Summer Breeze

Today I sit before the cross. It's something I used to do a lot up until just about two years ago, before everything got crazy, confusing and conflicted. So in a rare moment, I come before the cross, kneel down to the floor and my heart cries out with words and emotions my face and body are too exhausted to process. A warm breeze gently blows against my face as if the Father has bent down and tenderly lifted my face so I can stare into His eyes of love. It's something. It's a start. It's a moment of rekindling. The breeze is my reminder of what is true and real, this connection to the Eternal.

A few weeks ago I pushed through the end of my Spring term and am now into my last year (supposedly) of grad school. Time has flown and I'm not sure I've done enough wrestling and studying to really know what I'm doing. But it's a start. At the same time I have been in a season of redeeming my past. For reasons beyond what I can understand I've found myself remembering different passions and desires I had when I was younger. What plans and dreams I had for my future. And I've been rekindling, slowly, some of those same desires and passions once again. I've also found relationships with people who used to be in my life coming back into my life once again. Those who seem to be messengers from the Lord at just the right moment, coming to speak to me and remind me who I am to get back on track with where God has called me.The other day I ran into a friend I had grown up with, a friend that I had lost because of the broken relationship with my former best friends. Both of us recounted memories from our childhood, the struggles we experienced through our adulting process, the ways we have changed, and it was a gift. It restored to me many of the years I had lost in the pain of the betrayal and anger I felt over my former best friends walking away from a friendship that had been established since we were very young.

I also began being mentored and counseled by a remarkable woman of God who has been there for many of my adult years. She stepped back into my life in a moment of need. When I was extremely lonely and those who were in my smaller than I'd like world were not able to be there for me. It was at the same time that my counselor and I discovered I am a third culture kid, existing as a square peg in a world of round holes. Never really fitting in anywhere, never really being understood. This led to finally attacking some of the deeper pain behind my feelings that I am never good enough, the feelings that there is something fundamentally wrong with me and that I am always wrong.

Being able to adjust to many different environments and people but never really belonging has been an immense struggle in my life. And I wonder if others out there have been in the same boat. Never really feeling like you belong. There's something powerful in discovering who God has made you to be and how He wants to use and invite you into His plans. Our identity and gifting are meant to be cherished and celebrated and often times it's not. Satan and the fallen world and fallen humanity will constantly send messages of inadequacy to us. Messages that push us to be the same, messages that shame us and tear us down to the point of being ineffective for the beautiful and powerful call that God has placed over our lives. Even the Church has fallen prey to be the bearer of these same messages, done in the name of God, because we are fallen human beings too who struggle to truly work out our salvation, and are too quick to speak our words and our interpretations before we speak His truth.

It's kind of like this (VERY simply put):
A certain group of people really connect well with each other one day. Over time the sameness that drew them together leads to discovery of differences and uniqueness among all of its members. At that point each person discovers and relates to these differences in different ways and at different times. And some may never come to points of clarity and may continue to stay in confusion about the other person. At that point each person has a choice to accept the tension and choose to work through it and draw closer, or they choose that the tension is not worth it and begin to pull away. 

Some people may never really be able to be related to. The capacity for the other members of the group to work through the tension and begin to accept and draw closer to them is not really there.

I point this out more to offer grace and awareness, especially to those who are experiencing similar things. And I'm here to say that there is nothing wrong with you! Did you hear me? There is nothing wrong with you! Who you are has nothing to do with what you do. Not even your areas of gifting define who you are. For your identity cannot be controlled by you, your mom, your friends, your neighbors, your church, your government, your SAT or GRE score, your athleticism, your work, nor even your body. Your identity is found in the Holy One, who invites you to crawl up into His lap, lay your head against His chest and hear His heartbeat. Your identity is found in the Alpha and Omega who saw you before time began and yearned to be in relationship with you and for you to draw near to Him. Your identity is found in the blood of Christ shed on Calvary. The Prince of Peace who asks you to just reach out and touch the hem of his garment. The Lover of your Soul, who knows every hair on your head.

So the Lord asks us to come together and remember, together, what Jesus did on the cross. Communion invites everyone, every Son and Daughter, to the table to partake. Which means I need you as much as you need me. I need you to be you and you need me to be me so we can come together and enter into the courts of our King with thanksgiving. I think this is something that has been really lost in this generation - unity, community, connection. And I'll be the first to say I am guilty of this. I'd like to believe I do this but the reality is that I don't. Grace upon grace says don't stay there. So if you feel outcast, misunderstood, trampled on, ineffective, or inadequate (and the list goes on), know you are welcome at the Table of the Lord. Here, you belong...we all belong.