Who I Want to Be (Part I)

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead;
Yesterday is a promise that you've broken...
This is your life and today is all you've got now
And today is all you'll ever have--
Don't close your eyes...

This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose?

~Switchfoot
_____________________________

I found myself journaling last Friday, "I tire of the constant mental/emotional energy wasted on seemingly consequential issues. I am sick of fighting, sick of division. I am weary of encountering misdirected passions for everything but what really matters."

I have never been so weary in my life. I'm not just talking about physically tired. After being diagnosed with MS, then Lyme's disease, then getting pregnant and having to deal with exhausted adrenals, I know what physically tired is.

I am spiritually exhausted and emotionally drained. I'm tired of trying to pick up my Bible to read it and hearing a hundred interpretations of whatever passage I'm looking at, all varying by the denominational/experiential background of whichever voice is coming through. I am tired of sitting in church and trying to sort through what is being said to determine if it is really a true reflection of God's character or if it is merely a passage of Scripture being used to prove someone's principles. I'm tired of hearing pat answers that offer no hope or real truth, tired of being told that I have so much life and power as a Christian while being told at the same time that I cannot be passionate and I must not deviate from the majority rule of the "Church." I am tired of the political, cultural emphasis of the "religious right" of which I must necessarily be a part.

All my life I have been told that I am judgmental. I believed it, and I've spent the last several years raking myself over the coals for it. Recently, however, I am realizing that God created me to be a person who stands up for what I believe is truth, no matter the cost. As He has taught me more and more about offering grace, my attempts not to "judge" because I want to give grace have resulted in something I did not expect.

I only allow myself to be passionate when it is "safe" to be passionate.

Don't offend or judge anyone. Pour your energy into ministry and you'll be praised for your service. Pour your energy into improving your marriage by the book and you'll have an awesome marriage. Pour your life into your children and make sure they attend the right church every Sunday so they can be taught about God, and you'll produce Christian kids. Give yourself to the Lord for singleness or missions and He is using you greatly. Sing the right songs, pick the right friends, support the right goals, and you're worshipful and wise.

So my passion is redirected from the Gospel to the "deeper things of God," Jesus is sidelined, and I am told that "surrender" of my will to God's will (as defined by whom?) is a noble goal. I am told that I cannot be intimate with the Father, despite the fact that Christ prays for this very thing when He defines eternal life as "knowing God and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent." There is no grace for my failures to measure up to the standards that others have set for me, and certainly no grace for my failure to live up to my own expectations.

Last weekend, I remembered the last time I felt like I was truly who I want to be. It was a time when God's Word was alive to me, when my desire for Him was comparable to that of a lover for her beloved. I trusted Him, no matter what. I was not bound by what others thought of me, and I did not live in fear of tomorrow. I felt beautiful. I felt complete. God was the safest place I'd ever known. He was so near.

I had chosen to keep a vow I made to God that was condemned by nearly everyone I knew. I chose to love someone who had killed his love for me, knowing that he might never come back, and if he didn't, God would be enough. It didn't matter what anyone else thought.

If I had a picture of myself during that time, it would have been that of a little girl running and playing in a meadow of flowers and sunshine. She would have been wearing a white dress and little white blossoms in her hair. She had everything to lose, and nothing to fear.

Now I see her standing at the edge of the forest, clinging to the shadows she thinks will hide her, yet longing to be spinning into the sunlight of the meadow before her. She feels as though she has lost everything.

At some point, she stopped believing God would be enough.

Today I am not who I want to be. For the last two years, God has been chipping patiently at my walls of fear, continually placing before me the evidence of His gentle love. He is pursuing my heart. This I know. He does not despise the woman He created me to be.

There can be no shame for me in living before Him, complete in Christ.

3 comments:

Mike said...

Kel,

Wanted you to know, I was quite struck by this post . . . enough that it prompted me to write one of my own here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

~Mike

Just Me said...

Kelly,

I worked with you at HSLDA and occasionally visit your blog. Today God brought me here to hear His voice. Your entry left me in tears hearing the echos of my own heart and glimpses of my own journey with Him. Thank you for your transperancy (sp?), you blessed me beyond words today.

Terri (Silzell) White

Kelly Sauer said...

Terri, (and, really, all who have left comments) thank you for your comment. I'm just kind of sitting here blinking at what seems to be going on. People almost never comment on my "deep" posts, and this two-part post I put up felt so completely incoherent and discouraging. I knew I wanted to post it, but I didn't even feel like it was making sense over the week or so I was working on it! I've been going through a time of discouragement and have been struggling to figure out where I even am on the map--all I know is that everything is Him--it has to be Him, or I'm so lost. Thank you for the encouragement you have given me. I feel so often that I have nothing of God to offer anyone. Thank you so much for sharing your heart in return for my ramblings. It is so good to know that I am not alone.

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