Testify

I sit staring at the screen, praying for something true to come from me and my disobedient hands that type so recklessly. I wish to weave together two stories, intending to bring Him glory so that for once I don’t abuse this gift with uncensored pessimism and pretentious impressions of a somehow simultaneously happy but blue, healed and yet bruised, version of me. Such writings cannot be, they lost their validity because now, I AM FREE. So for once, I am going to write liberated from the devils who whisper poisonous poetry into my mind, for the sound of my heart being torn apart should not rhyme, I am destined to be more than a newspaper girl delivering gloomy dark words to an overcast world. So this first story is mostly-true, it’s about how I grew, but bear with me as my thoughts are often lost and my heart interprets things by means of metaphor and sometimes obscure allegory.

I was born into the field of flowers. There is a creek bed nearby, a cobalt-blue sky, and piles of rocks scattered around, some piled high and some very stuck in the ground. I was born into this field of flowers, over time I learned from those with deep roots and full blooms. I learned from praising petals and the intentional pollination of other plants with potential. These all have a direct line of access to the stream, the living water of the nearby creek. I too was led to the water. As I swam among the swish and the thrush my identity splashed me in the face! Daughter. It was a word both whispered and screamed, a concept written and read, an existence formulated from faraway oceans but brought local to this loving creek bed. It was a wave that crashed around the curves of the bank, looked me in the face, and said, “Daughter. Its time to listen to Me. You wear your chains like jewelry, but there is no beauty in the way those same chains fill your smile with unnecessary pain. You chase images of make-believe and petty selfish things that only lead you away from the stream, toward deserts of trials and grief. There is no satisfaction in distraction but in me, you will be whole and new and full of purpose because YOU are my daughter. I am the Water, I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Light. By my blood the road to life has been paved in love, so welcome to the journey. Come and follow Me, my love!”

Now for the second story: I am here to ask YOU personally; have you been in the creek? Do you know of whom I speak? There is a love that too often goes unspoken of, it restores and it saves and yet we shy away because the truth is grace, and where there is grace there was once conviction which puts you in a position of humility. And according to the world around you, being humble counteracts ambition and will leave you eating the scraps of food that tumble off the tables of more successful better-dressed people. But is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Or perhaps the great love is evaded because your heart has become jaded, and despite the irony, you are afraid to depend on the one thing that is truly dependable. Perhaps it is faith itself you fear, because sometimes faith is about letting go and trusting when the probability is low and most alarming. But didn’t you hear the angels say, “have no fear”? Written throughout the bible, that’s been pretty clear. As a side note, when I say “you this, and you that” I hope “you” know I often recite this in the mirror. So this is the universal “you” that I am speaking to: God is love. He sent His one and only son to die for you. All the stories are true, Jesus was God and man and He paid all of our dues. Tell me, can you fathom the weight of your own septic sin, let alone the entire load of humanity’s eternal struggle for innocence? Since when has sacrifice to that magnitude been so easily excluded from conversation? This is a story of the luminous life force of a transcendent trinity who is the ultimate ethereal emperor and the altruistic Allah of every one of us. I apologize for the excessive alliteration, but a logophile like myself can’t help but try to decorate descriptors more creatively. Anyway, the plot twist to this story is that despite His self-satisfying glory, Jesus (yes, the King of Kings) invites you to be connected by a love so perfected that your unworthiness can actually glorify the Creator of galaxies. For He declared, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9).