I was stalking the page of a fairly well-known worship leader the other day, reading her posts, watching her videos and I was floored by her joy. She exudes it. It pours out of her eyes, her mouth, her smile and her voice. She's like a big bright ball of sunshine that's so blinding you have to shield yourself from looking directly at her because the rays are just busting out everywhere.
She is full of wonder and peace and joy and excitement over Jesus' love. She gushes on and on about Him. She is effervescent. And as I read her words and watched as she giggled and laughed and exuded this joy, I wept.
Great, I thought, another thing to mourn. I have lost my joy. I listen to CDs of fantastic worship and half the time I am numb. I move my lips to sing and the words fall off my lips and feel strange and forced and foreign. I watch other people as they worship and tilt my head to the side in wonder as they so effortlessly offer up their praises and their words to the Father. I marvel at how easy it is for them to push through to that deeper level.
Because that used to be me. It used to be. And now, I feel like a shell of a human. I'm half the woman I used to be. Half the worshiper. Half the leader.
Remember in The Little Mermaid, when Ursula turned Ariel and King Triton into the shriveled up mer-people and how pitiful and desperate they looked and sounded in that state? That's how I feel. Shrunken, tiny, minuscule and weak. But even though I am in this malnourished state where my growth has been stunted, I am still reaching out for bread and water. I am hungry. I am thirsty. I have been starving and although I am hesitant and mistrusting because I am wounded and broken, I want to be fed, I NEED to be fed and I MUST drink. I want to live again! I'm dying to live again!!
So I am striving. I am diligently pursuing my Father. I am finding His bread of life and I am drinking His living water. I am sipping and nibbling because it is so overwhelming. And I am finding my insatiable hunger and thirst is slowly coming back. I know that soon I will be devouring every morsel and drowning down every drop just to be reaching out for more!
And now, I have a secret to tell you. I've only told a few people this and you might laugh, it's okay, I don't mind. There's something really cool that happens to me when I worship. When I really, really worship with every fiber of my being, when every little part of me focuses in on giving my self completely to God and lavishing my love on Him and accepting His love for me, something happens to me in THAT moment. That moment when I've given Him my all and I am worshiping Him in absolute reckless abandon.
I become a giant. I'm not kidding you. In my spirit, in that moment I am no longer 5'2". I see myself rising taller and taller and taller until I am so tall I am nearly to the ceiling! It is such an amazing feeling, so euphoric, so heady, so rich and I am so, SO tall! I know that sounds funny. It is. It's weird. My spirit man is tall. For always having been a shorty, let me tell you, that feels really, really good. But man, when I worship God with all that is in me, I'm telling you people, I literally become a giant.
I miss that. I miss my joy. And I miss my worship. And I'm so glad I'm getting it back. One bite, one sip, one song at a time. Oh how I love my Jesus.
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