I am at a children’s home and right now we are preparing a dance/drama for a church service.
Warning: this blog is vulnerable, if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth…please skip reading this one. And please don’t pity me, its degrading.
I am teaching a drama and dance to a song called “The Best in Me” by Marvin Sapp. The boy playing Jesus is one of my favorite guys. His name is Cory, and I got to know him last year, making sure to leave last summer having told him how much I believed that God had a very special calling on his life. This summer I have watched God work so hard on his heart. Then I felt led to ask Cory to play the Jesus part in the dance. He is 17 and in the 8th grade, and he failed again this year. The dance starts with 3 skits. One where a judge tells a convict that he is worthless, one where a mom tells a daughter that she wished she hadn’t had her, and one where Jesus is crucified, dies and is taken away. The dancers come out and dance to the song; about 2/3 through the song, Jesus reappears from a crowd of dancers and redeems the convict and the abused girl. It’s pretty awesome. But here is what happened to me tonight:
As the dance was going on, the music blaring, all the dancers doing a beautiful job, Cory and I are in the back behind them waiting for the cue for Jesus to reappear. I start describing to Cory the role of Jesus he is playing now. Before, he was dying on the cross; he was in agony and was hurting. But now, I tell him, he is proud, his posture is tall, because he has just defeated death and the grave and is coming back to heal the ones he loves. I told him that all the pain he was acting out before, that he was now acting out the opposite in joy. Then I told Cory to remember everything so far that God has brought him through, to think about all the places God has healed, and imagine as best he could all the great things God has planned for his life (he began to well up) and to imagine that he was about to give that to the convict and the daughter. It was an amazing moment, where everything said was on the spot and not thought through, it was purely and beautifully truth and the Holy Spirit. But it got me thinking.
I am teaching right now about not believing what the world says, but believing what God sees in you. God has put all the children in just the right place. The girl who is the abusive mom, I just found out that her mom told her a month ago that she was a mistake and she regretted having her. The boy playing the convict is about to get moved to a different home because he snuck into a cottage and had sex with his girlfriend, he can’t find love in anything but women. The boy playing Jesus Christ is a 17 year old 8th grader. The lyrics say:
He saw the best in me
When everyone else around
Could only see the worst in me
He is mine, I am his
It doesn’t matter what I did.
He only sees me
For who I am.
Those are all the lyrics. This is all I want them to leave with. That what the world says, what Satan says, and that the lies we tell ourselves mean nothing compared to how God sees us. This leads me to one of the most vulnerable things I struggle with:
Why am I twenty one years old and single? More than that, why am I twenty one and never once dated? What is wrong with me? Why am I so un-datable? I’m nice, I’m funny, I love the Lord, and I bathe regularly…why?
What is wrong with me?
I’m going to tell you the lie that I believe:
It doesn’t matter how many criteria of a desirable woman of God that I fit, no man wants to shame himself by dating a fat girl. I’m just not good enough without a good body. I am a sister and a friend, but I'm not beautiful enough to be a wife.
This is the lie that I believe, this is the feeling that leaves me lonely, rather than content with God. This is what causes me pain on the inside. I tell myself it is a lie, but the nagging fear in the deepest part of my heart is that it might be true. Just like having a mother who doesn’t want you, and you wonder if you really are worth anything; or feeling stupid because you have failed the 8th grade so many times you might as well quit. I see Cory’s face as I tell him to imagine all the good things that God sees in him and I ask him to portray the joy of Christ in bringing him those good things. I want Cory to really believe, the kind of believe you live by. I can believe it for Cory.
But God yanked at my spirit tonight, because God also wants me to believe it for myself. If God sees the best in me, he is going to bring a man who does as well. Tonight as I was teaching Cory to lean on God’s view of him, I myself had to let go and lean. I feel less lonely; I know that who I am in Christ is enough. I find it really beautiful how God is teaching me by having me teach things I don’t even fully grasp myself. Its not lack of preparation as a teacher or leader, it is genuine dependence on a real, loving, and powerful God.
Tomorrow night all the kids in the dance and I are writing down things the world has said about us and lies about ourselves that we believe and then as a dance team we are going to rip them up and chuck them in the trash. My slip is going to say “Nikki is an undesirable fat girl.” I am going to rip that up and throw it away. Because God sees the best in me, no matter how the world sees me. I belong to him and I am not just a fat girl, I am a daughter of the KING. And one day I am going to believe that for myself just as much as I believe in God’s amazing plan for Cory’s life and the lives of these children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-UAP_LMpqc
*note: I appreciate comments and all, but do not pity me or repeat affirmations that I have already said in my post. I would like the luxery of being vulnerable adn honest with people thinking that I am fishing for affirmation.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
clarity
I'm such and inconsistent blogger, forgive me. I have a hard time really thinking I have anything worth saying in blog form...also, I am lazy at times.
Back in May I began seeking God very expectantly, requesting clarity by the end of this Summer. I don't often give God timelines, but I had a feeling it was OK. I have felt little direction on what I am supposed to do after college and to whom or what I am supposed to be devoting my time and energies. I am indecisive to a fault and I feel compartmentalized and spread thin over the school year. I generally avoid thinking too much on my future, but in the back of my mind, Fear continually nags at me. So I called on God to bring a stop to this. I didn't ask him for an outline to my life, I just needed the confusion out. I needed to not spend my senior year crippled in fear.
So God, with his knack for faithfulness, has brought me clarity. Not answers, just clarity. The funny thing is, I can't particularly elaborate on what that clarity is...because I just feel it. On a practical level it is in my decision to not pursue English Academia, but rather commit my life to other broken people through ministry. So on that note, here are some recent thoughts of mine. background: I've been working the Summer at a children's home. This is my second summer working with these youth who I find to be the most broken people I have ever come in contact with in my life. Last Summer I spent my time being angry. I was so livid at God for how unfair their lives were. This summer, I find myself more sad than angry. More desperate for God to just DO SOMETHING...
http://everycommonbushafire.blogspot.com/2010/07/wasteful-god.html
This blog, by one of my favorite people (everone has favorites, don't lie to yourself), has resonated with me. Check it out.
He speaks about his frustration toward the Lord because really it is sickening how many people go through this world not feeling the love of God when others around claim to have it inside of them. The injustice of the spiritually, emotionally, and physically deprived makes my heart sad. I'm connecting to what Keith is saying not because I am conflicted with the Lord over the injustice of this world to the same degree that Keith is; Because part of me believes that the anger Keith feels is rooted in love and selflessness that only God can plant in a man. But what I connect with is the need to love the unlovable.
This summer, I have been working with teenagers who have been told on many levels how worthless they are. Whether its through a parent who refuses to take a couple classes to get their child back, the DSS system that plays freaking musical chairs with their placements, or foster families who ship them off at the first sign of inconvenience; these young people are starved for real relationship and are scrapping to find false forms of it. I'm sickened...and now, I have spent two monthes here to only be another person who is in and out of their lives. But one day, this will not be the case.
Right now, I am a fleeting intern, but one day I will be a constant in the lives of broken children. They will fight and break down, they will hate me and hate this world, and I will love them despite their rage against their own existance. The gospel that is settled in my core is the only thing that can heal them. I've started ranting, but I can't help it. I can't continue to think that by writing essays, and learning thoery that I can love people more deeply. Maybe for some, this is completly possible, but I think that I'm not made that way. So there is my clarity, in all of it's muddled delivery. Its not finished, its only started :)
Back in May I began seeking God very expectantly, requesting clarity by the end of this Summer. I don't often give God timelines, but I had a feeling it was OK. I have felt little direction on what I am supposed to do after college and to whom or what I am supposed to be devoting my time and energies. I am indecisive to a fault and I feel compartmentalized and spread thin over the school year. I generally avoid thinking too much on my future, but in the back of my mind, Fear continually nags at me. So I called on God to bring a stop to this. I didn't ask him for an outline to my life, I just needed the confusion out. I needed to not spend my senior year crippled in fear.
So God, with his knack for faithfulness, has brought me clarity. Not answers, just clarity. The funny thing is, I can't particularly elaborate on what that clarity is...because I just feel it. On a practical level it is in my decision to not pursue English Academia, but rather commit my life to other broken people through ministry. So on that note, here are some recent thoughts of mine. background: I've been working the Summer at a children's home. This is my second summer working with these youth who I find to be the most broken people I have ever come in contact with in my life. Last Summer I spent my time being angry. I was so livid at God for how unfair their lives were. This summer, I find myself more sad than angry. More desperate for God to just DO SOMETHING...
http://everycommonbushafire.blogspot.com/2010/07/wasteful-god.html
This blog, by one of my favorite people (everone has favorites, don't lie to yourself), has resonated with me. Check it out.
He speaks about his frustration toward the Lord because really it is sickening how many people go through this world not feeling the love of God when others around claim to have it inside of them. The injustice of the spiritually, emotionally, and physically deprived makes my heart sad. I'm connecting to what Keith is saying not because I am conflicted with the Lord over the injustice of this world to the same degree that Keith is; Because part of me believes that the anger Keith feels is rooted in love and selflessness that only God can plant in a man. But what I connect with is the need to love the unlovable.
This summer, I have been working with teenagers who have been told on many levels how worthless they are. Whether its through a parent who refuses to take a couple classes to get their child back, the DSS system that plays freaking musical chairs with their placements, or foster families who ship them off at the first sign of inconvenience; these young people are starved for real relationship and are scrapping to find false forms of it. I'm sickened...and now, I have spent two monthes here to only be another person who is in and out of their lives. But one day, this will not be the case.
Right now, I am a fleeting intern, but one day I will be a constant in the lives of broken children. They will fight and break down, they will hate me and hate this world, and I will love them despite their rage against their own existance. The gospel that is settled in my core is the only thing that can heal them. I've started ranting, but I can't help it. I can't continue to think that by writing essays, and learning thoery that I can love people more deeply. Maybe for some, this is completly possible, but I think that I'm not made that way. So there is my clarity, in all of it's muddled delivery. Its not finished, its only started :)
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