I hide.
Hiding for fear of comparison.
Because I watch the better than & worse than scenario unfold before my eyes.
& they have always placed me on top.
Until.
Because someone will come along & toss you carelessly to the other side.
It comes when the greater than voices hush.
& the silence holds all the answers.
So when nobody's saying your better,
We're thrusting ourselves under the bus,
diagnosing the quiet.
Killing our own self-esteem.
Hiding from commitment.
Because the unfinished stands out over the finished,
weighing me down with the
y o u c a n ' t f i n i s h a n y t h i n g y o u s t a r t.
& I cling to the rainy weather associations I make with commitment.
We had a terrible
falling out & the two of us
never
held
hands
since.
So there rests commitment, in the same place I left it.
Where I toss things that inch their way towards the word around like hot potato,
out of fear the word might stick.
Hiding bills.
Because if I don't open them, they don't count.
If my eyes don't see that red line, it doesn't exist.
& I stay rich & ignorant.
Hiding from being seen.
If they see you, they'll pick you apart.
Hiding Talents.
Because if they see all I have, it won't be enough.
[& SO WE HIDE. ]
Hoping others will seek, but not find. For fear of disappointment.
& so we throw the blanket over the abandoned work of art.
Ourselves.
The final masterpiece, the art that lives inside of us, locked away in the cobweb covered room. We're hiding more than bits or pieces of ourselves. We are covering up something sacred, something referred to as beloved & adorned. We are hiding the gift God has lavished on us as his sons & daughters.
We hide our God-given strengths.
Because foolishness sweeps over us like a bad day, blanketing our minds from the light & suffocating us by darkness. So we nod our heads yes as the devil lectures us that our talents aren't the best.
That they won't measure up.
& out goes our handcrafted specialty flavor of gourmet God talent, because it's no longer good enough. & what our broken eyes miss is a God slipping out with His gifts.
We hide them all together, sealing ourselves with average.
Oh, Isaiah.
They come together. They fall away. They heal just in time for a new breaking. They worship God. They forget God. You know the flow. Almost identical to our own.
Here in the midst of their forgetting their first love, God pulled the only thing that seems to get our attention.
Isolation between us & things we love.
There will be no flax for the harvesters,
no thread for the weavers.
The weavers & all the workers will be sick at heart.
{ ISAIAH 19:9-10 }
Deeper than not being able to perform a job, it's not being able to be themselves to the fullest. It's them not being able to be who they were made to be, live the work of art they were meant to live.
I have written more words than I have spoken.
Not really, though some days it feels like it. I have written more than I have revealed, as God has reminded my forgetfulness of who he's made me to be, reviving in me his promised spirit of boldness.
Because for years, I hid.
I had two blogs before this one. One was silly childish play, the other heartfelt catastrophes. & I wrote & I wrote. I filled notebooks. I started books. I sung sweet sorrow through poetry. I even made lesson plans for Sunday School classes.
& I hid it all, every once in a while finding the remnants in a half-filled notebook or in the bottom of a storage container. & I breathed it again like a cold gust of wind uninvitingly barging its morning chills into my unprepared nostrils.
The trees down through the woods filled all summer with the sun & now they spill with it.
The trees of the fields, they dance now with the glory before Him.
{ ANN VOSKAMP }
So the trees finally catch on & so do I. They watch in adornment as the sun floods the earth with God's glory all summer long. They wish they could do the same, dreaming until they hear the still small voice saying to simply be. & so they bask & it's fall & their golden ombre mirrors in the sun's worship. & I hear him whisper write write write beloved & my hands & I finally begin to reflect his Spirit.
& FOR THE FINE PRINT.
PREPARING US FOR 11 DAYS OF REFINING BEAUTIFUL, HERE'S SOME THINGS TO HAVE AT:
A MILLION LITTLE WAYS, EMILY P. FREEMAN
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