but first i just want to say, i love the way things looks so fresh and cleansed after a rain storm comes through. colors are so much more alive and vibrant.
maybe that’s what we need to come alive - a real good, strong rainstorm that strips us of all the dust and dirt we’ve collected. as the last drops fall, we’re left renewed + awake + vulnerable. we start to feel the cool air with a certain clarity. the sun pierces straight through to our soft layers that rest just beneath our tough exterior. our roots are enriched and strengthened.
i want to write a little bit about my heart, or rather, the perspective i hold over my heart. for awhile now, it’s been hard for me to feel strong emotions, other than anger or frustration. love, joy, excitedness, or even missing someone aren’t feelings i experience within myself frequently. so, for a good piece of this year and the year previous, i’ve been asking God to restore my feelings, restore my heart, put in me a heart of flesh instead of one made of stone. and He has been responding.
it happened the other day. i don’t even remember where i was or what i was doing, but i do remember all of a sudden recalling an image of the scar that runs down my father’s chest- white and straight, like fierce lightning.
when i was only four years old, he had heart surgery to replace a faulty valve in his human heart, and at that age i didn’t really grasp the magnitude of the possible negative implications.
he came out just fine, but with a very visible scar that would always remind him of that operation.
so when that image came to mind, i said to God (being hyper-sensitive to issues of the heart), “okay well, I’m guessing that’s what You want to do to me, huh? how’re You thinking of doing that?” and the answer that came back from Him made everything in me still:
“you’re going to have to go under.”
go under.
lose control.
be knocked out completely.
let the anesthetic take control.
at first i felt genuinely terrified. my mind start screaming sarcastically “i’m sorry, go under and have no idea what’s happening and not be able to wake until someone else lifts me out of the anesthesia??? nothing could possibly go wrong there...”
//sidenote: i’m much more human than I ought to be and I get much too anxious when I don’t have any control #TrustIssues.//
but after thinking through the idea and considering its currents, i’ve been finding that i want to go under, to fall deep into His Presence and not only let Him operate on and transform me there but to REMAIN there… under the anesthetic of His Presence: the only One who can sustain me, accept me for who i am, love me unconditionally and never walk out on me.
God has been so incredibly good + faithful to me, speaking sweet slices of love to me through all that surrounds me. He says “you say you haven’t seen Me face to face but I keep sending you love notes through those who surround you. those details, those gifts, those words are from Me.”
i know i’ve been missing out on so much of His incredibleness but i want to experience Him so deeply and i know the key to that is spending quality time with Him- in His Presence.
Papá, with all that i am, with all the gifts and talents You’ve given me, with all the dreams deep in my heart that are just seeds right now, with all of my thoughts, will all of my feelings, with all of my words actions footsteps touches, everything that i see, my attitudes, let me REFLECT YOU let me SERVE YOU let me HONOR YOU, great and mighty God!!
