it seems my buddy Oswald agrees with the stranger-I-used-to-know too:
Why doesn’t God reveal Himself to you? He cannot. It is not that He will not, but He cannot, because you are in the way as long as you won’t abandon yourself to Him in total surrender. ~ O. Chambers
Wellllllll, that's just weird. I don't usually look up his stuff before bed. Tonight couldn't have been more perfect timing for those words. I've wrestled, hand-to-hand combat style, with the "getting over myself" concept all weekend. Until today, I couldn't figure out what that's supposed to look like on a daily basis. Here's how if finally made sense, but I'll have to back up a few days:
Last week there was a trip. Nope, not a vacation, there's a difference, trust me. The why's and details aren't important to the story, but the timing is. I already told you that this time of year is tough on me, with dates and yada, yada.... Prior to the trip, I had felt myself slipping into disappointment, lethargy, discouragement and teetering on despair. Circumstances and conversations pushed me over the edge and I allowed myself to embrace a full-on depression.
In August I told you about that project of healing in me that seems impossible even to God? Yeah, well, I re-read it. I think I accidentally gave God permission to reach into that, didn't I? The insecurities and deep injuries I've held closely guarded and bound securely, were exposed to the light and air, dramatically and all at once.
Well what good is exposure, if there won't be healing? The lyrics of 'You Do All Things Well' (Tenth Avenue North) became my source of comfort and hope:
You break me to bind me
You hurt me, Lord, to heal me
You cut me to touch me
You died to revive me
There's a paragraph that I've typed here about four times. I can't seem to make it publishable, so I'll jump to the end. Today Luke 9:23 is what finally made sense of all of this nonsense I've been wrestling for months, no, years. Yup, it's a bumper-sticker-turned-real-to-me verse:
"Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
So, there it is. Oswald, the Stranger Friend, and the good doctor, Luke, agree. I have to get over me. My rights, desires, hopes- including the God-given ones, my capability and self-sufficiency, what I perceive to be my deepest needs, even my fears- will have to die, every day, if I want to follow Him- more importantly, if I want to see that He's in control... and I do. It's a well documented fact that I make such a mess when I lead.
The good news is that He's still writing my story with Mercy's pen. Nearly every day, I being reminded, in outrageous ways, that I am unconditionally loved, a precious treasure, extremely valuable, a daughter of the King, more valuable than the birds of the air or the flowers of the field...
One of these days, I just might believe it myself.
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