My Recent Eye Transplant

I’ve had people ask me how I’m doing lately and they’ve been wondering what God is teaching me. So here you go!

 

Ummm…lets see…I guess I’m doing good? Its a hard question to answer. I’m growing and maturing a lot. Or at least that’s what my teammates say. I
guess I don’t really see it, but I trust what they say and its really encouraging to hear. I want to change. If I come back from the World Race the same, it’s a tragedy.

 

But lately, over the past two or three days, I’ve been looking in the mirror and its just so weird… something is
different. But I can’t quite place what it is or why. Today I started
to think that maybe it’s my eyes. They just seem bigger, brighter, and
deeper. Like I actually think they’re beautiful. That’s pretty much the
first time I’ve ever thought that. You don’t know how many times I’ve
wished for blue, green, honey, or hazel eyes. But lately I’ve really been
liking mine. I remember one of our team coaches, Scott Pitts (we call him Pappy), said to us at training camp something to this effect: “For the most part, I saw young boys and girls get off that bus. By the end of this year, you will come back as men and women. I’ve seen it so many times. You will grow, change, mature, and experience the presence of God so much that it will physically change the way you look.” I thought about that a lot as I prepared to come on the race, and I still do. I wonder, when I get back, if there will be a depth to my eyes that I never knew I had. Maybe that’s the change that I’m beginning to see.

 

God is totally transforming
my mind and the way I see myself. He’s completely reworking my
identity. So many times he’s said to me, “Desiree, I wish you could see
yourself the way that I see you.”  I would always laugh bitterly, shrug it
off, and never understand what he sees in me because I could never see
anything good. But he’s been pursuing me. We worked with another team
last month, and they have this thing where if you ever say anything bad
about yourself or put yourself down, you have to say five good things
about yourself and who you are in Christ.  I absolutely hated that. I’d
make excuses to not say them or I would get even more upset.
Basically, they’d force me to say it. I couldn’t get away from it, no
matter how hard I tried. But what I’ve found is that it gets easier and
easier as time goes on. I’m also a lot more cautious with what I say now,
too. But that’s good. I need to guard my tongue and my heart, and out of
the overflow of the heart is what a man speaks (Luke 6:44-45). So now I have begun to speak life over myself, grudgingly at first, but here’s the crazy part – as I’ve spoken it, I’ve actually begun to believe it. My mind is being
transformed. My heart is being transformed. So maybe that’s
what I’m seeing. Maybe I’m finally starting to see myself the way God
sees me. Despite what my mind may be thinking, I look in the mirror and I see beautiful. It’s so weird. It’s catching me off guard. It’s
disarming. 

 

So who am I?

 

 

 

I am creative.

I am strong.

 

 

 

That is who I am in Christ.

 

 

 

Who are you?