This is what I’m struggling with:
Can I be who I am?
I can so easily get caught up in the way one person mothers
or one family does family
or the experiences that another person has that I don’t.
Then those things just sit inside my head trying to weave themselves into my heart.
Despair sets in.
I see myself sinning over and over again.
I find myself back in old haunts.
And I forget what Jesus did.
I forget what God is doing.
My eyes become so focused on others that I don’t even recognize what He is doing in my lap.
I worry that I’m doing everything wrong.
That the choices I’ve made have condemned me.
That we as a family are doomed because of the path we walk down.
And “this strangely attractive voice takes all uncertainties away and puts an end to the struggle. It speaks unambiguously for the darkness and offers a clear cut negative identity.”
In this place of fretting.
In the place of worrying.
We’ve all been there.
We’ve all heard that whisper that we aren’t good enough or this is the wrong way to go.
But it’s time to hear the other voice that offers life and light.
Jesus comes to speak to us saying
“I am your God. I have molded you with my own hands and I love what I have made…I so much want you to be with me. I so much want you to be close to me. I know all your thoughts. I hear all your words. I see all your actions. And I love you because you are beautiful,
made in my own image,
and expression of my most intimate love. Don’t judge yourself.
Do not condemn yourself. Do not reject yourself.
Let my love touch the deepest, most hidden corners of your heart and reveal to you your own beauty,
a beauty that you have lost sight of, but which will become visible to you again in the light of my mercy.”
His light has to touch all those inner crevices of my heart.
His light reaches out and into the deepest darkness of my soul.
It is cleansing.
It is healing.
And it takes my eyes off of the world, off of others, off of comparing and onto Him.
He gives me eyes and a heart to count all of it as a blessing; not as a loss.
{quotes from Henri Nouwen’s book The Road to Daybreak)