summer testimony

I can tell that my life is in a shift now... a painful shift but a beautiful, essential shift.  Call it shifting from duty to desire, schedule to soul, obligation to offering - I don't know what to call it!  But I look back... and oh my word, the past three years have been hard.  Working full time, school full time, ministry, counseling, friends, family - life has been good and FULL.  I'm afraid that I was in danger of losing myself - the part of me that is most precious, the connection to Jesus - in all of the busyness, pressure, and hub-bub.

So I quit my full time job and I start a part time job, and I begin to prepare myself for the next thing - my first counselor's "job" (well, it's an internship, but you know what I mean!).  In the midst of transitioning to working part time at a church and anticipating counseling, I find myself staring straight into my own heart... and maybe because life is quieter now, I can't escape my own heart.

For anyone who has spent time getting to know themselves, you know that it's good and it's bad... kind of beautiful and painful at the same time.  Except I think the bad usually comes first, then the good... the pain, then the beauty.   But anyway, here I am looking at my own heart, and I find in there a need that I can't explain in any word other than - precious.  Here's what I'm finding - it doesn't matter how much you know, how much reflecting you've done by a counselor's standards, how good your leadership skills may be, how much grace you can give in the moments when it's needed most - those things are not life in and of themselves. And even though I've grown by leaps and bounds in those areas in the past three years, as I look at my heart today, I find myself in much the same place I've always been  --  I am a child in desperate need of the love of her Father.


Maybe in my naivete or intensive counselor training, I thought "strength" would mean increasing independence.  But it hasn't... strength has meant increased dependence.  It's that beautiful, vulnerable place of knowing that the task in front of you has been crafted especially for you and walking forward with joy and anticipation... but knowing through and through, that you cannot do it on your own.  It's staring the task full in the face, falling on your knees, raising your hands up to heaven, and then walking forward.  It's knowing that if you stand, you'll be standing on Grace, but if you fall, you'll be caught by that same Grace.

So as I look in my own heart, I see even more of the need for increased relationship with my Father.  And I'm coming to understand that this is the greatest gift ever - to become aware of my own need and to be empowered to be willing to live in it... to open my hands, open my mouth and let Him fill me in whatever way He chooses.

So I learn not to be afraid of the 'bigness' of what is ahead of me... but to see it, feel it, let it impact me, and let it take me straight to Jesus and His cross.  May I become more like Him, may my life be more like His.