Coward to Courageous

“But in all his relationships, God reaches for man.

Reaches for you who have fallen and scraped your heart raw, for you who feel the shame of words that have snaked off your tongue and poisoned corners of your life, for you who keep trying to cover up pain with perfectionism.

Three words come through in the thicket of failure:

Where are you?”

-The Greatest Gift, Ann Voskamp

Let's take it back a few years, maybe all the way to 8^th grade when I really started to learn about God and crave for his relationship, most of all to be a light for him. But I did not know how… or maybe I did I just lacked the courage. As my heart was cowering in the corner peering out at the light that it was afraid to grasp, not because it did not want the light but because my heart knew once it allowed itself to over flow with light then it would have to share it. Let it shine. Speak the truth. Change my life.

Years passed… middle school, high school, college. They all came and went with my heart in the same place, staring at the light from afar not sure what to do with it. Sometimes my heart would move closer and then back off once the fear of earthly failure, the fear of what would happen next sank in, when the words of Satan became too powerful. His words of a haunted past, his words of sins, he would take my heart and scrape it raw with lies that I was never good enough… making my heart cower back in the corner again just looking on, knowing the truth but to afraid to do anything about it.

Then a friend… a friend whom I have had since high school spoke the truth to me. She said I needed to find a mentor, to find a church family with a life group and become a part of it; that I needed to look for more in this life than just attending church and believing. So I began to pray, to pray for a mentor, to pray for a church family that would bring us a life group to gather around us in storms, to be a word of encouragement, to show my husband and I how to take a leap of faith. No more than a month later the prayer was answered.

At this moment so many realities began to sink in… I had been trying to write my own story but God has a bigger one. I thought I was holding the pen that would write a great story of true love and kids and simple life… but then I realized that I was not holding a pen at all. That by trying to be the author in this great story has only caused heartache. God’s heart was breaking as I pushed him away and sought out my own story, and what a mess I had made; pages scribbled on, no plot… characters coming and going. Then I handed my messy book over to the creator of the heavens and earth and begged him to take it from here, "you’re the writer and I am but a character, I am but a small piece in your work of art. But please, please let me be a part of this story". And he has! Oh! He has!

In the past few months I have seen him erasing my scribbles and writing a beautiful story. A story written about a coward finding courage. A story of a lonesome heart finding multiple mentors, women after God’s own heart, a church family and a life group that have been nothing but encouraging to my husband and I and all because we had faith to let go and jump into his everlasting arms.

You see God does not laugh at failures. God does not cast you aside or strike you down. He lifts you up into his arms and says sit at my feet, drink from my cup, and be filled with my love and my light. Let me send you out into this world to show people there is a refuge from this chaos, that there is a peace that surpasses all and you know the provider!

Where Am I?

My heart has jumped into the light, immersed in it like never before. Overwhelmed and overflowing, now its one task is to pour it out, to shine, to be courageous and trust in him… and the journey has already begun.