Scars and Stories

I'm passionate about many things, but about writing especially. Most nights I stay up until early hours of the morning journaling and blogging and reading the writings of older, wiser minds. I drink in words like a caffeine addict drinks coffee- deeply and dependently. I lie awake at night dreaming of marvelous stories that have yet to be breathed into life on the empty canvases of my journal pages. Stories have always had a way of evoking a deeper part of me I keep buried too often, a part of me that cries out to be cultivated with pen and paper. So when God speaks to my heart that He's already written out my story, my heart stops for a moment.

Being so strongly attached to stories, I have a deep desire to write out my own. In my mind, there's no better dreams than the dreams I've already conjured, and there's no better story that the one I've already written out in my heart. So often I get to a place where I become so consumed with bringing my life-story to fruition and trying to edify my perfect version of my future that I forget to pause and focus on this present moment I'm in. I forget to receive this present moment as a gift from God, and take Him at His word when He whispers to my heart that this life is not my own, that I wasn't designed to direct my own steps (Jeremiah 10:23). That always has been and always will be His job. He's hemmed me in- behind and before, and His sovereign hand guides me and protects me. All the days ordained for me were written out in His book before one of them came to be (Psalms 139: 16).

He's already fearfully and wonderfully woven together a story far better than the one I cling to so tightly, the one I fight so hard to preserve. And He gently looks on me in my broken condition and whispers, "Let go. I've got this. You weren't made for this, Daughter. I've already written it all out. I'm here fighting this battle for you."

So I let go. I listen to his voice. And I learn what it is to receive this present moment as a gift and cherish that I have a God who loves me enough to have already written out my future for me and provides for me in this moment. I rejoice that my identity is set in Him and I don't have to be a product of my exhausted, inadequate efforts. I am His. And He is enough.

Just when I think that I've been humbled enough, that I've been laid as low as it gets, He takes me a little deeper. He shows me that He hasn't written out my story in the way I perceive writing. He hasn't penned down the details of my life with an ink pen on paper that can be ruined in a downpour or charred in a flame. The life and identity He's laid out for me is not wavering. It's been set in stone. For He's engraved my name and my identity on the palms of His hands (Isaiah 49:16), and He is the eternally unshakeable rock (Isaiah 26:4), the cornerstone upon which all life is founded (Isaiah 28:16 & Ephesians 2:20). And my name is written on the same palms that were pierced with nails and scarred by the sacrifice paid for my sins.  In those palms, in those scars my identity is found. For from those scars blood poured in place of my own so that the price I couldn't pay for my sins would be paid in full. In those scars, I've received life and healing. In those scars, I find proof that I am beloved. And that is my identity. That is my story boiled down to one word. Purely and simply beloved. And it is a far better story than I could have ever written.