The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. Zeph 3:17
Here is my story:
I gave my life to Jesus when I was about 9 years old. I was an outsider, in a new town, my Father had left my sister and I for drink and other women and my Mother, although she was there, was emotionally absent. So a Jesus who let me feel, a God who understood, a Father who wouldn't leave was water to my thirsty heart. I believed Jesus, I believed He cared, that I could trust Him with my life. This should have set me up for amazing success! I wish I could tell you that I never looked back, that I blossomed into this beautiful Christian woman, pure and focused and lovely, that every delightful potential God had breathed in me began to sprout right then. The truth is that I became quite the opposite of a beautiful Godly flower. Instead I believed the lies in my head, that I was unworthy, unable, and I became dry and brittle, an old frayed leaf lying on the ground. I stumbled through life, making mistake after mistake, bad choices riddled my life and nothing I did was committed to Him. I was too busy trying to be; be sufficient, be happy, be understood, be loved. The damaged seedling I had started off as chose not to believe God's promises even though I had heard them and without meaning to, I messed up my life so badly, hurting a lot of people along the way. Eventually one day I admitted to myself, I was dead. Alive on the outside to the world, but completely wasted and dead on the inside. I hated who I was, there was nothing I liked about who I had become. Nothing resonated with my desires for acceptance and authenticity, nothing I had tried had worked. And God saw me.
He saw how I could never fit in, how I didn't even feel good enough to be that person called "Christian", he saw my struggles and pain. My veneer of being just good enough, good enough Mother, good enough wife, acceptable nurse, balancing the line and trying to be happy even though I had no direction and my spirit was starving. Christianity, like the colour of a chameleon's skin, was just one skin I had tried on. I didn't move freely in it, It felt awkward, uncomfortable. I would put it on intermittently, try it on on Sunday or when my friends tried to get me to do things I knew were wrong. Because the lies I believed almost from the start had starved my roots; "You aren't like them", "You can't tell anyone what you believe, they won't like it", "You have to fit in to survive and get what you need". So I couldn't grow in that skin, the skin I thought God wanted me to wear.
But praise God in His wisdom and kindness, He knew that even though I was unfaithful and unbelieving, He would be faithful and believe in me. He came to me young because He knew I would never make it without His protection. I had given Him my permission at 9. And so, even though I turned my back on His His beautiful face every day until I was 35, He continued to love me and protect me and guide my path. It took many years to see this, to see the beautiful, painful truth. What kind of love pursues someone for 26 years day after day, patiently waiting, whispering, never giving up?
God's grace and mercy, His love is never ending, He never gives up.
That God delights in His children, that the Maker of All Things rejoices over each of us with singing,in the very skin He gave us, battered and abused though it is, is too astounding to comprehend. So after I had come to the end of myself, He patiently sat with me and walked with me and told me it was alright to be different, to feel so much, He asked me to be authentic with myself and Him and to trust that He had made me wonderfully and for a purpose that He would fulfill for me. And I finally had the courage to turn to He who had always been with me, to look Him in the face and take Him at His Word, a child again in His eyes.
So I have resolved to write of the lies I believed, of what He has shown me, of all my failings, how His song over my life has saved me. And how He is teaching me to let go and be the dancer He created me to be even though I am so bad at dancing.
My words are not advice because we are each unique, the only Word we can trust comes from Him. But perhaps some of what He has shown me will resonate with someone else. The glory is God's and I love Him because He first loved me.
