I don’t know how it happened, but slowly, like a dripping tap and without me being even a teensy bit aware of it, I had lost my first love. The flame inside had waned to just a few barely burning coals.
On the outside, this loss of first love looked like me needing to: problem-solve, be right, judge, get control back, look better, create direction, generate my own understanding and conclusions, be a better person—do, do, do. I had started to jump through hoops, force open locked doors, fight against insurmountable blockages; basically create my own ladder into a heaven of my own making that had its own powerless saviour. That powerless saviour was a teensy, tiny, boxed-in, thinking-I-was-unredeemed… me.
I had also been intuiting that over the next little while, things were about to change and I had been feeling the swirl of those changes around me in more ways than one. Impending change can be quite unsettling for me with all of its unknowns, because I tend to fear unknowns:
“The departure of those who are close to me is looking more and more sure. I don’t know where my life is headed, and I just don’t fit anywhere. I am a misfit in this world. Whilst people always seem to like me, they don’t know what to do with me—what to think of me. They don’t understand me or ‘get’ me. What the ‘carp’ am I ‘doing’? Who in the ‘firetrucking burpengary’ am I?”
Instead of locking eyes with Jesus and then curling up into Papa’s arms, I had stepped into mistrusting the very One who had sustained every single beat of my heart from my first days of womb-surfing.
By the time this past weekend arrived, my misplaced eyes, fear and mistrust finally culminated in me making a decision to pull away from distractedness. To take a breath. To turn most everything off and shut out the pounding in my head that told me I was a heinous human being because I could. not. fit. in. Did not fit in. Could never fit the moulds that society said I should, like beauty, fashion, age, abilities, blah, blah, blah, etc.,—you know—the usual stuff we tend to fleetingly measure ourselves by.
Just a quick aside: I don’t know about you, but whenever I hit this particular state of mind, sweet, poetic, and lulling words do absolutely nothing in me or around me. Absolutely nothing. In fact, words like that tend to feel more like a nuisance. I tend to swat them out of the air because they don’t bring life; they simply cover over the chaos that lies beneath the surface. When I am in a state of deception (which is when I choose to live in a space where i reject the person of Love’s embrace), I need truth, not pandering or mollycoddling.
On Saturday evening, I refocused my line of sight onto Jesus and began to repent (change my thinking). I traded my fearful grasping fists for open palms of surrender. In my spirit I heard the words of Jesus from Matthew 10:39: “Those who cling to their lives will give up true life. But those who let go of their lives for my sake and surrender it all to me will discover true life!” Ouch, but yes. Truth.
In that moment, I let go of every hope, direction, desire and projection I had assured myself of. I let go of wanting and needing to make something of myself. I let go of self-rightness and of needing to be understood by others. I let go of “I”… and then the pain came. It was a necessary pain; a pain that was brought about by a two-edged sword dividing between bone and marrow.
In the middle of this time, I began to chat with the Spirits of Counsel and Might to hear their takes on if and where my feet might best wander and what my hands might best create. There were such beautiful moments that came about from communing through The Vine into the hearts of Counsel and Might—it was and is my absolute desire to stay in this place of communion. The sweetness of moments spent with my Kingdom community were worth the letting go.
Today, as it stands presently, I no longer care if I don’t fit in this world. I no longer care if I am received by this world or not. I no longer care if I am understood or not. The very basest desires of my being—the greatest longings of my heart—are found in the person of Jesus, the presence of my Papa, and the interactions I have in Their Kingdom. Our Kingdom. In the family community of Yeshua, I am accepted. I am loved extravagantly. I am found not by my own might, but through the person and connection of His love poured out over me like new wine, fresh oil, or sweet-smelling perfume.
Nothing will ever take the place of my connection into Jesus. No one. No notoriety. No money. No fame. No being ‘normal’ and ‘accepted’ by the world. Nothing. My eyes were made for His and His for mine, and in that intimate place of connection, I stand with Him on the waters of life. Waves ripple and roll, roar and rumble around us, but I am unconcerned as I rediscover the One Who is my True Life all over again.
May you find your own moments of breathtaking awe in the presence and the person of Jesus and His Kingdom. May the life on His voice, the Truth in His heart, the brilliance of His mind, and the seven-fold personhood of His Spirit, lead you into moments where you are lifted up and embraced into His wonder. May your heads find peace, your souls find rest, and may the fatigue, weariness, confusion, apathy, and disquiet of momentary trials fall away beneath the undying, eternal, and restorative Love of our Beloved. As weeping endures for the night, may joy greet you with open arms of strength in the morning. And may you journey into unformed, new, and undefined spaces fitted into the One who knows you better than all others ever could.
With No More Fear and Much Love, Dear Ones,
Blessings
Xx
Because Souls Are Like Gardens 