When I was a baby I was baptized…and I’m so thankful my parents did this. It started a journey of pointing me to Christ and welcoming me into God’s family. Life is hard. Anyone who has had a rough go of it early in life especially in junior high and high school when you’re trying to figure out who “Me” is can speak for this. Somewhere along the journey we pick-up a whole lot of unneeded things like insecurities, fears, failures, lies…you name it.
A really good call on my parents’ part was sending me and my sister to summer camp. Camp gave me permission to be a total goof ball and be loved in that goofballness…to just be myself…whoever “Me” was. It also tangibly showed me who Christ is…and what love is really about by people closer to my age.
One of those summers when I was finally old enough to be a junior counselor God broke my heart in a good way. I went to my favorite lake and God told me how much he loved me and asked if I was really ready for Him to lead my life. I said Yes. God and I had a sweet moment next to the water and IN the water…but here’s the thing…it was just me and God. I’ve struggled with feeling “alone” a lot of my life…and that broken girl then she thought she only deserved the bare minimum. Not because of anything her family had taught her, but because of the filters and lenses to which she saw herself, how I saw myself.
This week things began to change. On the race…and I’m not proud of this…I’ve been sick 3 out of 3 countries. I came into the race completely out of shape, and more feeling like let’s get this awesome trip over with…then Go God! I was heartbroken…a lot of dreams not realized…and questioning if Adventures in Missions had made a mistake in accepting me…I felt like a complete mess. I was excited to get to know people before the race…but became this real beast at training camp and beyond… justifying my behavior by trying to “survive” training and all the whoa’s associated…and on the race trying to determine if I should STAY on the race. Just to clear things up right now…I’m NOT leavin’ the race unless God says so…I’m sticking out the full 11 months…and I actually LIKE Adventures in Missions now.
Sick week/month…I won’t go into the icky details…but I was sick of being sick that’s for sure. What began to happen….you know on Veggitales one of the veggies says in a corny accent….”We’re going to knock your walls down”…yep, that about sums it up…knock God did…and fall the walls came. It wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it would be. Things I thought would take the rest of my life to get over…God just kept saying He Is Bigger, Bigger, Bigger as He worked on them FOR me. It’s hard to recall the exact order of things…but some of the biggies were not hating humans…no joke…all people but men especially…and trusting people again. The absolute fear and hate of marriage…because God wants me to see myself as He sees his church as the Bride of Christ. When I was able to let go of that… God reminded me that He is a good God…and He has good things for his kids…and that sure does change your view of the world. Offenses…now that my heart had a lot of stuff cleared up I’ve had more room and space to not take offense to things people say or do so quickly. Sharing…if you don’t love people it’s kinda hard to WANT to share…but when you start to really see yourself in a love relationship/marriage to Christ you want to discuss with Him how you’ll use HIS/our stuff. One at a time each stronghold, lie, fear, hate, insecurity left the bunkhouse like different sized animals or something. Some of the “animals” were huge and others tiny and each one left promptly at Jesus command. One of my teammates loved me well through this and also prayed when things seemed extra impossible to be free from. What a trooper!
God expanded my heart to the point I thought it would burst. The most beautiful thing of all though…was as each wall came crumbling down…I could see Jesus more through His perfect love and not my broken filters and lenses…and it was like really really seeing a loved one for the first time. The love Christ has for me was/is completely overwhelming. God was letting me in to this whole new kind of intimacy with him…the type I imagine you experience with your spouse someday…and I was like whoa…I think I get why marriage is such a big deal to you. So long story short…I feel like I’m waking up from a really really deep sleep by the kiss from a heavenly King that only could have done what He did. God is crazy jealous for my healing because He only wants me to experience His love and joy more fully. He began a complete overhaul to repair / demolish how I saw Him. He wants me to really see Him to the fullest extent…as I can see Him…being a sinner on this earth. He wants this for ALL people.
Welcome to the new “Me”. I’m not sure how to describe the new me yet…but there’s a lot of things I used to really be passionate about that I’m enjoying doing more fully now. Watch out cute babies. Hugs…I’m working on liking hugs again…and it’s not as tough as it used to be for me. Social settings…although I’m always going to be an introvert at heart…God’s kinda nudging me on to step out more…and I’m not nearly as reluctant as I used to be. I know there are still going to be really really tough days…but my perspective on life and people is so drastically different now.
There’s so much I want to say about how I view my body image. I can really love myself better because of how I see Jesus loving me. Huge lessons I want to share with woman sooner than later because they are daily helping me compare less, judge less, and care less…practically giddy…because I know God loves His women so very very much.
Baptism…for several years I’ve wanted to get re-baptized. I understand people have strong feelings about infant and adult baptism so I won’t go there. Just know that I believe with all my heart this is what God wanted for me September 15, 2013. I’ve felt this for years but kept putting it off in hopes of a trip to Israel…apparently God had plans for an ocean in Nicaragua all along. He also made it very clear that my team leader was the guy to perform the baptism…so that left some guesswork out. It was incredibly awesome day…tumultuous day but as a dear friend pointed out…hasn’t my whole journey been that way? Wouldn’t want it any other way I guess…because I know God hand-designed what I viewed as a very big mess into a Beautiful Something.
