Growing is supposed to make you stronger, wiser, and better. I feel like God has stripped me down to the very skeleton (or more appropriately, "core") of my beliefs about life, love, community, and Himself. I don't feel wiser, better, stronger... in fact I feel the most vulnerable I've ever felt. And yet, I feel the growth in my heart and soul... slow in coming, but coming just the same.
God has taken me back to what I thought was already established in my life and allowed me to examine my very foundations. There are parts of this growing (some of the best parts) that can only be attributed to community, once again. I've wrestled to see all sides, asked question after question, and found what He has said from the very beginning of all this to be true. It rings the loudest, resonates as the most eternal.
And He asks me again and again, "Are you not the daughter I taught to use the sword and shield?"
The fact is, we are all called... but we must first realize that we, as individuals, are called. We must understand that God does not want to decrease us to oblivion until we are all walking christian clones, but He wants living breathing disciples, that He carefully crafted in the womb. If we are specially made to represent a part of the body and a specific part of the Father's heart, then we need to know what that looks like and do it well.
I know what I'm called to, and who I am called by... as much as I might try to shake or ignore the very words, the very heart of God and what that looks like for me loving people, I can not. I will not. It doesn't fit a pretty cookie cutter shape like I want it to, but my God is not a tame God. I have a feeling He takes great pleasure in me trying to tell Him what I can and cannot be. Every day God confirms in me what I try to deny. So what conclusion must I draw?
I cannot deny it any longer, nor will I.
I have a group of friends that challenge me, bless me, sharpen me, and continually have me questioning. I feel the presence of God whenever I am near them. You know, I prayed for years for friends like these, every single person in my life right now is a true blessing to know and love. My colleagues in Christ and Graphic Design, my professors and mentors, my elders and peers.... I am honored to call them my family, to tell them or express to them as often as possible my love for them...
And my love is raw, often unrefined, but it is weighty and true for them all the same. I was long afraid to love for fear of rejection amidst this people, the wild children that bring my Father joy. But I won't be afraid to love them as they are any longer. God has come to smooth and level us out, to pour into us His peace and joy, to give us wisdom and balance. We come wild and starved, and he teaches us to harness the power of the raging light of life that burns so mad and hot inside of us. He feeds us, loves us, not in spite of but because of... and we learn to love just as He has loved us.
Learning to tame the tongue lately. There's no perfection or art to it but God Himself, and that is all that's to be said. Whatever my state, Father, wherever I am in life... I just want my presence to bring peace as You bring peace. To be a salve to the broken hearted and the hurting souls as You have been for me. I want my life to echo that, bringing a glimpse of Your eternity into this finite world. You will have your justice, and you will have mercy, and I pray that you would continue this growing in me, however childlike I may feel now... however foolish and clumsy my words or my steps, it is a joy to speak with confidence of the One that is my very friend, my father, and my God. My bold, wild father... vicious and gentle in the very same breath.
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