S4 E6: Awakening To The Life You Were Created To Live

 Hey You!

Starting right off with a question for you in this episode...

What do you sense awakening in your life at this moment?

Do you sense anything awakening?

Is there something you would love ;) to see an awakening in this season?

I am loving this verse from Isaiah 43 that says...

I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don’t you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open up flowing streams in the desert.

Now Usually what stands out to me in this verse is the “something new” part but lately what’s been jumping out to me is the “don’t you perceive it?” part…

So this question of Are we perceiving it? What does that even mean?!?   

“To perceive” means to become aware or conscious of something, to realize or understand

Could  God be doing something in our lives that we have yet to realize?

Or maybe we have realized that something new is being awakened but we don’t have a full understanding of exactly what that it going to look like in our life.

If you're anything like me you would like all the details and all the understanding of how all this new is going to play out.

But typically that’s not how it works. Clarity and understanding usually come only when we put in some action and start moving. Kind of like that scripture that says “faith without works is dead.”  We can spend hours, days, years thinking about something but clarity comes quicker in the process of walking it out.

I know this spring season has felt different. and Forget feelings it has been different!

And that “different’ has been different for each of us.

But I truly believe that beautiful things have been awakening in us this Spring.  Oh, trust me…

I’ve seen the death. I’ve seen the struggle. 

But out of that struggle I’ve seen resiliency and growth.

I’m seeing new things pushing their way up through the messiness and dirt.

I’ve seen that new growth allow the sun and rain to fall upon on it’s sometimes parched body and nourish and revive.

I shared in the last episode that my prayer during this season has been that no matter how uncomfortable it makes us that we will allow those things that need to die that are not in our next season. And by doing that we would make room for the new.

In the book “Let your life speak” by Parker Palmer he says

“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts- then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them.”

THEN- if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss-we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.”

When you hear that you might know exactly what you abandoned and needs to be recovered. Or you might have been so busy with your life that you have not given much space to even think about it.

Wherever you might find yourself...it’s never too late.

And you have confirmation of that if you have breath in your body and are listening to this podcast. You are here. And there’s a reason for that.

You might be in your 20’s, your 30’s, 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s...it really doesn’t matter. God's mercy and grace is fresh and new every single day. 

The enemy of your soul would love to keep you “feeling” stuck feeling like a victim and filled with sadness and regret.

My mind can tend to go to regret at times and I have learned to quickly capture those thoughts and replace them with the truth. 

Here’s what I want you to think about ..

How about choosing 

Grace OVER Regret

  I think some wisdom and revelation only comes through living. 

I can’t count the number of things that I said in my younger years that I have done a complete 180 on…

For example, I can still see this conversation that I had with my mother in the kitchen in my mind so clearly.  The topic of infidelity at been brought up and I remember declaring with 100% percent confidence in my reasoning that “if my husband EVER cheated on me, my bags would be packed immediately! Case closed! No need for any conversation

 Mind you I was maybe 20 years old at the time and not married. I’m certain I held on to this belief years into our marriage. Let’s fast forward ... I’m in a conversation with someone around this same topic years into my marriage and even though infidelity isn’t something my husband and I have had to deal with, we have had to deal with a core issue that infidelity holds, which is trust being broken.  That has happened on different levels on both of our ends. 

So years after declaring this strongly held opinion I find myself in a conversation giving a listening ear and asked to offer advice … and I realized my heart had changed.  No longer did I hold a steadfast answer to a heartbreaking circumstance. What had changed??  I’d lived a little longer…

I’d experienced life with someone for more than a minute…

Someone,  that sometimes we had loved each other well and sometimes not so much…

We laughed together, we fought, we misunderstood each other, we brought babies into the world together, we didn’t know how to be vulnerable and verbalize what we really needed from each other, we were scared together and we were brave together,

 we still fight each other sometimes, but most importantly we learned to fight for each other.

I  bring up this example to say I could have regret over seemingly wasted days of struggling and getting it wrong, but are those days really wasted if they made me wiser?

So to those of you younger in age than me…( and anyone that needs to hear it)

Give yourself the grace and space to acknowledge that you don’t have it all figured out. You don’t become a wife and a mother, friend, and always know how to show up well. We’re all still learning how to show up well for ourselves which is what everything else flows out of.

After a season of seeing life ( in retrospect ) thorough a monochromatic lens, I can remember the awakening of my senses.  It’s like someone had turned all the colors in the world up a notch and I was seeing life around me with fresh eyes and it was beautiful. Breathtaking actually.

You might be wondering what wonderful thing happened in my life that brought about this breathtaking awakening.

Something died. And that something was part of me.

At the time it was painful. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to. For the first time in my life, I told God I was ticked off at him, didn’t understand him and that I really didn’t care if that offended him. 

Trust me I in no way had the belief that I was living out a life of faith perfectly, but what I will say is that I did believe that in this human body I was loving God, living a life of faith that I could not do any better.  I couldn’t love God any more than I did. I was doing anything and everything I thought he was asking of me and yet, everything I felt like I was believing for kept getting ripped from my hands.

I felt like something in me had died, I felt like I was grieving and I felt like God was just fine with that.

He let me be mad at him. He let me rip up in shreds the latest book I had been reading on how to love my neighbor better and not even feel guilty ripping about it.

 He let me lay in my bed binge-watching a series on Netflix that weeks before I wouldn’t have let pass before my eyes. 

He held me close as I watched episode after episode and my eyes burned with tears as he spoke to me through this storyline.

I didn’t perceive it right away. But an awakening was happening out of that dark season.

That part of me that died was the gift that made space for me to live.

What died was the me I had come to fit in all of the boxes around me. All of the expectations of being a Christ-follower, wife, mother, pastor’s wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter. Always trying to check all of the boxes and always being reminded by everyone else in the box of the areas I was falling short.

There’s a part of me that when I think back at that time and me letting God know how I was mad and how I felt he let me down and I see him smiling. Actually it’s kind of a smirk...you know the look when you know a secret that the other persons about to find out.

He loved that I was finally dying :)))

Because he wanted ME to freakin LIVE!!

And i wasn’t planning on saying this but I feel like someone needs to hear this…

I understand that I am NOTHING with Christ. NOTHING!

But something that awakened me during that season was Me being fully me doesn’t diminish who He is. In fact, he was in on the plan of designing exactly who I am.  And it brings my Father great pleasure to see me showing up in the world just as he purposed and planned.

If you’ve been around for a while you know that my heart and minds focus for 2020 has been around the scripture found in Habakkuk 2 where it talks about writing the vision out and making it clear.

Towards the end of 2019, I made artwork with this declaration of 2020 vision because I wanted it up before my eyes and many of you grabbed onto this in your spirit and brought the piece, and with me, we were believing for 2020 vision as we entered a new decade. My hope and prayer were for clarity in vision to run with passion and focus.

And then our world got hit with a pandemic and memes started popping up everywhere about 2020 being canceled.

from the beginning of this, I have felt such a blanket of peace surrounding this time. That even in the midst of all the uncertainty God is showing himself strong.

He’s right here with us not offended by our questions and is offering his grace and mercy in our every moment.

He hasn’t forgotten you. He sees you right where you are. And he’s saying to you…I am doing something new.

It’s springing up now! Do you perceive it?

Father- I pray for everyone listening. 

I pray that right here in this very moment they would feel your presence surrounding them. Whether they’re driving down the road, washing dishes, on a walk around the neighborhood...wherever they are may they know you are right there with them.

I pray that you would open hearts and minds to perceive what you are doing in our lives and in our world. Father, wake up all those areas in us that have been dormant. Remind us that you are one that formed us when we were inside of our mother. We were your idea. Your desire. And so our desires are good. They are wired within us because you knit us together that way. Help us to keep showing up in this world exactly as you had in your mind from the beginning because that is what brings you glory. 

Your goodness your excellence your love flowing out of us into the streets of our city.

We ask these things in the name of Jesus and say amen “so be it”