So.
Iām standing in the shower the other morning, still groggy with sleep, still furious from yesterday, and the day before. Furious with God about these feminine dilemmas that donāt make sense, the desperate longing for more and the impossibility of getting it.
This girl whoās passionately in love with solitude, independence, adventure, creation, exploration, endless hours of private thoughtāHe gave her a life of clutter and stress, of endless tedious demands, small precious troublesome hands and voices always tugging her out of herself, four or five people constantly dependent on her for health and happiness, someone always needing to know where she is.
Why?
Oh, forgive my ingratitudeā¦ but all this churns inside me. I must change who I am, and I cannot.
How to find my place in this script, obviously written for someone else? Does God take delight in giving us the lives least suited to us, so that we are forced to learn humility, roundedness, selflessness?
Standing there in the water, desperate to hear from Him, desperate from a several-day stalemate of no communicado, I begin talking.
Jesus, I donāt even know how to come to you; but here I am.
(Keep talking, keep talking. Just start somewhere. Donāt let the wall come backā¦)
Thank you that you see me. You see my beauties and my flaws, and you love me. You made me.
Here I stand, unclothed in every wayā¦
Thank you that you see the inside of me. You see…
Jaw dropping slowly open. The logical progression of thought becomes overwhelming.
You see my beauties and my flaws, and you love me.
You made me.
Suddenly my bluff is called. Suddenly my anger is melting into tears, mixing with the water running down my face.
Really?
Really, Jesus?
Can it be that all I most cherish and defend inside my soul, all I most hate and want to change, is precious to you? your fingerprint on me? Can it be that this impossible mix of gifts and callings was carefully crafted, tenderly given, meant to be held sacred?
How is it that I never found this thought before in all my life? Can it be that as my face is His, my hair, my bodyāof Him and for Him and precious to Himāso is my solitude, my independence, my adventure, my femininity, my inwardness?
Nothing was given without purpose. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is unseen. Nothing is rejected.
I am not wrestling with character traits, able to be built up or torn down. Iām wrestling with who I am at my core, the unchangeables given to me without my asking.
Precious.
All that I am is precious to Him.
He made me.
He sees me.
He loves me.
It doesn’t take away all struggle, but I get to rest in His arms instead of crossing swords.
He loves me.
Love you Shari!!Blessings on your journey with God into your true identity-you were made for His glory and the poundings of change,mundane work,troubles, pains,little ones demanding attention when your burned out, will make you turn to God more and he is waiting with delight to hug,hold,comfort and strengthen you!!You can do it with Gods help girl!!I love the honesty of your blog!!
I believe I was introduced to your blog through Shaunda…I am grateful to her. Your last 3 posts have opened my eyes & challenged me in the way I view myself. Thank you for being so real and so honest about your struggles!
(Oh, and by the way—I didn’t think that your blanket or that a.d.o.r.a.b.l.e. little dress [referring back to your May 5 entry] sold for what they were worth. Had I not been so busy at the time they sold, I’d have been jumping in to get the bidding higher!)
Thank you for your confessions. Keep writing. I will be back for more! I found your blog today and just spent the last hour reading every single post. I identify with this paragraph “Nothing was given without purpose. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is unseen. Nothing is rejected.” God has been trying hard to teach me this very lesson. I confess that I’m a pretty slow learner. Thanks again for sharing.
Oh Shari,
I have to say first of all I love your honesty. This post moved me to tears. It’s funny though because I have the opposite struggle I feel like so much of motherhood is isolation and loneliness. My personality enjoys being with other people. I’ve struggled so much feeling like I am not the right person for my life as well. Especially for me living out here this has been the case. And yet I also struggle with being pulled in a hundred different directions from my children. So much of motherhood is unexpected and hard. So much makes me want to go hide in a closet sometimes. š Perhaps we are put in places we don’t feel comfortable in order that Christ will shine through our weaknesses.
I must say that your post was very encouraging to me. To be reminded that Jesus loves me the way He made me and that He has a purpose in all that. Thank you so much for this encouragement. Thank you for letting Jesus shine through you!
Oh my. My PA friend Joanna sent me a link to your blog and I SO, SO love it. You know what it’s like to find someone who writes what you’re thinking and trying to write yourself but can’t express? I blog too. But I can’t write like this. At all. I so identified with the last 3 posts I read and I wish it wasn’t midnight so I could read more. I think I know you. But you’re probably used to that because of who your dad is and everything. I was an MBS student long ago, so I remember you as a little girl. š Mennonite connections aside, I think I will be back.
Oh yes! I sure do remember you, as a fun and colorful person. I remember being slightly shocked to see you jamming to “the raaaainforest, the tropical raaainforest” after a bird show at the Minneapolis Zoo. š You probably don’t even remember that. Nowadays I can appreciate it fully. Thanks for your words! I would love to find your blog.
All I can say, Shari, is you are one lovely person, inside and out! Keep blogging…I love it!!! I’m finding out things about you that I wouldn’t know otherwise. š You are sooo right, when God creates and gifts us, He doesn’t then walk away with a backward, disdainful glance, abandoning us to figure out life and ourselves on our own. He remains so present, so good, and so ‘right’.
So I perused the rest of your blog today. You talk of depression (don’t know if it was your own) and your sister’s battle with cancer among other things that resonated with me. But I am not a crafts person. Neither do I take good photos. š Did you just start to blog or were you doing it at another site before this spring?
That zoo memory is hilarious. I don’t remember it at all, though I faintly remember visiting the Minneapolis zoo. Are you sure it was Luci Peachey from Alberta?
Here are a few blog posts of mine that relate to things you write of:
http://quiet-hearts.xanga.com/756555945/fashion-and-me/
http://quiet-hearts.xanga.com/758559129/dreams-whims-and-reality/
http://quiet-hearts.xanga.com/762411368/the-real-me/
But. If you are like me you really don’t need another blog to read. Besides, I am long-winded. š I don’t find time to blog often and then when I do it’s this long medley of the bits and pieces I’ve been thinking about or writing of for many days.
Still grateful that I found you, Shari.
You can’t get out of it that easily. I visited your blog and you are most definitely the Luci I remember. š
You have good words, and ask wonderfully honest questions, and I look forward to reading more. Thanks for sharing! (Bc your comment included links, my blog settings required me to approve it before it showed up. That’s why you had trouble posting at first; sorry.)
The depression is mine, better than it was (thank you Jesus) but not that far away. I just started blogging this spring, and have a lot to learn. I love the process!
I found your blog through Gina’s (HomeJoys) a few days ago, and so I’ve found another rare thread in this tapestry of being a woman – you, who share your soul expressing what countless numbers of us cannot or may not. I’m a mother of 9, and raising 5 more… and just this morning was standing in my bedroom being deeply struck by the realization that this life of mine, so totally unfitted to who I “really am”, this life of mine in which I’ve been working so long, and still have so long to go (the youngest are 3 yr. old twins), must be exactly what Jesus, my precious, precious Lord, knew I would need to be and become and learn who I really am: precious in His sight, every detail of me… the enormity of His love, the breathtaking glimpses…
Well, you may wonder why it takes a woman of my experience so long to see these things (stubbornness. resistance. my own preferences. the list is very common to us all…no matter what our circumstances).
All this to say, while taking a little break today (cookies during naptime) and exploring your place a little more, I found this entry and, as so many have said before, I just had to share how deeply and completely and perfectly it expressed what I experienced earlier today. Isn’t it an incomparable thrill to realize (and be reminded again. and again. and again….) that all that we see and sense, have experienced and learned, are surrounded (and sometimes drained) by, is all part of the whole growing into we know not what yet? Isn’t it thrilling that we can’t see the end result, and yet know that He is steadily sculpting us (when we are in any way pliable), and chiseling us (when we are hard as rock)?
In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine; I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Isaiah 27:2-3
Naptime’s over, back to the trenches, with wonder in my heart at His touch, and thankfulness throughout me for your sharing of these very things. May God bless you, your life and growth, your calling and privilege, oh so faithfully and fully.