Holy shit, it’s been a hell of a year, guys.
In the best way, truly.
I started the year off with the word “renovate” and dear Lord, sweet Jesus, I’m smack dab in the middle of it. My life looks so different from the last time I checked in that it’s almost dizzying and I’ve got to say –
It’s tiring, I’m worn out and I’m only slightly less of a hot mess on paper than I was a few months ago, but I haven’t been this content in a long time and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The funny thing is I can rewind back to two years ago and I remember clinging to the life I knew with everything in me.
I’d just quit my job, I had money in the bank and a role in the church that I was pretty attached to at the time.
There’s a lot more I could write about that season of life but this isn’t intended to be a very long post. The point of me referring back to that time is to make the point that I was so afraid of losing it all.
I was afraid of going broke, I was afraid of not having my shit together, I was afraid of this and I was afraid of that –
and here I am now, inside of it all.
I won’t get into the details, but I made a mess.
I have amazing friends, amazing family and I serve an amazing God who shows up in the middle of our messes and helps us get to cleaning when we’re the very least deserving. In all honestly I was incredibly irresponsible with my time, money and resources when I walked away from my career and I might be playing clean-up for a while, but here’s the thing –
I see it less as clean-up and more as art.
God told us we would break, he told us it wouldn’t be easy, he told us we would have to let go of our old lives to take hold of the new, and I’m learning that it may not happen just once.
Maybe it happens over and over again, if we’ll let it.
I see it as the creation of a beautiful mosaic.
God comes alongside us and shows us how the broken pieces matter. He connects this piece with that chapter and that friend to this one. He removes pieces we thought were important and replaces them with other things that maybe we forgot mattered; like family, our faith and a knowledge of the substance of life –
which isn’t impressing a bunch of people with our online presence, it isn’t a number that consistently stays in our bank account and it isn’t a reputation of coolness, power or prestige or whatever it is we might think we want.
He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
I didn’t say that, it came from John Piper, I think.
But it’s true.
I’m embarrassingly poor right now and I’ve struggled with that a lot this week, but I remind myself that I made the decision two years ago that I’d rather be a starving artist than a well-paid sales rep and I’m owning that.
I am an artist and I am his paintbrush.
He has me firmly in his grip and we’re making beautiful things –
that’s the only thing that matters.
W
renovate ● 