You are mine in this wild and wonderful life.
Praise God for this wild and wonderful life. Praise Yahweh that He calls us His. Praise Jehovah that he gives me grace to feel His love and His promises. At the beginning of this year, my friends encouraged me to think of a word that could be used as a theme for this new year. Not necessarily a new year’s resolution but rather something to give over to the Lord to commit to Him and strive for something different this year. My word was SIMPLIFY. So many times when thinking about my calling and my purpose I get very overwhelmed and it all seems so unattainable. Love your neighbor, have a good attitude about things that are hard, uphold a steady temper and love everyone the same, ask good questions, save the lowly, fight for your passions, say hey to the outsider, do more than what’s expected of you at work, make sure you’re making a difference in your community. All of these things are thrown at me and my small head takes all of them and warps them all into one confusing, overwhelming, powerful person who I will never perfectly be. Because all of those callings that I just listed are good and right and just. But it just seems like a lot sometimes. You know how many times I don’t say hey to the person alone in the room? You know how many times I complain about something I don’t want to do? You know how many times I opt for the easy answer when I know that working just a little harder will make the results so much better?
This life is wild. There are so many aspects of emotions and relationships and work and learning and conflict being thrown at us everyday. But YOU ARE MINE. I fail and mess up and don’t live up to expectations and let people down and let myself down. YOU ARE MINE. I want to be nicer, I want to be kinder, I want to be more aware, I want to seek Him more, I want to have more discernment. YOU ARE MINE. I want to be a better nurse, I want to be a better friend, I want to be a better woman of faith. YOU ARE MINE. Simplify. Lord, I am standing at your feet, bringing all that I am and all that I have, wanting to please and honor you with my response to this world and the decisions I make.
This life is also wonderful. We live and we love and we experience joy and we laugh and we smile. We cry, we hurt, we ache, we want, we miss, we FEEL. We are alive. Remember that simple truth and I think it will be a lot easier and a lot more freeing to sit with all of these things that we are called to and have an actual desire to do them. When we realize that we are living beings on this earth, there is a natural desire in all of us to make something out of that. We want to seek justice, we want to love the unlovable, we want to go above and beyond at work, we want to respond well to the hard things. We want to live into the fact that WE ARE HIS. Every morning on my way to work, almost to a cliché extent, I play the song “Who You Say I am” by Hillsong and I most literally SCREAM the lyrics. I AM A CHILD OF GOD. IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE THERE IS A PLACE FOR ME. Simplify. He doesn’t want us to be overwhelmed. He’s not asking too much of us. He’s not grading us. He’s not comparing us. He loves us and just wants us to love Him in return. He smiles at us and wants to feel that smile. Simplify because “YOU ARE MINE IN THIS WILD AND WONDERFUL LIFE.”
“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are” (Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton).
<3 amy