I feel like a child, eagerly dancing before God’s throne, with my arms fully extended, lifting my heart toward him saying, “Here! Here! Take it! Make it something pretty. I wanna see! I wanna see!”
You laugh maybe, but that’s the image I got today after I finished a prayer that I realized was entirely full of eagerness and anticipation and a longing to fulfill every purpose that God made me for. The words came easily, releasing my mind, body and heart to Him and His purposes, without fear or hesistation. I have things I hope is part of His will for me life – but more than anything I want to easily hear God. To be able to eagerly obey out of love and excitement. To know without any doubts that what I’m doing is someething He decreed and therefore will succeed exactly the way he wants. To be allowed to serve Him and live out my God-created identity no matter what it is or what other people think. To be in love with my God.
So far, when I pray for direction, He’s just said ‘wait.’ It’s hard but I’m learning. Yesterday I felt He was saying I would have to give up my idea of a sucessful timeline and actions according to where the world thinks I should be at for my age. It’s hard for me to wait. I feel like a racehorse, prancing in the gate, waiting for it to open. But I know there’s a reason and He knows what is best for me.
I’m so excited and eager to see what God is going to make me into and use me for. When I get to Heaven, I don’t want to feel like there was a role in the history of this world that I was meant to play –and didn’t. I am understanding God now in ways I never did before and I wish everyone in the world could realize how good God really is.
I wish I was an artist. How drastically different this picture is than the little girl hiding in the bogs I described a year or so ago.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
If I could paint a picture....
If I could paint a picture, I would paint the image that came to me in church today.
I saw a man seated. I could not see his face but the jagged scars in his wrists identified him at once. He was in a garden of soft green with flowers peeping from between the blades of grace. A tree is at his back, lowering branches of a weeping willow around the group gathered around him. His hand strokes the face of a little girl with golden curls and a light blue dress. She is laughing through sparkling blue eyes. Her sash is white, clean and unwrinkled. On his other side is another girl with dark hair and a headband, wearing a dress of forest green. She kneels in front of him, her hands touching his knee. She, too, is unafraid. Between the two girls stands another, holding up a string of beads. A work of art that she has labored over and eagerly shows for his approval. It is granted by the look on her face.
But in the far corner, there is something which at first glance mars the peaceful scene. One more girl in a tattered, drab gown somewhere between the color of green and grey. Her sash trails the ground, hanging at one side where it has come loose. Brown hair hangs half hiding her face, whips flying up, lacking the touch of a comb. She is not part of the group. Not even close to the group. She kneels by the edge of a bog, one knee sinking into it's soft ground, the other foot planted on more firm ground. One hand grasps the long stem of a cattail, the other disappears into the mud as she tries to push herself up. The apron she wears holds the marks of long smears left by her hands, marring the white surface.
Though she is busy struggling to get up and most of her thoughts are directed toward that, her face is turned toward the man in a pleading, longing but very fearful look. Something we cannot see reaches out toward her, drawing her back down the road that lays just on the far side of the picture. The road is made of dirt, though well kept, going off into a place that promises better than the bog. But what, we don't know. But the man is ahead, though barricaded by the creatures of perfection, light and happiness.
Creatures she feel would only shove her back toward the bog, kicking her chest and pushing her lower than she already is. And the man that she feels unworthy to approach, confused about who he really is, yet relentlessly drawn toward him. Longing for him, despite her overwhelming hesitation. If one of the girls were to go and offer a hand to take her to the man, the girl would draw back, becoming entrapped in the bog. Her trust has been long shattered and disillusioned.
Is it possible that the man could take her hand and they could walk down that road together? Or must she choose between the road and the man? Is she brave enough to do anything besides peek from the bulrushes?
I know not how the story ends. Nor will it be as a real painting, forever frozen in one second of a life. I feel sure that the man will leave the flock of butterflies to go after the black sheep. She may not be like the other girls. She may never learn to trust anyone but the man.
But I cannot see her as the awful creature that she perceives herself to be. I feel her hopelessness but know she is not beyond hope. I do not see a blackened, defective misfit. I see a little child who has been shoved into the bog one too many times by someone she trusted.
I cannot hate her and I know the man does not either.
She is her biggest critic. But when she sees herself, hatred melts, compassion is stirred. The girl in the picture doesn't know she is being watched. But when I see her, I cannot hate myself.
Posted by Lindsey at 5:06 PM 0 comments
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