3 years ago if someone had said I was going to be doing this I would have excused myself to laugh, cry, and run as far as I could in the opposite direction. You see, I was broken. My understanding of love was that I was only as good as the number of people I could please with my actions and THAT was killing me. I was unable to keep the rotating number of men, friends and family happy and ended up hopelessly sad and spending most of my time alone avoiding anything that included the possibility of failure. I avoided making friend and i spent all my time being filled with the fake love of any boy that would tell me I was pretty. I was confused on what I was going to do with my life. I felt gross and incapable of changing my behavior. The weight of my choices were leaving me with no actual friends and no stability at all. I was distant and I wanted nothing more then to build a mote around myself.
That is it, I was the center of my life in 2011. It would have been unfathomable, to 3 years ago Bethany “Faye”, that someone could be loved because of the actions of someone else. Love, in my life at that point, didn’t consist of unconditional anything. Love was all conditioned to what you did for someone else or aloud someone else to do to you. I was only as good as someone was telling me and the people that where telling me I was worth something were NOT telling me I was worth much.
But, regardless, here I am. 3 years later, and different, still learning a lot about how to love and be loved properly, but different. The Lord gave me the name Bethany(disciple of the Lord), He gave me the name Faye (faithful) and He meant these words to be true. He has filled me with Love for people and a gift for caring for others and he has called me to rest on him to fill the plan he has on my life. Everyday more and more that hurt and selfish little girl is being turned to fix her eyes even more closely on the Love and Glory of a God that is the center of all things (even the center of us).
As I see it now, the beauty of the cross in my life is this: With the words “It is finished” I was promised a 180 degree shift in the nature my flesh and the enemy had in mind for me. I was taken from loveless to BELOVED, from weak to STRONG IN CHRIST. The Lord called me to CARE FOR OTHERS and to be a part of sharing his love with others and that blows my mind daily.
Paul’s description of the gospel in Ephesians 2:1-10 speaks wonders to my heart
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
You know, we all have our gospels story and a different part that means the most to us… what is your gospel story? what does the gift of God mean to you?
