I know this is a family blog and everyone really just comes here to see cute pictures of Bug, but shut it.
Facebook is bringing me back, and I have “facebook”-ed some age-old friends from yesteryear, and it made me nostalgic, contemplative, introspective, and a bunch of other really good-sounding adjectives. So be forewarned, frivolity lay not ahead. (Okay, well, that was the last of it anyway.)
I started thinking about where I came from, what has shaped me, and when the most definitive years of my life were. (Nothing like the internet to probe the depths.) There are so many benchmarks that are the Roman numerals to the outline of my life (forever indebted, Dr. B.). The obvious: being born (well?), living in Europe, moving to the deep South, encountering Christ, surrendering to Christ (oh, yes, it will be one of those posts tonight…), college, marriage, Bug… I’m a little awed by the meat between the headlines, and a little appalled by the meat that is not.
I’ve said this before, and it seems to be a recurring theme in my life, but I have mastered the art of mediocrity, despite being fashioned for greatness. As a believer (yes, in Jesus), the truth is we were fashioned in God’s likeness. How can that not intend us for greatness? Greatness as a daughter, a wife, a mother, greatness in deed, in thought, in action, greatness, above all and beyond all, as a child of God. And yet He’s stuck working with me, mediocre at best, selfish, ugly and dark at worst.
An old pastor of mine spoke of the condition of the human heart one sermon, and it has followed me ever since. The human heart is like a black hole, its depth and capacity for good and for evil, for love and for hate is almost immeasurable. The closer we come to God, the Creator of this heart, the deeper and darker we learn our hearts really are. But the glory (the glory!) of that is, God does not follow us there. He is already in the muck of it all, shining His light, revealing.
How is there no greatness, when the light of the Lord outshines the crevices of our deepest and our darkest, illuminating from within? And meanwhile, stuck in a rut, reveling in drab, accepting mediocrity, and trying to live by candlelight while the sun bursts on the other side.
It’s not that there is no joy or laughter (impossible with a four-year-old around and about), but there is little meat. The meat of Christianity that I once was so familiar with, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, once my lifeline, now no more my identity than my eye color (poop brown, by the way).
I am called, I am chosen, I am elevated to a higher standard.
I am identified, I am named, I am remembered.
I am pursued, I am missed, I am prodigal.
All. Because. Of. Christ.
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