It’s not you, it’s me…

Last week was probably one of the hardest weeks we’ve had since moving to the Rez.  All the ladies of the house were homesick.  Terribly homesick for our tiny island, the ocean, the smell the salt water makes as the tide goes out, our friends and even our little house.  The family who moved into our house, precious friends of ours, posted a video of our Papa mowing the yard.  That did not only me but both of the little girls in…it was odd to see someone else looking out our big picture window, odd to see a little boy other than Little Man waving as Papa did circles around and around the yard.  It wasn’t the other little guy or the family’s fault we missed our Papa so badly, it was us.

The girls and I talked about why we were missing all those things, all those people…why it was important to talk about those feelings and get them out in the open.. We talked about how when we don’t say how we feel and tell others (who are safe to tell) what we need, it gets all jumbled up inside like a big bowl of spaghetti noodles.  Last week, I was a giant bowl of spaghetti noodles.  All the feelings were getting jumbled up in the mixture of knowing we’re here for a purpose that was set out long before we had any clue and wistfulness for a life I wasn’t quite prepared to leave behind…dreams I wasn’t ready to let go of and hearts and hands I wasn’t ready to stop holding… I have a dear friend who reminds me frequently that if I don’t fight for what I need, no one else will… so last week I had to do some fighting on my own turf…some soul searching and digging, only to realize it was no one else’s responsibility, it wasn’t “you”, it was me.

Over the course of the past three years, I’ve done a lot of work around who I was, who I am and who God intended me to be…who I am to Him and what He says about me.  Old tapes play like a broken record and often times they just have to be burned…and yet, at our weakest and lowest moments, the enemy of our souls, refurbishes those bad boys and breaks them out for another spin.  Last week was a week of old tapes.  It was a week of pulling up my bootstraps and remembering who my Father says I am and then ending the week by walking in the strength of who He has called me to be and the journey He has called me to…  It was HARD, y’all.  It was utterly exhausting.  It was a week of apologies and making amends with myself, my husband and my children.  It was a week of calling out the old and relishing in the new, in the truth, in the righteousness of my King.  It was a week of renewing my mind to see this place the way He sees it, loving others the way He does…unconditionally, without exception and expectation.  Meeting people where they are and loving them despite themselves…loving myself, and living well in the midst of this new season.

My prayer throughout last week was that my babies were learning something from the mess…that they would see that its okay not to be okay, that perfection is for Jesus and no one else, that asking forgiveness is hard but living without it is harder…I’ve spent a lot of time working to create a perfect image of what I thought this life was supposed to look like…only to realize the only thing this life is supposed to look like is the beautiful, crazy, limitless love of our Father.  Because He created us each in His image and that my friends is enough.  He created us…we are His perfect creation.  EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Can’t produce any image much more perfect than that, can I?

“So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.” -Gen. 1:27