Even if it Hurts

I was getting ready to blog today...

About seven times.

And for about seven different reasons.

The weight of the world sitting curiously on my shoulders.

This morning during my workout/prayer time...it was your worlds. Every world. With faces and names and lives and situations flooding through my head, I pushed all the more intensely on my elliptical and I shouted (aloud) "Daddy, hold them! Hold their worlds. I'm not big enough! I can't do it! I can love them but I don't know if they know just how much I do. And I can't fix it. I can't fix all of the brokenness. Fix it, because I can't..."

Another time it was THE world. Stemming from me making rice muffins. After eating four without flinching (very curious and strange for me...), I wondered how food allergies and intolerances were diagnosed in other countries, what they did about them. All until a cynical voice in my head replied “if they eat enough to develop an intolerance to anything...” What started as guilt fell to a hurt for thousands of kids whose faces I can’t even create a frame of reference for...

I wanted to blog after watching a youTube clip of a vivacious four-year-old who dances in the mirror saying everything great about her life. I wondered when the last time I was so excited about the great things in my life. Let alone the times I am confidant enough to say “I can do anything good!” (Philippians 4:13 maybe?) with the help of the One who’s strength I rest upon. Do I trust? Do I praise?

Tonight a new family friend who recently went through some extreme life crap joined us for dinner. A man seeking earnestly to figure out where God would have him, he asked honest and interested questions. Knowing something of my story (that I didn’t tell him), he asked me – based upon where he now found himself – if I ever found it hard to be depend on God during my circumstance. It proceeded to reveal many small pieces of my story. He later thanked me for telling him and for being real and asked me if it was hard to share. "It's not my story,” I told him plainly, “it's God's. I didn't always see it that way but I'm realizing if I am going to allow my story to actually be about Him, then I don't have the right to not give evidence to where I've been, where He's taking me, if I'm asked. I want to live my life to make God known..." With a fervent prayer for God to be known in and through me, I realized...

There were pieces that needed to be shared. Pieces of my story that remain untold that will one day need to be given over to be God’s story if I really continually pray for God to be revealed in me. Secrets have to come out of darkness if Christ is going to shine through. The thought of sharing secrets gave me a panic attack and caused me to physically shake in a way I thought I was cold and would never get warm. The hurt of the worlds of other people, let alone my own...it was too much. And all I could think of was a Relient K song I love...

“You said ‘I know that this will hurt. But if I don’t break your heart, then things will just get worse...’”

I believe God has something He is doing in and through me with the weight that has my heart breaking. Trying to remember that life is about surrender. If I want to be whole, if I want wholeness for the ones I love and pray for, if I want wholeness for the world I want to impact, if I want my story to be given to God for His use and disposal, then I have to allow Him to do what it takes, despite the cost, to make my heart brand new... Even if it hurts.