I have not a choice; I must choose Life.

I believe that I know very little, but if I know one thing at this time in my life, it’s that I must begin to remember who I am or I will lose myself and lose a much larger battle.

It isn't about me—and that’s just it. Selfishly I want to possess myself but in order to do that, I have to completely forget my own definition of who I am and sacrifice it for the identity of Whose I am.

Christ died to give me His name, to write me in the book of life, and yet time after time I go back to that book and say “no. I will forget that life. I will selfishly hang onto my own self-definitive. I will cling to death.”

I forget that years ago I looked over the history of where God has brought myself and my family and chose His truth. In that decision, I said that I would literally forget myself and the flesh of my heritage and believe what He has said about me and radically apply it to my heart and let it change my being and very way of life.

But I've forgotten that. I've chosen the crummy-old-me. How ironic, that, such lack of confidence in who I really am now—a person who is now hidden in Christ—can be such an ungodly act? It is wrong and sinful to look upon the definition of my identity and say that it is not enough.

So, selflessly, I must refuse my feelings of low self-esteem and say that because Jesus gave me His life to live, it’s not what I think about myself anymore but what He thinks about me, and to choose differently from that would be to choose death and to refuse Christ.

The Christian life cannot be lived out it in the rags of a peasant, but walked out in the riches of the King. I must choose His life or I will not survive this world, fulfill the new dictum He gave me, or pass unto the Kingdom of the next life with Him.

I have not a choice; I must choose Life.

Unleashed

It was like staring into the face of a younger, angrier version of me.

The other day I found a research paper I’d written about two-and-a-half years earlier. I had somehow managed to use a sociology prompt as a platform from which to emotionally mouth-off about every bad experience I’d had with the institution of the church. I was cynical, hurt and wrecked with anger.

If you’re reading this and you’re surprised, I’m thankful. If you’re not, then you’ve known me well.
Not everything about that girl is gone. Admittedly I was surprised, reading back, that I’d actually managed a fairly well-researched rant for eight pages...

And yet some things have changed. Today I don’t sit in the church and cower in the pews all morning…I greet for one service on Sundays, involve myself in the discipleship process, and bubble over with excitement for everyone I get to see at Sunday school. While I am mentioning outward changes limited to the sphere of church activities, I hope this is only the sign of an inward change.

Because I remember when I once felt unworthy to come forth just to sing in worship.

I grew up in a minister’s home where my mother, siblings and I were regularly verbally battered and abused. I felt soiled.

The church home I attended most of my childhood was usually not equipped to encourage someone in my unique, and often awkward, situation. Hence, in my heart the church as a whole had reason to grieve for their mistakes and the burdens they cast on others.

Today my parents have been divorced for about the same amount of time it’s been since I wrote that report. Coming away to a new community for school and getting distance from so much of my hurt seems to have been God’s ticket to deliver me from some of the pain. Granted, I carried it with me for some time and it can still be a struggle to shed its burden.

Since then I’ve wrestled with my Heavenly Daddy for a new identity repeatedly, like Jacob wrestled with the Lord (Genesis 32). I’ve fought to regain the space within my heart to grant forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me and release them for their faults against me, while in turn releasing myself from the same standard. I’ve learned that I can know and accept the pieces of my family, the church, and myself that are confusing and imperfect. And after four years of my undergraduate I’ve learned that my daily security and provision rest entirely in Christ.

The relationships within my family are still often filled with tension, and it is a discipline to try walk into my home in a different manner.  I fail a lot. My relationships with my brother and sister are not as close as I wish they were, and I’m admittedly still at a loss as to how to change that. Sometimes speaking with my mother I mirror a person whose flesh I thought I shed a long time ago. And the significant role of Daddy in my life has been replaced by the Holy Spirit during prayer. Truthfully, the thing I most look forward to in Heaven is re-meeting my father, without all of our bondage.

Fortunately, church is now a place I call home. I couldn’t have asked for better support from the brothers and sisters I’ve known over the last several years. Without the help of good friends, the hours of their time that they gave, and even the tears they were willing to shed with me, I would not be the same person I am today. Praise be to God, the role of the church and its members has been redeemed in my life, and I regularly look forward to seeing it continually transformed into a place of healing, where the broken need not hide.

I share this because I believe that I’ve attended church with many at First Baptist Arlington over the years who’ve never heard my story. I also know that within any church there are those that do still hide, or those outside of it who just don’t feel “clean” enough to come in.

Or we’re hurt and need healing, like that girl in my paper that I still wrestle with from time to time. Wherever we are in life, each of us needs someone to help redirect our perspective and point us to the cross.

Thank you to my church home for letting me in, along with the close friends that regularly welcome me into their hearts. I hope my heart will be continually renewed as a place to make others feel just as welcome.

Dependence

Our gentleman was lifted out of his wheelchair, the pad beneath him assisting the lifters in shifting him to his bed without disturbing the position held by his thin frame. His arms and legs stayed in fairly the same position once he was laid on his back and a plain, white bed sheet retrieved to provide him with some warmth. The bruises and cuts on his arms were checked and redressed by the RN, and after she checked his vitals she left me to have my time with him.

I was a hospice volunteer on my first ride along with a nurse this Friday morning, visiting this particular patient (who will remain unnamed) at a nursing home facility. Ironically, I felt helpless next to this man. I also felt disgusted with my desire to keep a distance, either out of this helplessness or fear. Perhaps it unnerved me to see my own mortality reflected in his.

Regardless, once the RN left and I was able to warm up to the man on my own terms, I pulled up a chair next to him and checked his stack of books. The RN had lovingly mentioned that he loved being read to and would quickly fall to sleep not ten minutes into the reading. I found a Bible on the bottom of the stack, a couple of other Christian books, and at the top what I assumed was a devotional brought more recently by one of his children--Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young.

I could tell Mr. “S” was very sweet, though only able to utter small phrases and requests through his teeth and lips since his jaw moved little. I did the only thing I figured I should and opened his devotional to that day’s date, February 22ndd, and my voice trembled at the reading:

You need Me every moment. Your awareness of your constant need for Me is your greatest strength. Your neediness, properly handled, is a link to My Presence. However, there are pitfalls that you must be on guard against: self-pity, self-preoccupation, giving up. Your inadequacy presents you with a continual choice—deep dependence on Me or despair…

My eyes watered as I worked to hold myself in for the sake of Mr. S...as if that mattered. As I continued through devotional’s pages over the next few minutes, his breathing fell into rhythm and grew louder. His eyes fluttered closed and then opened again several times between my pauses in the reading. He politely let me know that after the next page he might go to sleep—if it was all right with me. I replied “of course”, and he let me know “it was good to know you” and some other kind compliments. He had asked my name twice in about the same ten-minute span.

Dependence is a word that keeps coming to mind in my spiritual walk in the last couple of years. In a season where I’m now examining some of my most basic dependencies, I realize that without understanding our fundamental dependence on a “Higher Being”, we have nothing by which to gage our other acts of dependence. Caffeine, relationships, financial stability, or even busyness all take advantage of our mind’s reward system to increase our reliance on whatever object grants us that fulfillment.

Amidst it all, I realize how needy I really can be and my craving for that sense of wholeness. Visiting that particular hospice client that day, in that hour, gave me a vivid image to match the level of need we each have, no matter how far we attempt to stuff it down sometimes.

And in Sarah Young’s words, our “greatest strength” is when we come to terms with our weakness, approaching the Lord’s throne for a depth of grace we cannot comprehend, and a moment-by-moment supply we often take for granted.