You know those moments when you are journaling, and you begin to word vomit on the paper? Well I had one of those last night around 11 pm.
My thoughts wandered to who I was pre race, who I am on the race, and who I want to be. At home, I am a daughter, a friend, an employee, a girlfriend, a Christian. On the race, I am a teammate, a racer, team leader, a friend, and Christian. After the race? Who knows.
Although there are truth’s in each of these statements, none of them matter if I am not living in freedom. None of them matter if I am not living in the truth that I am enough. If I continue to live as if my identity is in a title, then I am wasting away my life.
For most of life, I have been living as an orphan. You might read that sentence a few times and think to yourself, “Caitlyn has the most loving mom and dad I know”. Absolutely accurate. When I say orphan, I am referring to my spirit. A spiritual orphan. Yes, there is such thing. Jack Frost describes an orphan as someone who has restlessness because they have a feeling that there is more that they have to do in order to feel valued, accepted, or like they belong. You might be wondering what the opposite of an orphan heart is. Frost writes, “Sonship is a heart that feels at rest and secure in God’s love; it believes it belongs, it is free from shame and self-condemnation, it walks in honor toward all people, and it is willing to humble itself before man and God. It is subject to God’s mission to experience His love and to give it away”.
For the longest time, I have been living as an orphan. In my heart, I knew that God loved me, sent his son to die for me, and chose me as his daughter. But, my heart was also living as if I had to earn his love because I had messed up too many times.
I recently listened to a podcast by one of my favorite authors, Matt Chandler. He asked this specific question, “How does God feel about you right now? When he sees you, what feelings are conjured up inside of him”? When I heard that… I knew my answer wasn’t the right answer. I knew that the answer was that he saw me pure, as his own, made in his image, you name it. But my heart rejected that truth because I was still living as an orphan. No matter how many times I lead worship and raise my hands shouting and signing…no matter how many times I prayed…none of these would earn the love of the Father. How many of us live like a slave or a servant rather than a son and daughter?
It wasn’t until the World Race that I realized I was living as this orphan. I am not enough. At least, that is what I told myself. How many of us do missions, read our Bibles, or lead worship because there is a piece of us that says we aren’t enough and have to achieve the Fathers approval or love? My bet is that if we the church were honest, a lot more hands would be raised in agreement. Frost writes, “Do you rise up every morning feeling like a son or daughter secure and confident in your Father’s love, and living to give that love to others? Or do you get up every day feeling like a slave, struggling constantly with fears of failure or rejection, unable to trust, and wondering what you have to do to appease the Master today? Moving from slavery to sonship or daughtership is a matter of reaching the place where you get up in the morning feeling so loved and accepted in your Father’s heart that your whole purpose for existence becomes looking for ways to give that love away to the next person you meet”.
When we live as a slave, we undervalue what Jesus did on the cross. So, to sum up this word vomit blog for you… You, yes you reading this… you, struggling to know this truth. You are enough. Crying on a roof top in Guatemala, God used my friend to remind me of that truth. I was begging in my spirit for him to just verbally tell me that I, Caitlyn Duffy, was enough. And you know what, He did. It was in that moment that moment that I rejected my orphan spirit and clung to my Abba. Let’s stop living as slaves and lets live in freedom!
