It started out as a feeling, which then turned into a journal entry.  Which then turned into a quiet thought, which then turned into a blog post.  Thought I would share it with you, just in case I’m not alone.


Dear God,

I just figured it out.  No, that’s a lie.  You figured me out.  As always.

I’m being a freaking chameleon again.  I’m being the person everyone happens to need at the time, and I am good at blending in almost, almost perfectly, but I can’t remember what color I am, and I think I lost myself somewhere back there.

I can’t find a balance in my life…  Yet you want me to live to the extreme.  Right?  What do you want from me?

Stop right there.  Time for a truth intervention.  I am worshipping a false god if I think that you expect anything at all from me.  The better question is, what do you want for me?

You want me to live the abundant life (John 10:10).  You ultimately desire my happiness, though you understand that I will be most happy when I am with You (Psalm 68:3; John 14:3).  So why does my ministry seem to contradict that will?  If I’m going against the will of God, nothing good will come out of it.  Ministry is no lover.

Paul, your servant, my brother, vowed to “become all things to all men, that by all means [he] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).  But did you not care about Paul’s identity?  Did you not seek him out specifically?  Yet he was still only one person.  I, Lord! I am only one person.

Forgive me for misinterpreting who you are, who I am, and what you say about me.  I’m so worried with who I’m “supposed” to be that I forget that, in this moment, and even outside of this moment (that is, despite everything I’ve done to work up to this moment), I am already everything that I’m “supposed” to be.

What am I?  I am loved.  What am I?

I am a sheep.  If you led me to water, I wouldn’t even know to drink it.  I would just die there.  Tongue sticking out and all.  Hey look,” they would say.  “There lies the sheep who thought she was self-sufficient.”  B-e-a-utiful.

No.  You didn’t make me the way you made me so that I would be self-sufficient, useful, efficient, productive, optimal, or the “All-in-One” tool – that’s right, tool – that I’m pretending to be.  You never intended for me to be here… fitting like that little gear that the whole clock tower depends on.   There is no such gear: all are made to bear the weight that is proportional to their design, or the whole thing breaks down, just like Darwin’s theory without the abundance of fossil evidence that should have been found.

I was made to bear only what I can bear, and you promise not to give me more (1 Corinthians 10:13).  But I still take it and take it.  And I am crushed.  And you, being the one who has all things – you do not withhold it from me.  You are Loving enough to let me win the hard way.  Which sucks sometimes.

And you didn’t create me simply to take a burden for you.  And you, you think God gets tired?  If he did, would He set that “whole wide world” in your hands?  Heck no.  Why?  Because He’s clever!

And you, maybe You made me so that I could be weak.  So that my weakness could be made plain.  Well, congratulations!

Maybe you made me so that I could depend on you.

Maybe you designed me to feel the pressure when I’m self-sufficient, so that I would just back off and let God be God, and let the bygones of my past be by-gone.

And maybe, when I back off, I will be that happy little gear in the clock tower, spinning joyfully because she is right up next to the gear of Atlas, who has the whole world in his teeth.  And now that my Dirty Second Hands will be free, I will be free indeed, and I will lift them to You.