Sit Down and Shut Up

As I looked at this, something in me clicked.  I thought of my own life. How, at times in my life, I have been caged in.  God created me to be wild and free and fierce too.  I have crazy hair, a loud mouth and strong opinions.  As a child, it was easy to be the me God made me to be. 

But as a teenager, it got hard to just be me.  In youth group I was constantly made to feel that I was “too _______”.  Too loud. Too much.  Too free. Too wild. Too opinionated.  Too this.  Too that.

So I started changing who I was.  If I couldn’t be accepted in the church, where would I be welcomed? I went from one extreme to the other, whichever happened to be the worst option.  In regards to godliness, bravery, boldness, holiness, faith-I became tamed; shrinking back and shutting down. I kept God in the neat little safe box that I carried with me to church on Sunday.  In regards to sin and selfishness I decided to really show them what TOO much was and I became as loud and boundary pushing and opinionated as I possibly could be just to tick them off.

The picture I was seeing of what Christianity is supposed to look like was…well, it was boring.  Church-mouse anyone? No thank you.  That’s not in the cards for me.  So I continued going to church each week.  I was there physically.  Spiritually, however, I was totally checked out.  I began feeling like not only was I too much for the Christians around me; I must be too much for God too.

Maybe He is disappointed in me because I am too _____. Maybe He can’t love me because I am too_____.  Maybe there isn’t a place for me in His Kingdom because I am too______.  Then add shame over my own sin in to the mix of too ________ and you have one lost little soul. 

Let me tell ya, I was not digging it.  I felt constantly shushed.  My greatest pet peeve in life is to be shushed.  But for some reason I listened to the constant shushing of the enemy.  The instruction accompanying the too____ was loud and clear: 

SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP.

And in the church, as a woman specifically, I struggled to find my place.  Even after I rededicated my life to Christ a few years ago I still struggled with this-the sitting down and the shutting up.  I will never be godly.  I will never be pure.  I will never be used for His glory.  I don’t have what it takes to be godly and be a woman.  Because godly women are supposed to be “quiet and gentle.” I am supposed to be passionate about bake sales and knitting. (Not that I have a problem with baking or knitting-it just doesn’t stir my soul).

First and foremost, I am passionate about people.  But I also happen to be in love with adventures, and being dirty, and eating weird food, and climbing trees and mountains and jumping off cliffs and anything else that is high and scary and exploring and being scared and fighting for something I love and going my own way and blazing new trails and I don’t want a life that is boxed in or arranged in neat little compartmentalized rows.  I want messy and dangerous and crazy and brave and holy. 

But can all those things exist in one life? And for a woman? Can crazy, messy and holy walk through this life hand in hand? Can I be righteous and be dangerous? I mean I read “Captivating” and yeah, okay, I want to know I am beautiful and all that jazz…but I related more to “Wild at Heart.” Shoot. 

WHAT IS A GIRL TO DO? Is there a place for me? Where I can just be me?

I was looking to all the people around me to tell me who I was.  Or maybe it was to tell me that it was okay for me to be who I knew I was supposed to be.  Either way, I spent many years, just like that sad old lion, sitting in my cage watching the world pass me by.  I was basically dead.  I wasn’t being the me I was created to be.  I had let all the lies tame me.  I had let all the confusion shut me up and sit me down. 

But then…God brought me on the World Race.  And thankfully I hadn’t given up the fight completely like the lion has.  Yes, physically I may have spent some time sitting miserably in my cage.  But in my heart, I was waiting, yearning, for the moment I would let the world hear my roar.

And over the last 9 months, God has been revealing His truth to me.  He has shown me who He created me to be and who He says that I am. 

 And He says I am free.  I am a lion, but not like the one in the cage.  He didn’t create me to be fenced in.  He didn’t create me to live a safe existence.  I am created to be the lion I was praying to see running through the field in Africa, chasing something, wind in my mane.

He says that I am wild. I am free. I am crazy. I am fierce. I am brave. I am dangerous. I am holy. I am me.  And I don’t have to make apologies for it anymore.

He doesn’t think I am too ______. Not only can He handle me and use me to further His Kingdom on earth, but also He gave me those attributes as a gift.  They are actually a reflection of Jesus.  I mean come on; the gospel isn’t the story of a man sitting calmly keeping his pew warm.  Jesus was crazy and adventurous and brave and daring and compassionate and wild.  I think if we hung out for a day he would probably climb a tree with me.

 But this hasn’t always been an easy lesson to learn or embrace.  Just this week I opened up to my team about something I have been carrying around for six months.  Here is what happened. My first team, Homeward Bound, was so special to me.  I was the team leader for the three months we were together. There is no team like your first team.  Another thing to note: all 7 of us are high feelers (Myers Briggs).  We are all passionate, emotional, open-hearted women.  When it was time for our first team changes, we were NOT happy.  It was happening at the end of a great month in El Salvador.  A month where we all learned to love each other beyond limits, we created bonds that no amount of time will ever fade. We also really loved our ministry and hated saying goodbye to our friends there.  So as we stood in the park with our squad awaiting team changes, there were some tears. Maybe a lot of tears. And we were all linked together in a chain.  Swaying back and forth.  And maybe there was some singing.  We like to sing a lot.  And dance.  

But now, because of that moment, the squad always laughs at us.  It is a running joke.  It’s like when anyone else starts to feel anything or be overwhelmed with feelings they say things like “woah, be careful we don’t want to be like Homeward Bound.” Or “at least we aren’t as bad as Homeward Bound.” And for six months I have tried to laugh about it or ignore it, but I just couldn’t anymore.  When one of my teammates made a joke about it last week, I broke down.  Because every time someone makes an innocent joke, I am assaulted with the old lie… “see Stacie, you are too much.” Except this time, it was “see Stacie, you are too much and now because of you, your friends are regarded by your squad as too much also.”  The weight of that was too much for me to carry around anymore.  So I told my team and they all told me the truth of what they saw when they looked at Homeward Bound.

What the devil was saying was “too much” is exactly what made us, us.  It was the exact thing people enjoyed, the thing that touched people’s lives, even beyond the jokes.  In fact some even said the jokes were just a way to cope with jealousy because they envied the freedom that our team shared.

The very thing I am most attacked in is the very thing God has chosen as the means of His glory. 

So, I guess that was all a really longwinded way of saying… 

I will not sit down and I will not shut up.  You will hear me roar.  And I don’t plan on making any apologies for it. I will not be tamed. 

“There’s a violent hunger in my bones

‘Cause I’ve tasted and I’ve seen

There’s a lion roaring in my heart

And I’ve determined to set him free.”

-Jason Clark Surrendered and Untamed

“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

-Isadora Duncan