Honesty Pants

For the past couple of weeks, I have tried to update my blog, write something new, something inspiring, tell at least one story of what God is currently in the middle of teaching me (because He has been teaching me a lot)-- but I haven't been able to articulate any of it.

I haven't been able to put to words what I want to say, what I think I'm learning, what I hope God is doing in my soul. -- perhaps that is because I haven't taken intentional time to really get it all on paper yet, have been too scared to dive head-first, or it could be for other reasons like I just don't quite understand it all myself.

So instead, all I have been doing is staring at a blank screen most days, the on-and-off flicker of my vertical computer line on Microsoft Word, hoping the season I am currently in won't be exactly that --- an empty page.

So I stare and ramble and excessively use the delete button, then slam the backspace button with every frustrated fiber in me. I re-read my post "Dirty Girl" and Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet in hopes of making sense of whatever I can't make sense of at the moment.

But here's what I am discovering as I am at a stand-still with discovery --- that most days, and in most seasons of my life, I want to untangle and reweave, untangle and reweave. I want to see, at this moment, what this part of my life means to the bigger picture. I want to be active and busy and say to God, "I see what you're doing here! I'm picking up what you're throwing down, I'm smelling what you're stepping in, I'm yinging what you're yanging!"

But lately it hasn't been like that -- and that is a really, really good thing, because my faith grows when God yings and I don't know where the yang is, much less how to yang.

And in those moments Jesus says, "Sarah, stop trying to untangle this. Stop trying to dress it up, strip it down. Just be still and know. Be still and know I am who I say I am, and because I am, Sarah, you are free to be --- Be who I have called you to be, no matter where I call you to be."

Just be still and know.

So perhaps a life that follows Christ looks more like this:

If my life is a grand, one million piece puzzle, I believe God only lets us see one piece at a time. I believe He only hands us one piece at a time, because that's all our hearts and hands can handle. But as we live and follow him and grow in our faith, in His grace and truth and grow older, the picture of the puzzle of our life begins to focus and take shape. We start to see fuller faces, complete places. We start to see purposes, trails, transformation. Each piece starts to fit another - each piece belongs to those around it.

But on those days when Jesus hands me a middle peice instead of the edge one I thought I needed, I have to remember - don't freak out. That piece belongs somewhere for some divine purpose. Set it down. Stop untangling, reweaving and be still and know . . . the puzzle will be complete someday and that piece will be absolutely vital to complete the entire picture -- the picture of what God is doing and will do in the puzzle of my life.

Be still and know.