It's kind of a shame that I didn't write more in Malaysia because it was my most groundbreaking month. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
But last month was absolutely huge for me. We lived in a small town, I taught kindergarten in the mornings five days a week, and we had various ministries in the evenings, but inside of my spirit, mountains were being lifted off the ground and hauled into the sea.
It all started with our last worship session in Thailand.
I was sitting with my feet up on a chair and my arms crossed over my chest and a despondent look on my face. Not the most "grateful to be in the presence of God" posture, I'll admit. One of my squad leaders noticed me and knew that that was not how I was made to worship.
She approached me later that day beside the bus that would take us south to Bangkok on our way to Malaysia. "I saw you at worship. I'll be praying for you this month. I want you to speak up, stand up, sing out, and worship loud."
Uhh, you better be praying if you want to see that happen.
So I get to my ministry site and I try, I really try to get into worship. I feel as though God is pulling up my roots to dig me deeper, that when my joy returns it will be more substantial, weighted, less flighty. I can dig that.
But then joy burst into my life like the morning sun through a window. I was cracking jokes and giggling to myself and dancing in the kitchen and life was coursing through my veins, my bones, my spleen… everything. Mass joy.
And then that same squad leader who noticed me in Thailand posed the question, "What would life look like if we dared to live fully who we are?" Wouldn't that be something. But the more we talked about it, the more I could feel God calling me into it.
Just as the sea has most of its life living in the depths, I think that our life resides there as well. You're not really living if you're not diving into it, if you're not exploring the crevices of all that God has for you. So I said yes to God's version of myself and I placed my best version of myself on the altar.
And with the strumming of a few guitar chords, from inside of me was birthed a freedom I've never known before. I sang with a heart wide open, representative of the life I wanted to live, and I sang the words that my spirit gave me and it was one of the most beautiful encounters with the Divine that i've ever had.
I'm walking in that freedom, that I'll never be enough, but I'll be wholly complete with Christ, and that I was made to worship him in composition and spontaneity and that's what he asks me to bring to the table when I come to his House.
To be fully me to bring freedom for you to be fully you.
