Why me? I remember asking this question to myself many a time during my life. When bad things would happen, when friends turned away, when my heart was broken; pretty much anytime things didn’t go my way. Like everybody else I have had a lot of unmet expectations, dreams that I’ve watched slip through my fingertips, times when people let me down, when I didn’t measure up, when I didn’t feel good enough or felt like things were spinning out of control.
Why me?
I felt this race was going to be a year to sacrifice for my faith. I was nervous starting the race. I stood in my sin, wallowed in it even. I was comfortable in it. It’s known, it’s easy; it’s like if I took the step to really let go of all my sin I would be striped and abandoned. I believed in God, I believed in Jesus, but faith that I wouldn’t be left hung out to dry?…. Not so much.
Why me?
I came for a year of sacrifice, a year to let go of everything I had, everything I was, with the intention to get it all back when I returned. Yet I stand on the dry ground of Swaziland holding on to more of myself than I ever have before. As C.S. Lewis put it, “The greater the sin, the greater the mercy; the deeper the death, the brighter the rebirth.� He couldn’t have said it better. I have watched as pieces of myself were torn away. As the waters washed over my sin, it stung, and I was striped, but as the dirt is washed away, I find more and more of myself. I see more and more of myself. All the things I’ve held onto, all the “sacrifices� I’ve made, I now recognize as nothing. And yet, I still don’t understand.
Why me?
What good have I done that God would call me? Why was I given this opportunity? Why have I been blessed beyond words, to receive a change a freedom that I in no way deserve? I have been delivered from depression, from discontent, from insecurities, from failures, from regret, from myself. And now, I look back, why me? After all the times I turned from You, after all the times I preferred myself, after all the choices I made, knowing they were sin and yet choosing them anyway, why me?
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.�
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.�
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.�
Thank You, Jesus. Despite my sin, my shame, my pride, all of the flesh of me, You chose me. You called me, transformed me, not because I deserved it, but because of Your love for me. How I will ever repay You, I don’t know, but I will spend the rest of my life praising You, telling others about You, and sharing the love that You so freely poured into me. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.
