"Be you", comes the reply, Spoken straight into my heart.
I don't know how to do that. Don't know how to let my own face show clear in the mirror.
Don't really like the look of it most days. Struggle to see the Beauty written there.
It comes from wounds turned to scars now. Gashes born of abandon. A lifetime I've spent in this journey of healing. And some days it feels like today is the very first day.
Be me? But me is ugly, filthy, broken. I have no glory to offer. No perfectly packaged faith. No eloquent pages to publish. I am raw.
And for all the healing, all the weaving back together, still I discover more wounds. More gaping holes in my Created self. More spaces where the Divine has been shattered. More vacant corners in this beating heart.
What could I have to offer?
"You have Me"
And isn't that all there is?
When everything else is peeled away. When beauty grows wrinkled and words become silent.
When Pharisee-faith looks black in the Light of love.
Isn't the only gift really Grace. Only Grace.
So being me is becoming an offering.
Laying my heart open and offering Him. Pouring out what I know to be Truth.
In my brokenness I am Loved. I am Desired. A creation of intricate Design. A masterpiece.
I have no perfection to offer. No picture-perfect life.
This life I am living is often bloody. Pain spilling over. Often covered in the black ash of Refining Fire burning hot.
And worst of all, the ache of apathy that sometimes paralyzes. The desire for safety so strong it snuffs out the passion.
And all of this, all of me is His. And He is Beauty. He is Glory.
So my brokenness is Beautiful. My bleeding heart full of Glory. And I have much to offer. Right here, right in this moment.
In the quiet sharing of my heart. The arms stretched open inviting those who need Him to see my ache. To see the Joy, the Glory, that fills the emptiness in my pain.
Every moment I draw nearer to Him. Know Him more. The more I see my wounds. The more I am aware of my desperate need of Grace.
But it doesn't leave me in the darkness, it only makes me more aware of His Light.
In every breath, every choice. Every moment I decide to live this life for Him. That is being me.
In the simple moments of my days. The cleaning, the cooking, the teaching, the cuddling, the filling up of little souls.
This is His life beating in my chest. I am only really me in Him.
I am His.
That is me.
"I am God. I have called you to live right and well. I have taken responsibility for you, kept you safe. I have set you among my people to bind them to me, and provided you as a lighthouse to the nations. To make a start at bringing people into the open, into light: opening blind eyes, releasing prisoners from dungeons, emptying the dark prisons." Isaiah 42:6-7
