Who do you think you are ?
A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman (a book I highly recommend) recognizes this unfortunately common question we terrorize ourselves with.
Subtitle of the book: uncover the art you were made to live.
That’s where I’m at in life right now. I’m here in month five, Myanmar, uncovering the art I am. And it’s hard.
God loves me. Like wow how He loves me. It’s astonishing. It’s baffling really. I can’t wrap my mind around it. I can’t reason with or against it. I just say “wow”.
What’s the big idea here ?
Here’s the big idea:
You’re beautiful. You’re just a beautiful ray of sunshine type of being. You can do things. You can do real things that actually matter. You don’t have to wait to become anybody. You don’t have to wait until one day when people may or may not get on board with you. You don’t need anybody to tell you what it is or what it isn’t. It doesn’t have to be spoken over a loud speaker. It’s where you are- on a Tuesday, looking someone in the eye and loving them in the absence of words. It’s seeking to understand rather than being understood. Being more concerned loving than being loved.
It doesn’t escape me how lucky I am. How much a miraculous work of love God performed to change my life. It may not have looked it on the outside but it was black and blue on the inside. It was cold and traumatically ordinary. Not the busted head open or broken leg pains that come with cool stories. It was the daily pains. Full of headaches and stubbed toes that hurt but not enough to cry. Nobody rescues you from stubbed toes and headaches.
But they do. Actually. I didn’t know it then but I know now that my heart longed for a rescuer, a savior, a “please tell me there’s more to this life” giver that could and would and actually wanted to help me.
Y’all I’m slacking. You want to know the stories and I want to tell them but right now this is what I’ve got:
I’m overwhelmed and engulfed in things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how I could have been chosen to do this. To be here. But I’m here. I don’t understand how I didn’t realize how empty life was before. But now I do. I don’t understand how anybody could taste this and turn back. I don’t understand His UNENDING mercy. Really. Like I’m still trying to apologize to God for things I did in 2014. His answer every time: “I forgive you and I love you anyway.”
This “blog” might not a make a lick of sense. But I really hope it does. A quote we use often of the race is “I’m a tree in a story about a forest”(Donald Miller). How beautiful and poetic. But for me, the race and these fellow headaching toe stubbers running with me has been more like all these trees- the rebellious kind that refuse to be green but instead want to be purple and blue with beak shaped sections coming together as a forest to share a story about a tree. The tree of life- Jesus.
And for now this is the story I’ve got to share with you guys. Yes. Yes there is more. And yes it’s for me. And yes it’s for you. You don’t have to be green and mass produced, all standing in line. Your life is art and there was someone willing to die to uproot you and make you vibrant. Who do you think you are ?
I’m art. My life is a poem-
I’m loved more than seems reasonable or logical.
I’m a once harshly bitter and dead soul transformed and rebirthed into the world as joy-filled daughter.
Who do you think you are ?
