“that’s where Jesus died,” Joey says, pointing to the hole in the paper he’s scribbled with markers. it looks like an orange and yellow explosion happened, like a daffodil was torn apart. “that’s where it’s all empty and gone.”
the longer i live, the more i realize how empty and gone i am.
how the hole in my paper is me needing Jesus.
i need him in the voice of my husband talking sternly for me having run when i’m sick, because this girl doesn’t know when to stop.
i need him in the hands of a nanny who cooks suppers and cleans counters and tells stories with puppets and makes my children’s lives a fairy tale.
i need him in the crevices of my job: in my interactions with people, in providing covers for my book (which he did), people for marketing that book (which he has) and a publisher who believes in it (and so much more) and the longer i live, the more i realize how little life is about me.
i don’t want it to be about me. because that would be a waste of time.
“unless the Lord builds the house, its builders work in vain,” the Bible says, and i want to believe this in a radical way.
i want to believe it in a George Mueller kind of way (a man who founded an orphanage and refused to ask for donations but depended entirely on prayer). in an Elijah kind of way, who called fire down from heaven. in the widow’s kind of way, who gave all she had–two coins–to God.
so what does this kind of faith look like in an ordinary woman’s life?
i’m not sure, but i think it begins with choosing love.
it begins with asking, what is the most loving way i can spend my life? is it to market my own books? is it to promote my own blog posts and websites?
or is to trust God to do all of that while i care for the least of these?
“it’s so hard to get quiet enough, free enough of the bondage of self, to hear the voice in the whirlwind that Job heard,” writes anne lamott.
more than anything, i want be free. to be holy. i don’t want to waste my life on me.
(*linking this with the gypsy mama, whose word today is “identity”)
remarkable posts from this week’s link-up
i need you too. will you believe it?