This morning, the sun shone through my blinds, hitting my face and rudely awakening me. I could only see out of one eye; the other was clouded with coconut oil from my makeup remover. The taste of vanilla and peanut butter from dessert last night still lingered in my mouth. Glamorous.
I stumbled to the kettle in the kitchen and put water on for tea. The dog jumped off the bed in the other room and came for a good morning greeting. Clunk. Click Clack Click Clack. The sound of builders working on the house next door made him growl. I smiled.
I was grateful for mornings. Dad told me once that the morning was the clear time. There was joy in rising, he said, strength in the steadiness of the sun. The darkness of struggle was always left in yesterday. There needed never be a shadow with Him.
The world was changing, my heart was open and increasingly more free. But with more discernment came more warfare. Voices came into my mind and shouted at me and I couldn't think, couldn't even turn away. Night was when they attacked, when I was tired, when I was too weak to fight. Lies entered my mind and then attempted to settle as truths in my spirit. They spoke over my destiny, over my worth, over my identity, the woman I am and the woman I will become. They spoke over my darkest fears, the things I fear the most. They told me, without fail, that I would never be free.
The cold inside this heart that's now unfolding
is trying to thaw,
but things frozen up inside
keep falling out.
But it's better that they leave,
anyway.
If you had told me a year ago that today, I would be living in Sydney, doing life with the craziest people I've ever laid eyes on, I would have laughed. If you had told me I would leave everything I know and not only go, but stay in a strange country, I would have called you crazy. If you had told me that I would lose everything I had, but find the greatest Love in all of eternity, I would have politely nodded my head and wondered what the hell you were talking about.
But here I am, sitting under a tree in the Crow's Nest, waiting at a bus stop with no bench, eating a drumstick in the dark, wondering when I will get to meet with Jesus again. I see Him everywhere now. I see His kindness in the eyes of the poor. I see the glint of mischief in His eye when a child laughs. I see His power when the thunder rolls across the desert and threatens to soak the whole earth in glorious rain. And I see Him in me sometimes, when I open my mouth and out pops a song no one's ever heard before. He is beauty, you see, and beauty has begun to wrap me into itself, into its recesses of light. He is taking the poor cinder of my conscience, carried it back to His workshop, and is making it a true thing, radiant, clear. I have been close and tasted of the real love of my Christ, and it has started to consume my life.
See, I've been runnin' for a long time,
Trying to find my refuge.
Never stopping long enough to see
That I can find my rest
Under the weight
Of His sweet shadow.
As we get closer to Jesus, to beautiful Holy Spirit, and ultimately to the heart of Father, we encounter more and more resistance. We are threatening the very center of the Devil's power, and He quakes in His shoes when he sees us getting close to God. Church should not be the most exciting thing in your life. Nor should missions, playing a guitar in worship, seeing deaf ears hear, watching people get saved, or seeing all the kingdoms of the earth transformed. It is simply the pure Presence of Jesus, what He is, who He is, the love He carries and the Truth of His Being.
But there's a cost, a fight for Truth Himself.
See, we're in this HUGE battle for freedom, bigger than we can fathom, and just being close to our beautiful Jesus is the answer to victory. It is when we begin to yield all our heart, our fear, our addictions, our worry, our insufficiency to Him and let him unearth whatever He wants, it is then that we encounter incredible resistance, then that we start to battle for our very lives.
Sometimes we can't feel Him, sometimes we don't even have enough strength to cry out for help. Sometimes we feel tied down, like we cannot lift our hands or move, for the spirit of fear comes on us, and we are immobilized. Sometimes we think that we can't come to Him because there's too much "stuff" in the way.
He's never been afraid to deal with our stuff. His love comes in again. He takes those fears that we never thought we would be rid of, removes them from us, and fills us with love in their place. As I go deeper into Christ, the deeper He goes in my spirit and pulls out things I would rather had stayed buried, things I didn't even know were constricting me, slowly killing me.
I want to be close to Him. That's all I've ever wanted. I want to dive again into Him, into deeper waters. I feel the resistance, but I will not be turned away from Him, though much tries to entangle me. I'll never be satisfied with shallow again. Why would we splash when we can plunge in and swim in the deep blue depths? He wants to blow up all my paradigms with His love, wants to blow up the smallness of my own thinking about myself, wants to take me deeper in Him than I ever imagined. I must eat of Him daily, He must be in me my food and water and breath, or I will die.
He has set all of this up, every facet. I did nothing to get here but follow the little clues He left. It hits me afresh every day that He is the greatest treasure I could ever find or own or possess. He is ever close, so close to me. I cherish the wind of His whisper, even the hint of His being around me, the thought of Him thinking of me. I feel Him now, these days, more strong in me than ever. And I love Him so much... More than I could ever write in lifetimes of books.
I've made up my mind.
Until the darkness disappears
And the dawn has fully come,
In spite of shadows and fears-
I will go to the mountain with You.
All my love,
B
