Wednesday, April 29, 2009

the steps I took...




These past couple days I have been blessed to witness the birth of change. I have seen a small group of dedicated students multiply into hundreds of passionate crusaders. I have seen those crusaders take to their message to the nation without remorse, without fear, without baggage. I have witnessed them simply go, bearing nothing but a message on their breath and their hearts on their sleeves. God has moved in this place. It's holy.


And I cannot help but be transformed by that. In fact, a life of advocacy seems to be the only life that makes sense to me now. It's all over the Bible and splayed across the walls of my heart. But there's something more going on here. This has lead me to this place like a shard of a pot leads an archaeologist to a dig site. That material culture may give way to something much more intriguing and telling, but you've got to dig to figure it out.

I have always been afraid of being discovered as a fraud. Looking at my history, I should have become someone else. It's as if I've implanted a reset button in my head, so as soon as I do anything I don't want to acknowledge as myself, I hit it and we're good to go. I do things, think things, want things that I don't want other people to know about. Truth is, though, all those skeletons I want to stay hidden away are still me, and I've got to deal with them.

But in dealing with them, I can't condemn myself. Because if I was truly condemned, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now. I have been delivered like Samson, Solomon, David, and Adam. They were flawed and messed up royally, but they still had a place. They were still made whole.

So the pendulum can swing between me ignoring that which I don't want to accept as myself and being a complete downer about how no one really knows how I really am because I hide it. Both mentalities get me nowhere and they are both false.

Truth is, I have done and still do things that I'm not proud of. But they are me. I'm not as innocent as I'd like to paint. I'm not as dark as I feel I should be. I am certainly not very good on my own, or else I wouldn't be in this pickle. But there is more truth about me hidden in that which I have ignored than there is in the me I've been trying to create since I met Lauren Stevens (aka Fish Lips, she was one of the major starting points of all of this).

So these steps I've taken have lead me here, and I have been redeemed by my Redeemer. But I need to accept myself and all that I've done. Let myself back in the house like the prodigal son, regardless of how I've dirtied myself. I've got to come home, all of me, and that's where I've got to begin laying the groundwork for my future. Not on top of my neglected self, because that past will always stir unless I put it to sleep, peacefully.




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