On Being

It is during my times of greatest change that I feel most threatened at the prospect of losing my identity. Here, the innocent remark from a friend sparks an internal war between truth and my feelings of betrayal. Here, the not-knowing becomes the only enemy, and I fight for control of my destiny. As if I believe I can own my destiny. I want to be, to exist in this void.

And God is "I Am" and I live and move and have my being in Him, and I resent Him for that some days, and others I quietly acknowledge that I am glad to fall into Him and let Him live for me because I'm too tired to hold onto me anymore.

I am like the wind, like the mountains, too free-spirited, too wild, yet I understand that He has made me this way for His purpose, and He does not desire my captivity - merely the love of my whole heart. Merely. I say it as if it is a simple thing, and simple it is, if I will let it be simple, if I will thank Him for the void and trust His creating hand for my today and my yesterday and my tomorrow. He is, after all, the God who makes the crooked paths straight and leads the blind in ways they do not know.

I know I will always be a restless heart, for I am always seeking more of Him and He is always changing my perspective and stepping outside the bigger and bigger boxes I make for Him. His words burn and ache inside of me and bring life that I do not understand and cannot question, and I am broken and whole at once and I ache to see Him as He is so I may be who I am meant to be.

Already, I feel Him creating new love in me, freeing me from my pursuit of one thing so that I know it is all right to pursue another, but the release of that one thing is the release of a part of the being I have assumed, as if I am laying down a part of my armor in my fight for my destiny. I am more exposed, more vulnerable, more able to love, more afraid to give my affirmation than I should be, for I am not truly threatened by those who ask it.

But perfect love casts out fear, and I am new at throwing myself into His love and trusting Him with who I am as the me that knows His voice struggles against the me that must know and control who I am. My testimony is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, and I am nothing without Him, and everything that I am that is worth anything is Him, because God chose the weak and the fools who would let Him be their God. And He is not ashamed to be their God because they live and move in Him, through all the change and all the being that they didn't choose as they walked by faith that was solid and sure and nothing at all like a blind leap into the dark.

I remember these others who have gone before, my cloud of witnesses, those who spent years with Him in the wilderness before they learned of grace to teach it, who wandered years after Him across plains and desert looking for Canaan, who died believing His promise that He would give them everything they longed for. He waited to give them the promise, but I know the fullness of it in Jesus, and in my own wilderness I learn of His grace for me, and I learn of His grace for others, and vulnerable me learns more of love without fear.

To find rest in Him, this is my destiny, seared upon my soul by the only Word that brings light into darkness and reaps where it seems nothing has been sown. I seek and I don't seek, but every day I am changed, and my heart is changed, and I want to love and to rest here in this void and trust His love for me. Who I am is no longer the point; I cannot define my identity for myself, for He has become more in me than I knew.

All my being is to be found in His "I AM" and, oddly, I don't resent Him for this. What, after all, would I really be without Him?