Today, I Am Called to Live

I have probably had the best spring of my life this year….not because life was easy, but because life was lived. When you walk in something hard, you forget how to breathe. When your heart is learning to die so that it can truly live, you can feel so discouraged. When the deep parts of your life are drastically changing, you actually just feel really stuck.

But there will be a moment (followed by a hundred more) in which you will come up for air and find that you don’t have to suffocate anymore. You don’t have to be held hostage by your feelings. You don’t have to be afraid of different. Because different than you had planned is exactly what God has designed full of purpose. The end of yourself is the best place to begin and the beginning of the best.

I believe that.

I have known it.

I am living it.

God wants more than survival for us, He wants satisfaction for us. And God knows (oh, how He knows!) that the only satisfaction for our souls is Himself.

And so-

There is a road named loving-kindness in which we are stripped bare of all we want so we can know all of Who we need. There is a road named loving-kindness in which we are thrust into heartache to be more whole than ever before. There is a road named loving-kindness in which we are exhausted so our cracked and bleeding cups can exceedingly overflow in God. There is a road named loving-kindness that leaves us better than the way we were found and leads our souls to our sole-satisfaction…God Himself.

Don’t you see? God desires and deserves all our attention and He will bring us to Himself in thousands of ways and He will give of Himself all the way, every time. This is the God who created you, who has woven purpose within you, who has said I am yours, and you are mine.

I will sing praises to my God while I have my being!

This emphatic resolve from the Psalms has never made as much sense as it does now. And I am learning that hard places can make hearts soft, desolate roads are rich with love, and difficult valleys can burst with blessings. Today, I am called to live, and I can live because I know Life.

And yet, I get overwhelmed. I feel pressed down by emotions. I carry the cutting burdens of this earth-bound life. So I bury myself in the Psalms. I remember I am woven with purpose. I remember that God desires sole-satisfaction for my soul, and these hard places have pushed and pulled me beneath the shadow of His wings. So I rest. I believe His goodness, and I begin to see it. I resolve, I am called to the beauty and the interactions of today.

God has designed beauty into the day He has given me. I accept the gift. And God commands that I love Him and I love others in every interaction existing within it. I live out the gift.

My fear doesn’t get the final say. I have purpose. My hard places don’t get to hold me. I’ve broken out in celebration. My burdens don’t get to become me. My being is because of God. And because of Him?

I have life,

and the passionate makings of a joyful noise.

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