What is it supposed to feel like?
That thing where you find your soul mate and “you just know.”
How is that supposed to feel? What does it look like when you just know?
I dont just know.
I dont know that ill ever just know. And I dont know whether its okay or not.
Rambles of a frazzled mess.
It is never far from me. I am wrapped up in it.
Reject flesh, die to self.
How do I kill and ignore what wraps and suffocates me? How do I unravel? How do I kill comfort?
I hate it. My flesh. I hate that I love it. I hate that I run to it.
I hate its resilience. As many times as I try to run from it, I snap right back again.
How do I rid myself of me, Lord?
Black streets. White skies. Black windows. White buildings. Black coffee. White eyes.
Blank, bare, dull eyes. Eyes that look passed mine into nothing; going nowhere, feeling nothing. Eyes whose whites bore through the space between us creating a deep, black abyss of nothing.
Dead.
Alone.
Empty.
Some people died a long time ago and simply wait for their bodies to waste away. Some people drive black Mercedes and wear white Gucci suits with black Armani ties that they keep in their prisitine white mansions, but they are completely foreign to the concept of what it is to be Full. Alive. Happy.
Some people live their whole lives in black and white. They are colorblind to reality; blind to the colors of fullness and real abundance. Blind to real goodness and happiness. They spend their whole lives living nothing more than a shade of reality.
Color is to wonder. Color is to dream wide awake. Color is to grasp hold of the idea of LIFE and to choose fullness; REAL fullness. The fullness that comes only in the roots of our inmost being where the completeness of who we are is found. Fullness that doesn’t come with accumulating stuff and gaining the approval of the world, but rather with meeting the Maker of your talents and abilities and personality and heart and discovering the wonder of intimacy and relationship with Him. It costs everything the world has to offer. But it gains everything you have been hungering for in the depths of your spirit.
Black and white become nothing more than memories found in an empty casket where your grave used to be. It is swallowed up in wonder and awe. This film that has been covering your eyes comes off, and you see color for the first time. Rich, warm, brilliant, piercing colors that flood through to the depths of your soul, and something is found. That thing you have been living your life in desperate search for has finally been grasped. And that place that was once hollow and barren and dead; that place that once brought anxiety and worry and restlessness is now filled with this magnificent, warm, thick consistency of completeness and wholeness.
This is your Maker.
This is Fullness.
All you once knew is lost, and all you once sought is finally found all at the same time.
Fullness is color. Fullness is brilliant. It costs everything. But you lose nothing, for all that you gain is all your spirit has hungered for and more.
Strip off your grave clothes. Wipe the film from your eyes and seek out your Maker. Enter into the life you were meant, designed, fashioned, and created to live for.
This life is color.
You were never meant to be colorblind.
Gossip kills.
Your words are stronger than you know. They can give life or death.
Choose your words carefully.
Humbled.
He’s literally the best.
That’s all.
There was this realization I had to come to at several times in my life, and that I know I will have to come to several more times in the future. I came back to this realization this past week, weak and broken. It’s one of the most humbling places to come back to. When the realization begins to sweep over me like a tidal wave, I try to avoid it and ignore it and reject it until I can do nothing more than stop, turn, and face it; face that morbid monster that forever follows me.
The realization is that i am a mess.
I don’t have it together. I am not perfect. I am a sinner. I’ve got dirt in my shoes. And I am a mess.
My closet is full of junk, and my hands cling tightly to things that will kill me. My heart is deceitful, my thoughts are incapable of being fully pure, and my flesh gets fed more than my spirit far too often.
I am a mess.
I desire what i know will kill me, and rebellion lurks in the shadows of my heart. I rely on people to tell me I am worthy most of the time, and too often I rely on myself to try to make myself worthy. I like to take much more than I like to give, and I think about myself about 90% more than I do anyone else.
I am a mess.
I insist on being understood more than I try to understand, and I hold my head high with pride thinking I am better than others. I like my way more than I like God’s way most of the time, and I don’t trust Him in all things. I like being in control more than I like submitting.
I am a mess.
But the worst realization i come to every time is that I find I don’t fully believe that I am free. I would rather punish myself and keep myself in places of bondage rather than allow myself to accept the free and glorious gift of freedom and abundant life that Jesus went to all measures to give me. I disregard this incredible thing being offered to me, and instead pridefully insist on attempting to take care of it myself and condemn myself because I think that is what is best.
I am literally a mess.
But.
Something else happens in these humbling moments of self realization. God tells me something in the midst of all the ugliness that I face. He tells me that regardless of my mess, regardless of my struggles, regardless of my inconsistencies and rebellious and sinful nature, He is consistent. Regardless of my inconsistency, He is consistent. He reminds me that He has made a covenant with me, not a contract. He has said for better of for worse, not do better or else. He has said that He doesn’t relate to me in my sinful nature, but rather in the nature of Christ. He relates to me in my willingness to trust Him and depend on Him, regardless of my circumstances. He has told me that I don’t have to be enough; that I will always have something that needs fixing and mending, but that that’s okay.
That’s okay.
It is OKAY. It is okay for me to be a mess. My circumstances don’t depict what His heart for me looks like or how He will choose to treat me for the day. I am fully and wholly loved. Always. In all things. For better or worse. I am fully and wholly and extravagantly loved. When I finally turn to Him with my mess and ask Him what I need to do to get better, He simply tells me, “Be still and know that I am God. Be still. And KNOW. Know in your spirit and in the depths of your heart that I AM. I AM the Creator of the air you need to survive and the heart that keeps you alive. I AM the Commander of the Skies that directs the winds and the rains and the clouds. I AM the conductor of the symphonies of crickets and birds. I AM the intricate hand that knit each piece of hair into your scalp and carved each crease in your hands. I AM. Know who I am in the stillness of your heart.”
I don’t need to fix anything. I don’t have to work at and strive for anything. I don’t have to relocate or transition into another place before I can be accepted by God. He says that in your pile of rubble is where He will meet you. In the eye of the storm of your life is where He will meet you. He doesn’t stand above us and wait for us to get up to His level before He will walk with us. He came down to the lowest darkest places of our lives, even when we rejected Him and didn’t want Him to, and He stands behind us and pushes us forward and upward. He is before us and behind us, encouraging us and helping us and pushing us towards the person that He created us to be. He is in it with us. He isn’t waiting on us to fix it all. He is already here, right now, in the darkest corners of your life, desiring to get the opportunity to tell you how amazing and extravagant you are in His eyes. He just wants to love you. He just wants to accept you and make you feel whole. Because you are worth wholeness. You are worth being told that you are great. Because you are. And you aren’t great because of anything you are doing or anything you have done, you are great because Jesus has made you great. He has seen you and called you up into greatness by dying for you and tangibly showing you with the greatest sacrifice that you are great enough and worthy enough to die for.
That is who you are. That is who I am. That is who we are. We are sinners who have been called into greatness by the greatest lover on the planet. So you are a mess. Be a mess. Accept that you are a mess. Because it is only by doing this that you will see how great God’s love is for you.
You are fully, wholly and extravagantly loved. Receive it.
I was born. I came into the world a human. A human being, I was formed and molded and put on this earth. I was born.
But it is so much more than that.
I was BORN!
I, Alison Renee Conrad, the essence of who I am, the person that only comes in the form of me, was born! I was brought into existence. The beginning of me started.
I was BORN.
But more than that, the most important part of that, was that I was born a woman.
God called me to women’s ministry on Saturday night. He showed me my life, showed me His truths, revealed His desires and passions and identity over me as a woman, and called me to share it with other woman.
And I could not be more excited.
It’s rare to find community that goes deep; to find a people who usher you in and seek out the inner parts of your heart and desire healing and wholeness for you. It is rare to find a community that desires depth, let alone one that does this well.
I have been brought into one this past year.
I have found myself being developed and helping to develop a community that continues to propel and enhance each individual in their relationships with our Abba. All of us have had past experiences in community. Whether it be in the high school you went to, or the neighborhood families you grew up next to, or the church families you entered into, or college ministries/groups/clubs you chose to become a part of. We have all experienced community. And a lot of it has been broken. A lot of it has deterred its people from being real. A lot of it has placed an identity over its individuals that was never their identity to begin with. A lot of it HAS encouraged the secret places of its people’s hearts to be exposed, and then has left those places to wither and die rather than nurturing and taking care of those places. A lot of it has left its members burned, broken, and walled up with a determination to never let another person in again.
God has placed a high calling on His Community. He has created it for good. We can’t do life without it. It is there to help us recognize and believe in the identity God has given us. It sounds strange to say that and believe it if you have experienced the damage it has the ability to do. But it is truth. God wants us to live in close unity, sharing everything including His Spirit so that we as His body would be able to work in greater and richer measures to bring forth His Kingdom.
Right now, the community I have delved into has been the biggest blessing yet in my life. I cannot express the gratefulness my heart has to God for what He has brought me into. It brings me to tears to think that God has such a beautiful adventure for me here with these people. But the serpent of my past creeps up and tells me to draw back now, because getting this close to this many people again will only lead to more of the heartbreak I experienced in my past. It tells me that it’s not worth it to become vulnerable and pour out my spirit to these people. It tells me they have no intentions of taking care of me. It whispers lies of deceit and blasphemy.
So I have dedicated this day off of work to sitting with God and asking Him to reveal His heart. I have asked Him to show me what it looks like to maintain a healthy community where we can continually grow and heal and be encouraged and brought forth in our faith. I have been seeking His heart on what it looks like, specifically, to maintain a healthy community of men AND women, where we can do life together in vulnerability while at the same time protecting our hearts and our purity.
What does that look like? How are we supposed to bind ourselves together in unity and harmony where our hearts are exposed and raw in order for God to lift us up and strengthen us as His body?
All that I have gotten so far is that when we enter into the family of Christ, our relationships are defined by God and not by us. Every relationship that we get into in the community of Christ has a role given by God. And our job is to see God’s face in the friends made and to ask God how to serve them and what the relationship is supposed to look like. And then to TALK about it. And to run towards that goal together so that God can bless that relationship in every way possible. It is easy to confuse intentions with friends of the opposite sex. So keeping your heart on the table, and consistently asking God to remind you of how He thinks about the other person will promote healthy community.
It is rare to find a group of people you can run with and learn with. It is a privilege to be taught and grown while running alongside brothers and sisters. And I desire to soak up every ounce of it.
Keep teaching me, Abba.
(via etiquetteforalady)
Healing is yours.
(Source: herewecollide, via wildpeonies)
