Change. Vulnerability. Heartache. Pain. Tears. Wrestling. Journey. Intimacy. Walls. Identity.
These words really sum up what my first month has been since I arrived in the Dominican. The big change from the comfort of home and familiar faces to a foreign country where my native language isn’t native anymore. Learning to be vulnerable with the Lord and others. The heartache of the pain from the past still threatening to haunt me while I’m miles away from home. Teary nights where my spirit was wrestling with my flesh. The journey the Lord has called me on to grow closer to him and become more intimate. The walls He has been breaking down to redefine my identity.
I have been debriefing this first month with my whole squad before we head to Haiti, and it has been oh so relaxing, yet revealing all at the same time. A couple of nights ago I had a vision during one of our sessions. I was chained to a wall. And there is my freedom and joy sitting on a table in front of me, but I am unable to reach it. The chains hold me back. I’m pulling and pulling and pulling and I don’t budge. Then somehow the chains turn into a rope I am holding in my hands, and I realize that I am intentionally trying to drag this wall behind me to the table. The Lord revealed to me that this wall is a wall I built myself. An identity I built myself. Compiled together of how I have viewed myself and how others have viewed me, but no room for how God has viewed me.
He called me to leave the wall. To leave the thing I have taken years to build up for myself. How in the world am I supposed to do that?
The next day I had a one on one with my squad mentor Kate. I told her about my vision and was seeking out understanding on how to leave this wall and to gain a new perspective on what the Lord revealed to me. What she began to tell me totally grasped the bigger picture. She said that she sees me and the Lord in a boat, and I am holding the rope and it is tethered to the shore. The shore is my old self, or “the wall” of my old identity. The way I view me and the way others view me. And the Lord is asking if he can untie the rope anchoring me to the shore; to this old self. To set sail with him and let the Holy Spirit be the wind in my sails. To allow him to be the only one I listen and talk to. The one who redefines who I am.
And he promises me a new shore; a new self. The self that is free and joyful. The self that is completely and utterly defined by the Lord. The self that is unashamed of who she truly is and whose she truly is.
A me that isn’t defined by me, but defined by God alone.
And as I am launched into this new month with new people and a new country, my defining begins. To be comfortable in being uncomfortable of not really knowing who I am. To be completely dependent upon the Lord and have him help me process through the pain and hurt of my past. To not just let me be redefined, but to let God redefine how I see him. To see him for how he wants me to see him.
To fight to grow more and more intimate with him everyday. To let him not only build my foundation, but to be it. To let him sail me on the ocean of his grace. To be free to struggle and wrestle for what’s good. To begin to allow God to show me who I truly am. To land me ashore of my new self completely redefined by him. And that self is unknown to me, but that’s ok. Because God sees the other side, and that is all I need.
