“Falling in love with yourself is as beautiful as any experience of love is. It’s learning to laugh at your awkward tendencies and smile at all your quirky habits. It’s learning to be grateful for the many sides you have – confident, crazy, shy, sexy, nerdy, angry, weird, and all the rest of them. It is realizing that you’re one of a kind and that you deserve to give the world the best person you can be. Falling in love with yourself is being happy in your life and knowing that in this one moment in time, you’re beautiful simply because you are you.”

— Kovie Biakolo

(Source: larmoyante, via ayoungwomanslight)

The Perfect Wisdom of our God

I read this same story last year, and I think about it so often. 

“Many years ago there was a monk who needed olive oil, so he planted an olive tree sapling. After he finished planting it, he prayed, ‘Lord, my tree needs rain so its tender roots may drink and grow. Send gentle showers.’ And the Lord sent gentle showers. Then the monk prayed, ‘Lord, my tree needs sun. Please send it sun.’ And the sun shown, gilding the once-dripping clouds. ‘Now send frost, dear Lord, to strengthen its branches,’ cried the monk. And soon the little tree was covered in sparkling frost, but by evening it had died.

Then the monk sought out a brother monk in his cell and told him of his strange experience. After hearing the story, the other monk said, ‘I also have planted a little tree. See how it is thriving! But I entrust my tree to its God. He who made it knows better than a man like me what it needs. I gave God no constraints or conditions, except to pray, ‘Lord, send what it needs— whether that be a storm or sunshine, wind, rain, or frost. You made it, and you know best what it needs.’”

Streams in the Desert Devotion for March 29.

Everyone always says “God’s grace is an ocean, and we’re all sinking.”

And I completely agree with that.

But think for a second about how terrifying sinking in an ocean would actually be. If you were alone in the middle of the massive sea, I can bet that your first reaction would not be to float there in great happiness and rest. You would most likely be screaming, trying to frantically think of a way to get out of the situation, and probably weeping in great distress.

Once we realize the safeness that is God’s grace, it becomes beautiful and freeing. But imagine the process of letting go, the actual sinking and release of control that allows us to slip into the scariness of that trust by which we receive grace. It’s not all fun and games.

It’s a huge statement that I think, as Christians, we’re so used to just throwing around.

But really take a while to think about what it means to sink into a body of water that mankind knows less than 10% about. I don’t know what that thought feels like to you, personally, but really take a second to just feel the emotion that it brings. And then talk to your Creator about that emotion.

The Simple Joy of Being Able to Trust and Obey

“They asked, ‘How did you get your sight?’

He answered, ‘The man named Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. Then He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” 

-John 9:10-11

Imagine this story if the blind man had become upset with Jesus for putting mud on his eyes, or if he had become confused and simply wiped away the mess instead of traveling to wash it as Jesus commanded. Imagine how this story would end without the obedience of the blind man.

I have to say that his obedience is so encouraging, yet so convicting.

If I were this man, I would have preferred a healing without the mud, without the traveling to wash, and honestly, with simplicity and ease. But Christ commanded otherwise. He put mud on his eyes, even when it may have seemed to human minds that the mess was unnecessary. 

I guess my point is that we’re not going to understand why God does what He does. We don’t understand why He brings mud, mess, and difficulty before healing sometimes. We don’t understand why His good so often doesn’t seem to align with what we perceive as good.

All that really matters is that we trust and obey. He does what He does for reasons we may never understand, but as that old hymn says, “there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey”. 

He knows what He is doing, and He only works for the good of His children, whether or not there seems to be some unnecessary mud in the way. Just trust, and just obey. That is joy.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m a human a lot lately.

Just a little, tiny, human girl with feelings and passions, fears and mistakes. A tiny human with a painful past and an unknown future.

I’ve been thinking about how similar we all are, us humans; how we can know a hundred people who are exactly like us while knowing absolutely nothing about them. 

It’s so easy to go through life knowing less than a fraction of who the people around you actually are, what they’re actually going through. We so often fail to really experience people.

I don’t know if I’ve noticed it more because I’m in the South, the buckle of the Bible belt, where literally everyone seems to be a Christian in some way or another, and it’s actually more prevalent, or if I’m just becoming more aware of what has always surrounded me, but it seems like everyone wants to hide who they are for fear that their past somehow lessens their value. Everyone wants to hide their mistakes, their failures. 

Sure, we talk about our struggles if they involve workload or sickness, but I guess I’m the kind of person who wants to fully know a person. It’s great to pray for someone’s stress with schoolwork, and that’s needed, but everyone deals with that. I want to be able to know someone’s past mistakes, where they’ve screwed up, what they’re carrying shame and guilt for, where they actually come from, and all of the difficult things that are refining them into Christ’s image. That’s where healing comes from. True and raw community. I don’t know if it’s just that the South is full of well-sheltered Christians who have never made significant mistakes, but I feel pretty alone in my failures. And I’m going to get pretty open here: I feel completely discouraged from sharing the intimate parts of who I am with people because, in all honesty, no one seems to expect me to. People expect everyone around them to put up a fake facade, so they don’t dig and push for more. 

I don’t mean to be critiquing the way people interact, I’m just sort of stating my observations and how I’ve been reacting to a belated realization of culture shock in moving from California to Tennessee. The South operates differently, and I think I’m just beginning to be able to put my finger on that specific difference. In my community in California, rawness was desired and pursued, and here it seems to by shied away from.

And I guess it’s just strange to think about what a huge influence our society and our culture have on us tiny, little humans. These macro-level forces that we forget about, like the structure of society, are subtly shaping our micro-level interactions on a day to day basis. The community we bring ourselves into, in some ways, molds and changes who we are. It’s inevitable. And it’s intriguing, in my opinion. It makes me realize how tiny, fleeting, and ultimately powerless we all are.

So Here’s a Problem:

This might not be a well-liked post, and it might not even be relevant to many people, but I feel convicted to just put this out there. (Just so you know, at times it might seem like this is directed only to women of the church, but that’s simply because I’m speaking from my own point-of-view).

Okay. So everyone has been talking about the super bowl this past week, and of course, they’re all talking about Beyonce’s half-time performance. I just don’t understand how, as Christians, we’re endorsing such provocative and un-Christlike behavior.

Now I’m not going to say that Beyonce isn’t talented, and I’m definitely not saying that we should condemn her or hate her in any way, shape, or form. All I’m saying is that when my Christian friends post all over the internet about how Beyonce is an idol and a goddess simply because she danced around in lingerie, it concerns me. If the Holy Spirit is living inside of us, we’re called to deny the flesh. We’re called to live in a way that Christ would. We’re called to purity. I don’t want to imply in any way that Christ wouldn’t love this woman. I just think it needs to be made clear that He would not be supporting her actions. He wouldn’t want to see performances like the super bowl half-time show. I believe that it would break His heart, and that He would desire repentance. So why should we want anything different?

To break it down, this whole situation concerns me on three levels:

1. What kind of a witness is it to be okay with sin? How are people who have yet to experience the freedom of Christ going to see that very freedom in us when we’re still praising things that are of this world? It’s not something we should take lightly. Christ clearly didn’t take it lightly when He suffered on the cross to save us from our selfish and lustful ways. As Christians, what kind of example are we setting when we act like it’s perfectly okay to present ourselves in the way that Beyonce did on Sunday? Would you be comfortable dancing in that way in that kind of outfit, knowing that you’re causing insecure thoughts in millions of women and lustful thoughts in millions of men? I wouldn’t expect most Christ-following women to willingly flaunt their bodies in that way, so why are we praising someone who is doing something that we know to cause so much pain?

2. This shouldn’t be the standard that any girl holds herself to, and honestly, it breaks my heart that even a Christian community is not only accepting, but encouraging scandalous behavior for its women. It’s what we’ve been rescued from, ladies. If we’ve been set free from this kind of bondage, why are we perfectly fine when we see other women in it? We’ve been saved from the worldly idea that a woman is only as good as her body. We have so much more than ourselves to live for, and so does she. Why are we perfectly content with this adulterated degradation? I’m not going to deny that Beyonce is beautiful, but do we realize that by talking about her and by glorifying her so much that we’re consequently hurting the women of the church? We’re causing women who are completely different from any of those dancers to believe that they have to work toward that, and that distracts them from working toward God Himself. Even if it doesn’t personally affect us, we need to be aware of how it affects others. Why should becoming another person be anyone’s goal? Do we even realize that that’s what we’re telling women when we praise one specific person so heavily? All it does is create insecurities and hurt for women. This idolization of one type of person isn’t healthy, guys. It’s just not.

3. Think of the men of the church. Think about how much of a struggle lust is for them. We, as women, have so much power over what gets into their minds, and the things we say, do, wear, and endorse have a much stronger affect on men than we can possibly understand. How can we expect them to respect us when we’re completely okay with other women exploiting their bodies? Why are we okay with women in lingerie becoming a norm? Why are we okay with the men who are going to lead Christian households and churches becoming socialized to such perverted earthly norms? As a church, we’re called to purity. We can’t suppose that a performance like Beyonce’s doesn’t create unhealthy, difficult, and hurtful expectations in a man’s mind. And because of that, we shouldn’t be joking about it. Satan uses those small things, those simple comments and conversations, to plant seeds of torment and guilt into them. Over time, this can completely change a person. As women of the church, we’re supposed to lift our brothers up, not tear them down. Making the sin of lust even more difficult for them is the last thing we should be doing. Why would we cause them to believe that one type of woman is the best type of woman? That causes them to objectify us. It causes them to lose focus on their Father and to put the focus on the desires of the world. I know that we obviously can’t change the fact that so many men saw this, but we can change the way we speak about it. We can be light and encouragement in our actions and words by not condoning this behavior, but by being the kind of Psalm 31 women that men should actually strive after. We can treat this as a wake up call to how cautious we should be about our words and actions around our brothers in Christ.

I know it might seem like I’m making a huge deal about something trivial, but I think that this one instance exemplifies many issues in the church as a whole, and I can’t exactly sit here and be quiet while I’m seeing my brothers and sisters getting mixed up in idolization and pain. We have to take all of these little things seriously, because we don’t realize how big the little things actually are. We can’t just brush these issues off and expect them not to affect the people of God.