I’ve always loved the verses in Matthew 6:25-27, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
I’ve always admired how birds float on the wind, swaying with it wherever it may take them. They look so at peace as they glide through the air, wings spread on either side, as though they’re without a care in the world. There’s been many times when God has brought into my life this idea of me being a songbird. Over and over the past few months He has given me songs as well as images of birds. The first time was actually at training camp for the world race. We were singing a song with the lyrics “you’re never gonna let, never gonna let me down.” And as I stood there with arms spread and eyes closed, I was soaring through the sky, and right there flying next to me was my Abba. Through that image, God told me that He wanted me to be like a bird. He desired for me to be completely free with Him, not held back by anything. He wanted me to give anything keeping me down to Him and He wanted me to trust; to trust that He would never let me down. He was showing me that if I trusted Him, I could soar. The thing is I didn’t know what was holding me down, I just knew that there was this hesitation and feeling like I couldn’t get off the ground.
Then once again as I was a few weeks into being in Romania me and my team of 5 others, along with our 2 leaders all sat down and did listening prayer for each other. We asked God about each person around us and what He wanted us to say to them. As it was my turn to listen to what everyone else had gotten from the Lord about me, one of my leaders shared something crazy. She said she had seen a vision of me as a songbird flying through the sky. She said God wanted me to let go and just trust Him, to think about how the birds trust in the wind to hold them up. God wanted me to put that same trust in Him. I had not shared the vision I had received at training camp with my leader, but God had shown her almost the same exact vision I had gotten. He was telling me once again that I could trust Him and that I was made to soar. But once again I felt held back, and I didn’t know why.
So flash forward, now I’m in Chile and a few days ago my squad took part in this thing the World Race calls LDW (leadership development weekend). During this time we have different members of the squad speak, lead worship, and lead prophesy rooms, and our squad leaders also spoke about different things. It’s a time for us to grow and to step further into the things the Lord is calling us to. This LDW seemed to be all about the emotions. During those few days I really started to realize just how much I bury my emotions. I always tend to be the mediator in my relationships with people. I don’t want tension or conflict and I’ve come to realize this is because in the past I’ve gone through different friend groups fast and so I fight to never introduce conflict because I’m afraid it will give them a reason to leave. Instead, I hide my emotions and act like everything is always fine; it’s a false output of contentedness that in no way actually reflects what’s going on inside. And I now realize that this has carried over into my relationship with the Father. When I feel emotions, even though I know they’re there, and He knows they’re there, I hide them. Sometimes I even manage to convince myself that I am actually fine. But whether I portray it or not, a lot of the time I’m not fine. And that’s actually ok. In fact God wants me to come to Him with every part of me, messy emotions and all, because He can handle them. God created us to be emotional beings. He is emotional and we are created in His image. He understands our emotions and He wants to help us through them.
In my life there’s one specific relationship in which trust was shattered, and through that relationship, my trust in the Father was also broken. Yet I’ve been trying to pretend like everything is fine because I don’t want to bring that doubt, and struggle to trust before Him. I worry that if I address that there is an issue then somehow God will love me less through it, when in reality it is healthy to address conflict. Addressing it is what is going to fix it whereas my first instinct of ignoring and burying it will only make things worse. I have to fight that urge and instead put it out in the open. Unlike in the past when I’ve been vulnerable and it has given people the ability to take that vulnerability and hurt me with it, the Father will instead use it to strengthen our relationship. Yes my trust right now is in pieces, and it will never be exactly how it used to be, but when the pieces are all finally brought together it will create something even more beautiful than it was before.
Now yesterday morning as I was journaling, I looked at some of the notes I had taken from one of my leader’s talks about emotions, and I had written down “The Sower’s Song” by Andrew Peterson. I honestly had no idea at the time why I was writing it down; once again God was using me as a songbird. So as I was journaling yesterday I saw that I had written it down and I listened to it. Although I’ve heard the song before I never actually payed attention to the words, but God spoke to me so clearly through it as I listened this last time. The beginning of the song says, “I am furrowed like the field, torn open like the dirt. And I know that to be healed, I must be broken first. I am aching for the yield that you will harvest from this hurt. Abide in me, let these branches bear you fruit. Abide in me Lord, as I abide in you.”
Through these words the Lord just confirmed that He wanted me to bring all of my emotions to Him as I cannot be healed from them unless I allow them to come to the surface and let myself feel them no matter how painful the process may be. Until I allow myself to be broken before God, I won’t be able to find restoration; after all, a bird can’t fly with a broken wing, no matter how hard it may try to ignore it.