Mapping the Geography of our Hearts and Affections {Remembering the Girl Who Sings}

I'm often asked if I want to return to the West. If the pressures of city life have squished us too far, if we have tired of apartment living, of navigating the urban grid and all the challenges that come with city life in general. 

Do I Ever Just Want to Go Home?

The answer is yes. Every. Single. Day.

And  the answer is no. Because somehow my life has become much greater than my own preferences and affections- and I'm even forging new ones.

The video shown above is my valley. It feels like home. Always. It is constant and full of my history- full of my family's history for several generations. Those mountains? They orient me. I never realized how much I relied on them to know north and south, east and west. I never realized how much I relied on them to know myself. . . . not until I'd left and seen that most of the world offered an endless expanse of flat land. Directionless. 

The geography in this valley is my comfort. Plucked from it, I have experienced a sense of loss, of being lost even. Without a compass, without sign posts and markers to map the way- how does one orient their heart? 

Where is our true north?

Taking a good look at what we long for is a great indicator of what we put our hope in, of what we cling to, what we defend at all costs. . . . . and where we direct our affections. I've had to ask myself what holds my affection most- what is my first love? Often, the answer has been whatever is known. In my past, in places I hold dear, in people I love. Then the whisper comes. . . "love the Lord will all your heart." Is Christ my first love? Is my home and rest and hope and satisfaction in him? 

There is only one love that will truly fulfill and make me sing. Our voices, our personalities and our passions are squelched when our hearts are restless, chasing after anything else to be anchored by.

We will never be free to say yes, to venture, to embrace, or to journey with God, until we let go. The prayer of my heart has become a song lately. Embrace and let go is the rhythm beneath the melody.

"Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, where we walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander. . .that my faith would be made stronger in the presence of my Savior." -Oceans

I want to live wildly, and among the wild, because that is my calling- it's part of my story. 

I must choose whether to orient my heart to the past or to the story God is writing for me- however uncomfortable that makes me! 

This song has me asking- can I be called out to live in wild places for the benefit of others? My son also makes an appearance as the little boy running through the woods in this video. . . Thanks times a million to Andy Mineo for inviting him to take part in sharing the message of your music!

And that I may never forget that where I am right now is exactly where God has me. And maybe you too friend? 

What do you long for that keeps you from living life fully right where you are?

Where can we give thanks together for where God has you right now? What might the Spirit be nudging you to release to him so that you can take hold of something greater?

Praying that we may each rightly embrace what God has given us today-and let go of what grips our hearts and keeps us from a song of freedom. It's in that space that our true home starts to be seen to us as beauty. 

So thankful you are here,

Kristen  

Its Time for us to Dress Like Daughters {Remembering the Girl Who Sings}

I come from a family of musicians. Although I am the least skilled among them, its a requirement that we all sing. We share memories and and sayings and inside jokes through songs and quips. When we pass butter and tongs getting the Christmas table set, when we peek in to whisper good morning to our children (or want to embarrass them in public!), when we ask a blessing each evening over a shared meal. . . there is always a tune in the air.  Musicals are our jam- and we know all the words and hold heated convictions about every version ever made. We mark seasons of the year by which musical befits it: Meet Me in St. Louis is always for Autumn, while the Music Man is thoroughly enjoyed in the Spring. This will either endear you to us, or annoy you to bits, because we just can't sit and watch- we have to participate and sing along! With this background, it was impossible to experience childhood without Eliza Dolittle at center stage. Her story captivated me.

The cockney girl who dreamed of being a fine lady finds herself the object of a bet between two gentlemen, Colonel and a prideful linguist, who believes he can transform anyone from an urchin into something elegant, with enough skill to fool even royalty. And so begins the story of My Fair Lady. . .

Henry Higgins taught Eliza Dolittle how to pose and pretend. He fancied up her speech and walk, the rhythm of her days and with all his might squeezed out every ounce of un-refinement that he could. He never said much about who she was before, he just moved her toward being a lady , something better. And so a girl pretending, and nerves shaking and a mind racing to do everything just so was presented and passed off as something grand. 

The cockney though? It bubbled there right under the surface, always ready to pop out at the wrong moment, always bringing a measure of fear to dear Eliza's outings. Would today be the one where her control would buckle? Where she would be found out for what she really was? 

This was a girl who had no wild dreams for herself. Her mind's greatest imagination had been a dream of being a girl selling flowers in a real shoppe. . . never to be so important as to stand among kings, never to be noticed.

But then she put on that dress.

Heads turned. Kings called. Men and women of consequence beheld beauty in her. She had their ear and attention. She, only she, had to believe it was all true, that it was all real. That she was real. She was the last and most impossible to fool- she had to believe she wasn't the street dweller she knew she was. She had to believe she was fine. She had to believe that her clothes had transformed her.

We are, each and every one of us an Eliza. And its all true, every bit- the clothes do make the man. . .  and the woman.

So what are you wearing?

What clings to your skin and sways when you move? What sashays and twirls when you dance with joy and wraps round you and tickles your cheek like the softest scarf?

I've spent far too many days wearing fear. Wearing insecurity. Wearing comparison. I leave the house hoping no one else notices my sooty parts- I've been a great pretender. And perhaps none of us can pretend quite so well as Eliza, but the beautiful part of our story- the foundation of our entire identity, is that for us, there is no need to pose. We are daughters of the King. We must be enveloped in the garment he has wrapped us in. White as snow. Sheer beauty. Loveliness. A new identity clinging to us, becoming us.

If we're really ready to dress like daughters, we must clothe ourselves in Christ.

When we put him on, we wear our new clothes forever. Never to fade or be mended, just glowing white and starched beautiful forever. No matter how tattered the girl beneath the petticoats may feel, no matter how often she wonders if she will be found out, the dress sets her before the King. Her clothes make her.

As we dive in to the foundations of who we are- who we can be as a girl who sings- let me ask you, Have you put on Christ? Do you know that your whole self is set right, your whole status and being and refinement and and beauty rest squarely on his shoulders? 

Ask him to show you today where you can cling to him. Ask him to show you that you are his daughter. The daughter of a King, welcome in his court, one who may hold his attention, one who he sees as beautiful.

For reflection today- perhaps to write out, to ask God to make alive in your heart?

Galatians 3:26-27; Zephaniah 3:17; Psalm 91:4; Galatians 4:7

The God Who Visits A Second Time {Remembering the Girl Who Sings}

Y'all. Y'all. I'm not even from the south and I have no other words. I had no idea my 31 Days of writing would begin this way. Sheer mayhem. With company from out of town, with illness striking, with a spur of the moment adventure to the country....what a whirlwind this past week was, and what a gift. I'm not convinced I can do anything well on a tight deadline and even though the bones of this series are written, I couldn't give the final push this past week to publish posts here. And do you know what was swirling in my mind while I let things fly off the rails and couldn't be in this space writing?

Psst. Psst. I knew it would go down like this. I knew you couldn't share your story well. Couldn't be consistent, couldn't be faithful. Do you even have anything worth saying?

Lies. Every one. And you know what takes a girl with a song in her heart straight down into a deep pit of hopelessness? Listening to any of 'em. In my ideal series, a different post would hold this Day 2 spot, but you know what? I think my week went haywire so I wouldn't miss this word for you today. A word I hadn't counted on sharing that wedged its way in to the narrative because I needed to feel it and know it and remember it again too.

So here it is girls. . . . .

God's plan will not be derailed when we blow it.

It just won't.

Do you feel like you've blown it?  My guess is that if you are here with me to Remember the Girl Who Sings, you have the sense of having lost her.  Maybe you wonder if you even deserve to have her back- to be full of joy again. Maybe you feel like you missed your chance to flourish because of poor choices or unbelief. Maybe you've never even known what it looks like to experience the joy of the Lord, to sing a song of purpose and freedom and hope, and so you are reading here today because you long so, so much for something more. Maybe you wonder if a life lived fully and passionately is even within your grasp.

You know what truth I can't escape when I read my Bible? The people God choses are very seldom the people we would choose. They are typically arrogant or lack faith and are almost always insecure. They have made mistakes again and again.  

For a long time, my least favorite person in the Bible was Jonah. The dude just could not pull it together. I think reading about him and judging him made me feel better about myself (true story). So, Jonah opposed the will of God, and ran away to avoid speaking to the people of Nineveh, because he didn't think they were worthy of God's mercy. These people were a brute force in Jonah's time and he had likely seen destruction in their wake. He did not want to see them experience God's favor. . . the favor that he clung to, the favor he thought came from all the ways he was living his life the right way. 

You can probably already see why I don't like him. I see just a little too much of myself in this guy. Poor Jonah, it took being swallowed up in the belly of a fish for three days before he obeyed. Yet even after seeing with his own eyes the people he despised come to repentance, after seeing God's will complete, Jonah's heart didn't soften. He went to whine about it all under a tree.

Moses on the other hand has always seemed so heroic to me. But if we take a closer look, the truth comes out that he was pretty brash and arrogant, at least at first. The book of Acts tells us that he had a passion for God's call on his life, to identify with his people, to be the one to free them from their oppression. He thought he would be welcomed as their rescuer by asserting himself. Nope. Moses jumped the gun. 

“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.  He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not." -Acts 7: 23-25

 So he ran. He hid in the desert for forty years. 

I've hidden too.  

But we serve a God who visits a second time. 

He came again to Jonah. After three dark days that must have felt like death, our God came again. He wrought mercy on a nation that was wretched. 

He came again still, only this time, God Himself anguished for three days of death. 

He brings mercy to me.

He came again to Moses. He said, I AM. I am the author of it all. I am transcendent. I am holding all things together. I am enough. He rescued a people.

Then he came and was I AM in the flesh. He was enough. 

He rescues me.

The greater Jonah emerging after three days of death has come. The greater Moses, delivering us from bondage, is with us.

He not only comes again to use us, now he dwells with us. In us.

He is the God who visits a second time and a third and a fourth. . . . his plan will not be derailed by us, by what we think we have lost or have left behind, because his plan is really not about us at all. Its about Him. 

He has called you to find your voice, to seek him. . . to sing. He is visiting you again. Nothing is going to blow that. 

Singing with you with great hope today and clinging to him as we study together this month,

Kristen