Humbled & Amazed

You know what's humbling? Faith. Also? Hope. Why?

Because the two don't focus on "YOU" at all.
We have an object of faith. We have a hope for something greater to occur. Neither of these are borne of us or anything that we can do or think to do.
For me, it's recently become very humbling. Partially due to the realization that faith and hope have an object...but the other part due to finally coming to understand that I cannot make all these things in my life happen. I cannot personally change the world. I alone cannot change people. I cannot rid the people around me of greed, vanity, and hatred, partially because I cannot rid myself of these repulsive tendencies. (Perhaps that is why I am feeling so bitter towards others these days...because I am projecting my worst qualities on them...but that's for another day.) What I hope for? I have no means to the end. Not by myself, at least.

Where did this all come from? I think it's been wrestling for a spot in my mind's eye for quite a while. But what finally got it there was 1) thoughts in a book (Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, a very interesting and mind opening read), and 2) this past Sunday's message.

Before you read all this below, I want to say something. Yes, most of this is just my thoughts and how God has shaped my life recently. But I hope you can take some truths out of it. I don't want this to be about me. I think the lessons I'm learning are some of what we all learn. It's what God is doing, not what I am.

We just began a sermon series on Philippians on Sunday, and the first question struck me hard. "What do you have full confidence in? Think about it for a second, then tell someone sitting next to you. Go on! Do it!"
I don't know how everyone else felt, but as I started going through a list of possibilities, then reached the end of that list with nothing concrete, I had no idea what to say. I felt I should have an answer, so I said my family (if you're reading this, I love you guys, you're not just a backup but let me explain!), which is so often true. Had you asked me this at the end of last school year, I would have quickly said my intelligence or my grades. Perhaps with a hint of pride, but not gloating. (I've fought that, and I don't want to be like that.) Probably friends and family too.
I hesitate to say that everything has changed, but it's honestly the truth.

To preface this, nothing horrible has happened that has ripped me away from these things. God has just helped me come to realize my fearful grip I've had on all these things because I was so scared that if I lost them, then who would I be...my grip was there for all the wrong reasons. I was trying to secure myself an identity that I could ultimately control, one that was safe and unchanging.

What a lie we've all told ourselves- that we can control it all. That things don't have to change if we are careful enough. That if we grip onto something or someone on this earth tight enough that they'll never leave and we'll never have to question who we are without them.

As the last semester for many of my friends begins, and my second to last one, CHANGE is now the looming thundercloud on the horizon. People are moving on with their lives, becoming "real people" as we call them, and I'm not always going to live in the same apartment as them or a few blocks away from them. Next year I'll be responsible for all bills, insurances, you name it, it'll be my problem then. I won't have my parents and family there any longer telling me that I can be whatever I want to be and they'll support me 100% because I'm already supposed to be that person and I don't even know where I'll be in a year...and honestly I don't know where I want to be.

My whole life I've been clinging to things so that I don't have to do it all on my own. And all those things are going to be different in four months, in a year. And, over the last year, God has been slowly and gently, albeit painfully, prying my fingers loose from each object or person.
1) My grades. No longer am I a straight A or even A- student. At first, it killed me on the inside, hurt me much more than I'd care to divulge. But I've been shown that my identity does not rest on a 4.0 GPA. My worth is not found in being at the top of my class. And I'm okay with that for the first time in my entire life.
2) My friends. I've had a rough year with staying in contact, being a good friend, and seeing good friends on the reg. I didn't know what was going on in a lot of my friends' lives, and started feeling apathy because to me, I had failed. Yes, many of my friends I've made here and some in high school will be friends for life. But my identity is also not found in them (though I love you and care for you all dearly). Though they'll always be a phone call away, lives get busy and who knows if we'll even be in the same countries in 2 years time...but I've finally realized that this is no reason for apathy. No reason to be reserved and pull back for fear it'll hurt on "goodbye." I will love them and know them while I have the time, but I will not depend on them for my knowledge of myself. And that is healthy.
3) My family. I love my family more than anything here on this earth. But I've been challenged more this year by their doubts of my future plans, dreams, whatever. (To those of you who are reading this- I am not mad about your doubts, and if you haven't doubted or thought I'm crazy then thank you, but thank you to those who do think I'm crazy too.) Yeah, I've been fickle in my last few years of "what I want to be when I grow up." Yeah, I've sounded crazy, and my family gets the worst of it because I figure they're the only people who can't leave me or stop loving me even if I am insane. Which isn't exactly true but it's been what I've chosen to believe. But I digress...I've finally come to terms with the fact that if God is calling me to something, or if I feel so strongly about something I must do- not even my family should be able to stop me. I cannot live my life people-pleasing any longer, because rarely is people-pleasing- in the sense we see it- also God-pleasing. To have my identity stretched so many different ways is not healthy, nor will it form me into the person God would have me to be.
4) A romantic relationship. For so long I've dreamed of my "perfect man" coming along and making everything okay. And now I cannot believe that for all this time I have been so completely and utterly wrong. My life does not begin when I fall in love, get married, etc...and my identity is certainly not molded by the men in my life. God has been trying to teach me this gently, but sometimes it's taken some tough love to lead me to the truth. I've thought I'd found "him" a couple times. But then my strength slips and all I am is consumed by this person and I forget who I am and who the real Him is. I forget that God is THE perfect man, in Jesus Christ, and that no earthly man will ever make me whole like He can. God has been telling me for so long that now is not my time...at least not for the last couple years. I've fought it for a long time, but am finally starting to accept it. I said this a couple years ago, and it still rings true:  I want to fall in love with God before I fall in love with a man here. Maybe it will be a somewhat tandem thing. Who knows. But right now I am investing in God.

And perhaps this has all been leading up to now. Perhaps I am just now seeing the puzzle pieces fitting together, even if it's just a minute section of the puzzle that is my life. God is stringing me down, just like I've been asking. Prying my fingers loose and making Him the one solid person/thing I could cling to.

Ha. Funny thing is, I'd been hesitant for so long in asking for this, for being completely "in" when I was asking Him for this, because I thought He was going to make it something extremely drastic, like everything and everyone around me completely gone. Maybe I was expecting the book of Job. But maybe He didn't think that would be right in my life. Reliance only when I had literally nothing left that I could turn to...I don't think that is the kind of reliance He wanted from me. He knew that I probably needed to learn to rely on Him even when I did have a choice to still grab on to something else, even if that "something else" wasn't perfect. So He helped by partially tearing some things down but not completely- training me IN the battlefield. All this makes me reminiscent of the movie Evan Almighty when "God" in the form of Morgan Freeman is talking to Evan's wife about what she expected from God when she asked for her family to be closer. For my life, it sounds more like this:  When you ask God for increased faith in and reliance on Him, is He going to just give that to you, or give you the opportunity to develop it?

Mind. Blown. I'm just realizing all this now.

I am so humbled by this. How He has so beautifully crafted all of this craziness and things this year that I have hated and that have depressed me...He has done all these things to prepare me for what is next, to grow my faith and my reliance on Him. How He has shown me that it is not me, that it is HIM that will make a difference in this world, but I am able and blessed to be able to be His hands and feet. And hope in a better world and a plan for my life? Awesome. Humbling to know that a) it is not up to me to make miracles happen, and b) it never was up to me because I couldn't do it alone anyways. Plus, if He would do all of this...line all of this up just so I could learn a little more about faith...then how could I ever doubt that He has an awesome-amazing-super-fantastic plan for the rest of my days here??

You know what all this does, too? Makes me love Him. Makes me want to rely on Him, rather than thinking that, well, who else do I have?

And to bring it back to the question in service of what I have confidence in...as I came to the end of my list with nothing, I didn't feel despair. I wanted to feel despair...in fact, I think I tried to conjure it up. It was what I expected to feel.
What did I feel instead? Peace. Relief. A strange sense that I had come a long way, that I was on the right path and I was moving forward. It's kind of all hitting me now, because in that moment I think I was so confused by these good emotions when expecting the bad.
Like God had loosened my fingers on all the things here, and I was starting to place my confidence in Him, in something heavenly, instead.

I've still got a lot of learning to do and a lot of improvements to make (as well as a lot of mistakes along the way), but God is here with me to grow me and care for me.

And that, my friends, is something utterly fantastic.

Peace & Blessings

[...we have to face the clouds to see the silver lining...("what faith can do", kutless) - look it up!]