Someday...

About two weeks ago, I celebrated Senior Presentation along with the rest of the NCL Cypress Belles Class of 2014. For those of you who don't know, Senior Presentation is basically a big going away ball for the senior class in National Charity League, an organization where mothers and daughters volunteer together in the community. The night was magical to say the least.

It began with my brother escorting me onto the stage, where I then linked arms with my mom as a recording of a letter I had written to her was played. In case you're curious, this was the letter:

Dear Mom,

I can honestly say that over the past 18 years, you have been my best friend. You show me everyday what it is to be strong, courageous, humble and perseverant through everything life throws our way. In every season, you have been my comfort and my safe place to hide. I remember when we went to Kenya almost three years ago, and we were camping in the most remote location we had been to yet. There was a horrible rain storm that blew through and I was so afraid of the lightning and the wind and the rain and the huge river we pitched our tent next to. I was the most terrified I had ever been, and you held my hand and eased my fears. You even made me laugh at the craziness of it all. In 
that moment, I was embarrassed that at the age of 15 I needed my mother to hold my hand in a storm. But looking back on it, I am proud that I have a mother who reaches out to hold my hand through every storm to calm my fears and to bring me joy even in the darkest of times. You truly are the most incredible and inspiring woman I have ever met, and I could not ask for a better mom and best friend. I love you mom.

Obviously, there were some water works shed:

 

 

After we had our special mother-daughter moment, my mom handed me off to my dad to be presented around the ballroom as my accomplishments were read along with my plans for the future. Walking around the ballroom with my dad at my side, I was beaming with pure excitement. 

 

As we finished our walk around the ballroom, my dad let me go to walk to the end of the stage on my own as my favorite bible verse was read (1 Peter 5:10), and the speaker announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Madelynn Marlow." In that moment, I felt more radiant than I ever had in my life.

 

The whole night was marvelous in everyway. It was better than I ever imagined it could be. And as I floated through the night, I couldn't help but hope that this was a little glimpse into what heaven will be like. Someday, I'll get to stand before my father, dressed in pure white, and my whole life will be there for Him to see. My entire life's journey will be laid before Him, and I'll be presented before His heavenly court. And I hope by then my life will have been full of adventures for His kingdom, a life full of brave pursuits of my purpose. I hope He'll look at me and see someone who lived beyond her comfort zone, who trusted Him with no limits. I hope He'll see someone clothed in humility who walked with a confidence in her identity as a daughter of the Risen King.

 

My heart bursts with longing expectation for the day when I stand alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ, linking together to form His beautiful, immaculate bride. With all our sins and scars washed away in the light of His abundant grace, we'll be presented to Him on that glorious day. And my ears ache to hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant," declared from the lips of my heavenly father as we are unveiled before His heavenly court.

 

I'm so far from all the things I want to be when I reach heaven. There's so much more life for me to cultivate, so much more I've yet to experience. And while I know I still have many mistakes before me, I know my Father will be there to pick me up every time I fall, and I pray that those words will forever be engraved in my heart, pushing me toward my destination:

Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done.

Brave

2013 was a bittersweet year for me. One thing I found as I walked through the valleys and the peaks of this past year was that more and more people kept calling me brave. Some even the bravest person they had ever met. And this struck me as odd because I had always viewed myself as a little cowardly. I'm often very soft spoken and timid in nature, and I'm definitely not known as a risk taker. I'm the epitome of indecisive, the queen of over thinking. I worry. A lot. And sometimes I let fear hold me back from moving forward. I can string pretty words into sweet truths and stories, but when it comes to acting on those words? I freeze. I'm quick to avoid discomfort and awkward situations, staying in my cozy little bubble of complacency.

So to say I was confused when people called me brave is an understatement. I was dumbstruck. How could someone like me ever be considered brave? As I thought on it, I remembered a quote I had stumbled upon a while ago:

 

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." -Nelson Mandela

If there's anything I learned looking back on 2013, it's what it is to be brave.

Being brave is looking fear in the face and saying, "You don't own me. You have no power over me."

Being brave is trusting without borders. Even when those borders are a little outside your comfort zone.

Being brave is surrendering your heart to the one who is Freedom.

Being brave isn't being strong. It's letting God's power be perfected in your weakness. It's letting His strength be at work in you.

Being brave is listening, really listening to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit and acting on it. Even when it hurts. Even when everything in you tells you to go another way. It is better. And it is worth it.

And being brave is being Love. Purely and simply Love. When we pursue the one who is Love and reflect His heart, that is when we are our bravest. Because love is not easy. It is difficult and messy at times. But when we step into loving each other and immerse ourselves in Love Himself, we find ourselves face to face with the creator of courage, the one who holds bravery in His hands. For when He was pierced for our sins and showed the greatest  display of love by laying down His life for the least of these, that was the peak of all bravery. And it is from those same scarred hands we receive our courage.

So was I really that brave in 2013? Probably not as much as I could have been. But in those moments when I shied away from being brave and stepping out of my comfort zone, God stepped into my insecurity and uncertainty and showed me what true bravery is. He is my source of courage when I feel cowardly to the core. 

My only resolution going into the new year is this:

To be brave.

Closer

Last week I visited the Lanier Theological Library in Houston for the first time. And let me tell you, I was in book nerd/bible nerd heaven. The smell of old books to me is intoxicating (go ahead, call me weird), and there were hundreds of them. And I just about died when I saw the C.S. Lewis collection. It was a struggle for me not to scream in my typical over-excited teenager squeal when I saw all of his handwritten letters on display in a library where you are supposed to keep everything to a whisper. Honestly, I was the epitome of giddy.

As my friend Lauren and I perused the library, utterly in awe of its magnificence, we stumbled upon some artifacts on display.  The artifacts dated back hundreds of years, some even back to the time when Jesus walked the earth.

"I know it's a stretch," I said to Lauren, "but what if Jesus actually touched one of these pitchers, one of these bowls? How cool would that be?"

"It's almost makes you feel closer in a way," she responded. "It's something tangible from his time, something we can actually grasp and feel. It's hard to describe, but it just makes you feel closer."

And it made me think about how we all crave that feeling of "closer". If we could just see God in the flesh, touch His hand and audibly hear His voice, then we would feel closer. Then we would really know He's there. We crave the security that tangibility offers us, and sometimes it's really hard for us to wrap our minds around a God we can't see or feel.

We get so caught up in searching, so caught up in trying to do more and be more so we can get to God, we forget to be still and see that He is right in front of us and all around us. He meets us where we are- there's no searching, journeying or working to find His presence and attain salvation. He is right here. And He wants you to receive Him and allow His Holy Spirit to bridge the gap between you and Him. He wants to close that space, to abide in you and you in Him. He wants to provide for you that need to be "closer" until the need is filled by the life of Jesus poured into every crevice of your soul, every fiber of your being.

I invite you today to lay down all your efforts to work for your salvation, all your efforts to journey to God. God hasn't called us to trek towards Him and work to find Him. He stands right in front of us with open hands calling us to open our hearts, to allow Him to meet us where we are and drench our souls in His grace. This is the "closer" we crave. And he has come to fill it.

When I Grow Up...

I've come to the age where I'm starting to make what the little kids I babysit would call "grown-up choices." I'm enrolling in college. I have a job. I'm having to manage my time and money more on my own. And in about 16 days I'll embark on the "golden" age of 18, the age envied by every child in a hurry to grow up, the grand age of independence. It's all a little scary because the question we were all asked as children of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is a question I'll soon have to answer. And in all honesty, I have no idea.

Yesterday as I was babysitting, a paleontologist came on the TV screen to talk about dinosaurs and digs and all the things paleontologists do that kids find fascinating. I looked over at little four year-old Audrey, who was intently watching the screen, and asked her if that was what she wanted to be when she grew up. She responded no.

"Well," I asked her, "What do you want to be then?"

"I want to be Audrey." She responded with confidence.

I was expecting anything but that answer. A ballerina, an artist, a doctor. Anything. But instead she responded with the best possible answer: herself.

I feel like so often I get caught up in who I want to be that I forget who I really am. I forget that God fearfully and wonderfully crafted me out of the dust into His beloved creation. I forget that He is using me right where I am, and that he'll lead me where I'm meant to be. And I forget that I don't have to focus on creating my "perfect" version of me, but rather be rooted in my God created identity.

In those moments where I find myself despairing over my future, I hear God saying that He already has it written out. He calls me not to worry but rather to receive Him in this moment and trust that he has plans to give me a hope and a future. Daily He unwraps a little more of who He has created me to be and shows me just how much He truly treasures who I am. He has crafted each of us as jewels in His hands, and I feel like His heart breaks as He watches me be critical of His creation, of me. There is so much peace that comes in resting in our God given identity in this moment and trusting that daily He is shaping us according to our individual kingdom callings.

The crazy thing about trusting God with our identities is that as we trust Him more, we find that we look less like ourselves and more like Jesus. When we accept Christ into our hearts and die to ourselves, we find ourselves being molded more and more into the image of Christ. While we will never be perfect, we become more Christ-like and find that is where our true identities lie, in Christ. As I journey deeper and deeper in the search for myself, somewhere along the way I lose myself and find Christ. And in losing myself, I find who I was meant to be: a daughter of the Lord and a reflection of Christ.

So what do I want to be when I grow up? Not a psychologist. Not a missionary. Not an author or any of the other dreams I've conjured for my future.

I want to be me. Purely and simply me. The me that God has created me to be, the me that looks less like myself and more like Jesus. And I think that's that best thing anyone could want to be.

My Declaration

At the beginning of the school year, I was assigned to write a personal declaration of independence from something in my own life that I had grievances against. I felt it pressed on my heart to declare my independence from sin and my dependence on Christ. Reading over it again, I was reminded to press harder into Christ and be completely dependent on Him daily. And I'm hoping these words might serve as a catalyst for others to make their own declaration as well.

{My Declaration}

Having been caught in the snares of the supernatural strikes against my soul, I am left no choice but to make a desperate declaration of independence from the sin that suffocates me. Since birth I have been in bondage to a darkness not of this world that has invaded the ill-guarded territory of my heart. I refuse to be a slave any longer to this insatiable master of sin. I not only declare, but demand my independence.

I proclaim that my life will be a declaration of the promises straight from the mouth of the one who embodies Truth. His life giving words will be etched into my heart so that the unwavering truth of my freedom will be self-evident to every fiber of my being. No longer will I be pressed under the heavy thumb of an all-consuming darkness; rather I will be wrapped in the life-giving light that is my Savior and Creator. My identity will never again be broken, forgotten, insufficient, and unloved. The identity to which I've been entitled under the authority of grace is redeemed, beloved, restored and set apart. 

Daily sin has beleaguered me in a relentless pursuit. Until this day of my declaration, sin has severed the relationship with Christ I was destined to obtain. Sin unswervingly served as the opaque veil that stood between my savior and me over the course of my life. The remedy prescribed since the beginning of time has been the sacrifice of perfect blood to atone for the wrongs to which I've been enslaved . But my blood runs thick with impurities that invalidate the sufficiency of any sacrifice I could offer. God looked at me in my broken and tainted condition and had compassion on my heart which He fearfully and wonderfully formed. Deeply loving me and the rest of the sin enslaved world, He sacrificed the only person whose blood could ever rightfully atone for sin: His son. The formula for the remedy to my seemingly incurable maladies was God in flesh sacrificed on the altar of a rugged cross. He paid the price I deserved to pay for my sins and bled the blood that was I supposed to bleed. And he was resurrected to life so that I might walk in newness of life with Him, free from the snare of sin. His remedy is purely and simply grace. And He offers it to anyone who would receive it. 

The grave could not hold Him and death itself could stop Him. And He has set me free that I might proclaim these grievances against sin so that it would no longer serve as my feeble crutch but rather so my dependency would lie solely in Christ.

Sin sucked the marrow from my bones and made me void of any true life.

Sin bound me tightly in chains that wore calluses on my soul.

Sin made me feel as worthless as the dust from which I was created and to which I will return.

Sin stripped me of my God ordained identity and eroded me to the core.

Sin robbed me of every ounce of self worth until I was no longer a diadem in the hand of the King but rather the remains of useless ashes.

I have pursued every mean of action to rid myself of the effects of these grievances listed. I have performed every good deed, I have worked myself till exhaustion and explored every logical method in the world. I pushed myself into the ground trying to earn my own salvation, and I was never enough. Everything I did only amounted to a pile of ash and a desperate, empty heart. In my moment of desperation, there was only one thing left to do: to receive the grace that is more than enough to sustain me and redeem me from the pit. No longer am I caught in a vicious cycle of aimlessly attempting to save myself. I declare that I am free from sin and that darkness has no power over me. My independence from sin also serves as my declaration of complete dependence on my Savior. I will walk the straight and level path paved for me by Christ, and rejoice unfettered by any malicious maladies.

Melt

"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor of human or a husband's will, but born of God." -John 1:12-13

I am innately an independent, strong-willed, stubborn person. I often push myself to ridiculous limits thinking I can handle all I have weighing on my shoulders on my own. I like handling responsibility and feeling strong and accomplished about all I've done. What I don't like is the feeling of dependency. It's such an uncomfortable place to be for me. Dependency requires me admitting my weakness and need. It requires confessing that I can't do it all on my own, that I can't handle everything weighing on my shoulders, and I need help.

Sometimes I get so caught up in my cycle of stubborn independence, I feel almost like machine. I feel like I'm made of cogs chiseled out of stone, constantly turning and moving, only slowing down from rust and erosion from being over worked. I end every day feeling exhausted and burned out with nothing left to give, only to wake up another day and give my all again. And I am tired of churning and cranking out the products I think will please the world. I want so much more. I need so much more.

What I need is for my heart to melt. I need Jesus to come in with His all consuming fire and melt my heart of stone into a heart of flesh that is beating to the rhythms of His grace. My whole spirit cries out to be melted, to break free from the vicious cycle of independence and find rest in sweet dependence on Christ. I need Christ to come and put to death this relentless machine monotonously cranking within me and resurrect in me His refreshing, sustaining life.

One thing I so admire about the children for whom I care is their unashamed dependency. They never hesitate to recognize their need and ask for it. They ask boldly, unabashedly, and confident that they will be provided what they need because they trust that I can provide for them. When I received Christ, I was adopted into His kingdom as a child of God, and He declared me His daughter. I was designed from day one to be dependent on Christ and lean into His Holy Spirit daily through relationship. And He desires for me to come to Him, abandoning my shame attached to my independent spirit, and boldly trust Him with my every need. When I dare to be dependent and step out of my comfort zone, it is then that I find rest. It is then that I fulfillment.

Singleness of Heart

Jeremiah 32:37-41

I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and of action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them; I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. 

I have a confession.

I have cheated.

I'm not talking about in school, although I'm sure every person who has lived through high school can attest to having shared answers at some point. I'm talking about in my walk with God, the most important relationship in which to stay faithful. While proclaiming God as the Lover of my soul, I've entertained the affections of the most unworthy of suitors.

I have loved pride.

I have loved worldly approval.

I have loved my selfishness.

I have loved having control.

And I have been completely consumed with doubt.

These suitors, while innately dark and gnarled with sin, whispered beautiful things to my soul. They told me I could do it all on my own, that I was strong and self sufficient enough to barrel through life as a completely independent person. They told me that measuring up to the standards of this world was a reputable thing that I should pursue for the sake of an ideal identity. They told me that I knew best and that I needed to look out for myself. They told me that I could have power over my circumstance if I pushed myself hard enough. And they told me that the solid truth in which I had rooted my life was a shaky foundation and that trusting in anyone but myself was a risky gambit. All these voices harmonized in my mind to fabricate a glorious image of myself, one that I naturally craved to attain.

These deep desires turned into insatiable needs that competed with the One true need I had professed to wholeheartedly pursue: Jesus. When I accepted Jesus, He called me out upon stormy waters, and asked only that I keep my eyes on Him and simply believe. With eager anticipation, I stepped out in faith and began my pursuit. But then I saw the clouds. And the waves. And the rain. And the lightning. And those voices began to speak sweet lies to my soul. The second I took my eyes off of Jesus, the second I doubted and believed in voices other than His, I sank.

As I deservedly drowned in the stormy seas to which I had become helplessly enslaved, He did something incredible: He reached down and pulled me out and set me back on solid ground.

That is grace. Purely and simply grace.

When I deserve to drown in the fury of the storms, He never fails to bring me back to the safe refuge of His embrace. When I deserve complete and total separation from Him, He unites me with Him in a grip of grace where He eternally abides in me and I in Him. He has declared me His daughter and He my God. And though my wayward heart is tempted to succumb to look to the world, He instills in me a singleness of heart solely set on pursuing Him. And because everything we do flows out of what we believe, He provides me with a singleness in my actions as I walk the straight and level paths He has set before me. He challenges me to rise up as one in a generation of many to leave a legacy of undivided faith to those generations to follow. His promise stands true to never stop weaving our story together for our good and ultimately the good of His kingdom. He passionately rejoices over us as we pursue Him and taste His goodness. And with the entirety of His divine heart and soul, He pours into us and plants us in the peace of His presence.

He is good. He is all I need. And I have returned to Him to forevermore proclaim Him the only true lover of my soul.

Madelynn