A little girl of 3 years old, messy hair and starry-eyes, running with her arms outstretched like wings, circling around and swooping low. A smile beaming out from her dimpled face, shining with hope and remnants of her mama's lipstick smeared on in "secret". As she gets further away, she turns to look over her shoulder at the Daddy she's sure is watching and smiles her biggest, she knows when she circles back around from her "flight" that he's going to scoop her up and tell her how pretty and remarkable his girl is. She's loved and she just knows it. She doesn't have to do a single thing but run in the freedom of who she is. This is what her Father calls her "freedom run".
You couldn't have broken me from that vision if you tried. Rooted in place, arms meagerly raised in "worship", that vision stole the very air out of my lungs. Father, you couldn't possibly mean..
"Yes. I entirely mean..."
He showed me the freedom He wants me to live in. Through the eyes of three year old me, God showed me what it feels like to know. The words "child like faith" consume me and through this moment, I understand something I've spent my entire life trying to chase down.
Effortless love.
This is hard. Seriously this is difficult to look at and watch because my feeble brain is looking for the catch and cannot find one. This moment is untainted, the vision unblemished.
It is called grace and the stuff sticks all over you, thickest in the places where the wounds are deepest. An undeserved gift served up in the least expected places in moments when it seems to be mythical to believe in things like forgiveness and mercy. This is where I collide with love, head on. All of my huffing and puffing in my previous posts leaves me a bit chagrined because this is what God does. God does love without even trying and no matter how much I try, He isn't budging. I can bring Him my failures and He gets all giddy and tosses them over His shoulder like so much worthless rubbish and then leans in for a hug around the neck. He wants to be close to me, the failures aren't to be ruminated on when there is so much love to be given. When I want to whine and squirm about my boo-boos, Jesus is pure focus, willing me to hold still so He can goop some mercy on them. I try to explain how it got there and why it looks so bad and my Savior gives me the "pay no mind" look as He shows me how He paid it all on that cross. If I want to be injured and nurse the wounds for attention or anything short of praising God for the healing that has already begun, well, I can take my mat and park it next to the springs for the next 38 years if that suites me, however; He knows me better than that. He knows His girl better than that. I want to be healed.
I've spent the last few months getting used to a new haircut. Worrying that maybe I should've just left it alone and "what if I don't look pretty?" and God shows me a little girl with a mess of tangled up hair from the wind she's been catching in her freedom run. It's glorious.
I spend a lot of time thinking about my wardrobe and what I could wear to emphasize this or minimize that and God shows me a little girl who's contagious joy will outlast any fashion trends. It's breathtaking.
My smile gets hidden behind grins and smirks because I'm self conscious about my imperfect teeth and then God shows me a child beaming with such abandon that I can't even describe her teeth, all I see is the radiance of her confidence. It's liberating.
Entire days of my life have been spent consumed with thoughts of being unlovable or not good enough. Days hungry for food, attention or love. Then God shows me a little girl who's body is nourished by full acceptance, never once concerned with whether she will be wanted when she circles back around because the world hasn't tainted how she sees herself and she knows she is seen and thoroughly adored. It's captivating.
Oh, the effort I have put into trying to get it right and please those around me who seem to have standards I can never meet. Then the image of a little girl, effortlessly just being who she is and it is more than enough, the ease in which she runs doesn't come from thinking too hard about it. She runs the best way any of us can; with the full knowledge that she is seen. Her joy comes purely from knowing that her Father loves her and loves to see her freedom run.
After all of this time, all of my blustering about; I'd forgotten about freedom. I didn't realize that I was still striving so hard. I cannot explain what exactly happened in my heart today and I won't even pretend to translate it here the way it took place. All I know is that God took me back to a place and time before the world changed my view of Him and myself and life got terribly painful and confusing. In a dazzling moment of pure mercy, I was shown that forgiveness and redemption look like bare feet running in summer grass with only one destination in mind; freedom. It's been a very long time since I've felt those sun-warmed blades of grass under my feet. I remember them though.
Father, take me there. My arms are open wide and I'm circling back to you.
