Transformation

It’s hard to stand here and talk about how God is working in my life. Because it’s not one big, life-altering “aha.” It’s a million little things that take longer to explain than enjoy and wouldn’t matter much to anyone but me, but they are my world.

What I can tell you is that everything is different. Everything. My heart responds from a new place, and I want to tell you that it feels weird, but it doesn’t. It is radically different but at perfect peace. That is, it feels so natural that I wonder what I was doing all those years.

The way God’s been working in me has been an agonizingly slow process, but it is such an incredible journey. I turned around in my darkness and saw just a reflection of light dimly off His presence and I said, “What are you doing here?” He was about to show me.

I had prayed so long for Him to heal my brokenness. I’d thought it would be easy, just putting the pieces back together. What I didn’t realize was that my brokenness had become my wholeness, so my brokenness, too, had to be broken. It gets kind of messy from there.

I remember the first time I realized I wasn’t scared. It was scary! And the many times I worried that I wasn’t worried enough.

If you had told me my darkness didn’t have to define me, I would have asked you how could it not? Even if God were to work in me, my story would always have been my darkness first, God’s redemption second.

But as He sets me free, I am astonished at what a tiny, miniscule part of ANYTHING that darkness is or ever was. It was always fact, but it was never Truth. Truth is what God is doing, has done, and continues to do in me. It is the wholeness with which He created me, which I am tapping into and coming to know. It is more real, more authentic, and more SIMPLE than anything I’ve ever known.

He keeps me engaged, moving forward by keeping my heart stirred, thirsty and anxious for more of what He’s doing. For His continued presence. The world prefers me shaken, knowing I’ll run for shelter wherever I can find it if the ground trembles hard enough. But God keeps me stirred, keeps my heart moving, and invites me to gently blend myself into this grander thing He is doing. You get that mountaintop experience that you know will never last. You know you’ve got to come down. But I feel like I’m soaring and yet this is the most grounded I have ever been.

With piercing gentleness, He is answering the questions of my heart. Questions I have asked a million times, questions I didn’t know I was asking until His answer imploded some hard place in my heart that I never had the words fo, and questions I wouldn’t have dared ask. He is answering me, and I am hearing Him.

I am constantly speechless because it’s so beautiful and I…I never knew…

He’s inviting me to live from this profoundly stilled place within me. It is that authenticity I have been looking for, that place where something is real. Everything is real. It is a place where I feel like I don’t have to fight any more. It makes perfect sense to be there; it is that place where I make sense. It is beautiful and a mess…and a million little things…

I want to share quickly one of the ways He is using you right now in all this. You show me something that all the prayer and devotion in the world could never get across. God has richly blessed me, and He has gifted me. I knew how my gifts could bless me. I knew sort of how they could bless God. But watching you…soaking in your gifts…has shown me how I pray His gift in me can bless you.