Rekindled

It's been more than 5 months since I've written. It feels foreign and like coming home, all at the same time.

My last post was written in late October, just before I attended the Ezer Collective, a Christian Women's leadership training, in Minneapolis. I was petrified walking in. There were writers, authors, CEOs, pastors...and people like me, just learning what it means to walk in their given assignments.

On the first night, our hostess, Jo Saxton, told us to start walking in our gifts. If we have been told by God that we should speak, we are speakers. If we have been told we should write, we are writers. Throughout the weekend, I became comfortable with saying, "I'm a writer and a speaker." By the last day, I felt it deep within me; it was part of me.

Then, I had to come home, and I bawled. I missed my husband and kids, but I didn't know how to bring my new "identity" as a writer and speaker home to meet my "identity" as a wife and a mom. They felt awkward and separate.

When I got home, I could tell Josiah was NOT okay. I thought, That's okay. He'll get used to this new me eventually. This is my purpose, and he'll learn to help me walk in it.

If you haven't caught on yet, friends, what you're witnessing in the retelling, is what it looks like to crash and burn upon reentry.

Josiah and I had many conversations over the next few days, all of which I chalked up to his fear, until he said: "I'm afraid this speaking thing is going to take off, and when it does, you're never going to want to be here because you already don't want to be here. Even when you're here, it feels like you're not."

I can't tell you how much it hurts to even write those words...because they were true. I didn't want to be here. I wanted to start my journey, go all the places,  and do all the big things. I wanted to do something that made me feel successful, unlike this mom thing, which I feel dreadfully unprepared for and not-gifted in.

And with those words that hurt so much, but desperately needed to be said, the demolition began. Layer upon layer of inaccurate perceptions and false identities had to be knocked down and scraped away. I have spent more time sobbing on my knees, crying out to God, than I even thought was possible.

I was searching for worth in everything BUT Christ; spending my time as a wife and a mom felt like something that was just holding space until I could get to my real calling, my real purpose, my real identity.

But slowly, God showed me that my identity has nothing to do with any title I hold other than Daughter of the King...not even "wife" and "mom." My worth is completely unassociated with anything I have ever done or will do.

There is nothing I could ever do to be more pleasing, loved, accepted, or forgiven. Because I have accepted Christ and call Him Lord over my life, I am already "deeply loved, fully pleasing, totally accepted, and completely forgiven;"* there's nothing I could do to earn it or lose it.

Before all this, I could have told you that, but I didn't really believe it. There were places deep down I hadn't let God touch or heal, so I toiled desperately and frantically to be pleasing, loved, and accepted by everyone around me.

But all of it was empty and left me aching inside for what was real. It was there all the time in the person of my Savior; He just had to scrape away all of the other stuff first.

I've spent the last 5 months learning to enjoy His presence and hear His voice, to just be present and enjoy what He's given me. I've spent 5 months sheltered, hidden, letting him slowly, and often painfully, strip, scrape, and scrub.

Now, He says it's time to take a step forward, on wobbly, new legs, but much firmer ground.

This week, as I was studying 2 Timothy, a verse pierced my heart. From logos to rhema, it became a word just for me:

Therefore, I remind you to keep ablaze the gift of God

that is in you through the laying on of my hands.

For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness,

but one of power, love, and sound judgment.

2 Timothy 1:6-7

The Greek word there for "keep ablaze" is anazopyreo, and it means to rekindle the remains of a fire, to stir up the embers of a fire that looks almost dead, and give it new life.

It's time to start sharing again, to rekindle the fire in my heart to share His words.

There are 2 things I'm 100% sure of as I walk forward. The first is that I'm going to mess up. I'm going to make mistakes and lean on old habits every now and then. At times, I'm going to fail. But what makes all of that okay is the second: He is with me every step of the way, loving, steering, and correcting.

I don't have to be perfect or enough because He already is, and that's enough for me.


*This quote is from a book which helped me greatly along on this journey: The Search for Significance, by Robert S. McGee. If you haven't read it, you should. If you have, then you already know.