I've been doing a lot of thinking. Reading Job again and really, really, really feelin' him. He is so honest about his dark and deep pain. He holds nothing back. He just cries out to God about his agony. I understand that feeling. I understand feeling so bad you wish to have never existed. I also know what it is like to have people try to talk me out of it, who look at me as if I am not as spiritually strong because I am in a crucible of extreme weakness, people who want for me to be the old me, people who have expectations... expectations I used to live to fill.
I'm done with that. My God is a strong God. He is also a God who would rather I fall to my knees before Him with a bleeding, heavy heart versus smile and say all the proper Christian things but be hiding my reality behind closed doors.
Ouch. Did that hurt?
I am still grieving, still processing, still "catching up" as I mentioned in a previous post. I don't have all of the answers. I get in grumpy moods. I am still learning how to manage Fibromyalgia. I am still without doctors here, almost out of prescriptions. I am still missing the child I left behind in CA. I am still IN THE CRUCIBLE.
This is where I need to be.
This is what makes me weak and Him strong. This is what tests my faith, causing me to ask really hard questions of the God who gave His Son for me. Questions about churches, about religion, about worship, about my beliefs. This is what makes Him bigger and me smaller. This is what changes me, rids me of selfishness and pride and arrogance.
Oh, we get through a trial and we think we have it known. I have. God has brought me through so much....
and every single time I know Him more. I feel His heartbeat more. I gain more when I lose. I reach another level of love with Him and I think it can't possibly get any deeper...
and I am wrong each time,
because the levels are limitless. I will never know the fullness because it is a love too vast for me to comprehend. It is infinite. It is pure. And it is constant.
I feel my spirit opening up a little bit each day. I am committing to a home church, I am asking God where He would have me serve, I am being honest with the Pastor and with people I meet about my limitations, I am being reminded that it's not about me but that it also gets to be about me sometimes. I don't always have to take a backseat because sometimes I need to be lifted up too. I used to live on a tightrope. People asked me to listen. People depended on me. It was tiring. I don't want to wear a Christian mask. I don't ever want to care about my status at a church. I don't want to apologize for my broken times, because they are worth everything. They make life sweeter because I can't take it for granted.
My heart is for children. It has been my whole life, but most especially when I got to my teens. Then in my 20's some friends and I created a babysitting ministry at church (a'la The Babysitter's Club), and the Lord laid on my heart to volunteer to babysit for my mentor's children every week so she could have some alone time. From there He entrusted me with a precious ministry where I had the privilege of caring for 5 kids. From those 5 kids He brought more. Our car was always full. My heart was always full.
Tonight at church I was speaking with the Pastor when his little boy trotted over. He stood before me wearing pajamas and these huge yellow earphones. My heart lifted and melted simultaneously. He stared up at me in silence. I pressed his little nose. Love. That's it. My mama heart was instantly on fire.
That's what is missing. For 5 years I had a constant stream of kids. In 2009 it became where I could no longer work and care for the kids on a daily basis, but I still interacted with them and saw the teens every week, and lived with Mylie.
For the first time in about a decade I am not around children. It makes a difference. The call God has on my life includes the mother heart He has given me. It includes interacting with young ones and sharing His love with them.
I'm not sure what that looks like with Fibromyalgia and all of it's limitations, but I am excited to find out.
I also realize I am going to be limiting my text conversations a bit. I've actually been trying to make phone calls when able because it's more personal and I like hearing my friends and family's voices.
Lots swirling around in my heart that I will be praying about.
I am reminded again and again that when I think I know something God is quite ready to show me how little I actually know. ;)
I am glad I can share my heart with Him no holds barred and He loves me even so.
