I can be a very ugly person in the eyes of other people... who wants to face that?



It has been a strange week, a exhausting week. A heavy week. A deep, very full week. And life doesn't seem to stop to wait for me to keep up.

Suffocation. Space. There is something incredibly soothing about silence, just a stop to all the tossing and turning, all the wondering and wandering. And i feel this is something God has been callng me to especially in the past few days.

Last night I was journaling, doing a little reflection, or maybe it could more accurately be called pouring out worry and frustration. And Abba led me to this passage in Isaiah:

In repentance and rest is your salvation,
In quietness and trust is your strength...

...the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
He rises to show you compassion.
The Lord is a God of justice
And blessed are all who wait on Him.

Isaiah 30:15a&18

I can be a very ugly person in the eyes of other people. And so that is why I must thank God for his grace. In his grace, I am able to shout at the top of my lungs "This IS WHO I AM!" I can be nothing more and nothing less at this moment than simply who God has allowed me to be at this very moment. I cannot be changed by others, only offered freely by God to change me. And the only way that can happen is in quiet surrender.

So I feel the need for some space. There is something so freeing about being able to say, "this is what I want, what I need, who I am, and you are just going to have to accept that until the Healer fixes me." I am not bound by the expectations and presumptions of other people. I need a little room to breath. To let out that breath and be that person, no matter how ugly she looks to you. I can't make my self anything different.

None of this probably makes sense, but i just wish the person I am really speaking to could hear me. I hope that somehow they can hear me. To really see that I can't breath. That i'm scared and hurt and i just want free. I need free. I need free. And that breaking free might cause some hurt, at this moment, I feel that freedom will come from a good, firm declaration of independence. She may think that I am already too independent, too offensive, not whatever enough, but that is the person i need to be right now. I need to be that person. And how do i do that without being hurtful? I don't know. But i think that I may need to be allowed to hurt before I am able to love. I heard a quote once that i really liked about love. It says something to this effect: "In order to love someone, we must know what hurts them." I feel like i need to have the right to be the mean person, the person who has the right to be wrong, the person who has that as a choice before i can be the right kind of person for the right reasons. I need to have that freedom.


Abba God! I am crying out to you tonight! I am feeling suffocated and trapped. I feel so totally overwhelmed in obligation, not truth, not real love. What are my rights? What part of me am I trying to express here? Set me free. I need your grace, that room to breath tonight.