Finally, I wrote again

There once was a young girl.  Her mom and dad loved her very much.  She enjoyed nature and being alone talking to God as a child.  As she grew she began to dream dreams of marriage and having a family of her own.  Eventhough she didn't realize it much of her life was spent alone.  This would go with her through most of her life.  She felt the need to keep her parents loving her by performance even though they never gave her reason.  She sought their continued approval.

She lived her life doing this with friends.  Then as she married and had her children she also sought their approval.  She longed to be a good mother but did not know how.  She gave to her children through providing their physical needs.  She got them to activities, church, school.  The children lacked for nothing but their moms heart.

The children grew older and left home.  The mother didn't know what she had done wrong but knew she had failed her family.  Then the love of God began to penetrate the mothers heart.  She began to experience Gods acceptance and love in ways she could not imagine.  She began to live life and be in the lives of others and her family.  She was coming out of a life time of protection and isolation.

She realized what she had not done in her marriage and with her children was give her heart away.  So how could she expect them to give her theirs.  Little by little she began to open her self up to them and to others.  To not fear rejection or pain but to be more interested in learning and giving than she was about receiving.  To see God do what she could not do and be for her out of who she could not be.

This woman is me.  I have felt the pull of temptation to live in regret.  But know the forgiveness of my family and God.  I have seen how my failures and my sin God has used to bring me to a place that is better than if I had never failed.  I have spent my life trying to find contentment and happiness, peace.  I have dined at the White House with the staff of the President of the United States and been in a couple of their presence.  I have eaten my meals at the cafeteria of several mental hospitals and been with a woman who said she was a devil worshiper and felt fear over take me.  I have been on ocean shores, mountain tops, and flown high above the sky.  I have been behind the locked doors and bared windows with the insane.  I have been with the rich and famous and have sat in AA with the addict trying to make it one more day.    I have been in the admiration of thousands and felt all alone and I have been all alone with the Lord and felt His love and acceptance that I knew who I was and my purpose.  I have had anything I wanted that money could buy and I have felt I have lost all that mattered.  I have found out that giving your heart away is where you find out who  you really are.  Is where you meet the very heart of God.  His heart for you.

So the walls of protection, the fear, the comfort places are gone for today and I am giving my heart away.  I may pull back tomorrow but now I know the way back home.  The way to the party.  I use to think I had to hold on but then I saw it was Him holding on to me.  I did not find happiness and contentment but it found me.  Not in the circumstances that are easy and appear good or the people that love and accept me and always do what I want but in the Person of Jesus. That I can be open and honest and vulnerable and risk rejection for the sake of intimacy.  I see that in my failure and need is the very place where Jesus feels at home.  My perfectionism is going and I am embracing my weakness and finding a strength and courage I never though I would have in this life.  When trouble is knocking down my door and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel I remember, He reminds me, it is Him setting me free more and more.  So I am risking what I cannot keep to gain what I cannot lose, Jim Elliott.  I am not moving into the prison but standing on the outside calling others out.  To a place of freedom.

I am finding that the gospel is all I really need to know and all good things flow out of that love of the Father in sending His Son for me.  So it grows deep and wide and I am humbled once again.  I am brought to repentance and a joy that I cannot keep.  I know His mercy and the wrath that was taken out on His Son for me.  I am knowing healing.  That I might fail but I might fly and it is worth the risk.  That it is in my failing that I soar.  It is through giving my heart away that I find His for me.