The day before my final exam, before courses and summer vacations and life beginning at the end of my comfort zone.
I'll admit I'm feeling a bit vulnerable these days, a bit fragile, a bit tossed about.
Dealing with love and loss and letting go, I labor hard against these things that threaten to hold me captive.
I can feel them rising up under the surface, the words that I run back to when things get a little out of control, the words that have kept me tied up for so long that their shackles begin to look like comfort.
Unloved. Unworthy. Broken. Damaged.
The voice comes up within me: Who do you think you are?
It's so easy to want to turn and run back to that safe place.
I sit here, writhing around in my discomfort, and I hear myself say the words, "Love me. Love me so I don't feel quite so uncomfortable and stressed out and fragile. Love me because I need someone to prove to me I'm not this person I think I am."
Did you hear that?
Love me because I'm feeling insecure in myself, in my work, in what I'm doing and in who I am.
Love me because I need it.
It takes me a minute to realize what I've just said.
Not too long ago, I made a promise to a friend that I would never again use another person to satisfy my own desires.
And yet, when I am uncomfortable in my situation and insecure in my future and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, it is that I want to run back to.
I want to throw myself into another person or another thing like one would dive off a platform into a pool of water.
Maybe then I would feel a bit more secure, a bit more stable.
And then I hear it, the tiny voice whispering inside of me, so quiet that I could miss it.
I love you.
I love you. You are whole, complete. You have everything you need in this moment. Look around you, my child, at this love letter I am writing for you every single day.
I still am unsure of what I am doing. I am still stressed out and overwhelmed and exhausted.
And yet the work I am doing is not unimportant. Even in this, I am loved. This, what I am doing in this moment, it matters.
Instead of focusing on the One, true voice that will lead me to Freedom, I get caught up in the lies.
That if I don't go to Uganda this summer I won't be important.
If I don't make him fall in love with me right now I somehow have lost my worth.
The work I am doing now is important.
This place of uncertainty but willingness, of loving with patience and trust, walking in freedom and truth, this matters.
My willingness to be here now, not going to Africa, loving with patience, it's not something to be looked down on.
Even this, this path that is uncertain and confusing, this is part of God's plan. This work is not in vain. Where I am, though uncomfortable and new and full of change, though not fitting into where the world says I should be or where my head screams at me I should be, it matters. He has chosen to use me in such a time as this, and even though I don't understand I will choose to trust.
I love you, My Child. This matters. What you are doing matters. You matter.
I will follow the sound of His love and promises out of slavery and into Freedom.
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