redefine

After taking enough time to let silence be a comfortable companion this morning, I was able to think and pray over the last year. All that it's meant, all that it will mean and all that is changing in me because of it. Recent years have been full with a theme of restoration in my life. Isaiah 61 followed me across continents and through so many seasons, meaning a million beautiful things along the way. This morning the Lord was so kind to speak straight to my heart and show me that after restoring much, he is redefining much. He has rebuilt places long devastated and is teaching me what it means to be truly alive in those places, knowing more of him & becoming more like Christ in the process. That means that my old self has to die. Harsh language? It's that critical. It's that important. It is that new. It's new life. Ah, let your soul sit with that for a moment. My heart just turns over on itself in the thought that God is not through with me yet. Some days I feel like such a mess. You know those deep moments that you walk out of full just to find the world looks different. And that is just the thing, the places that are so hard to walk into and through, they shape us. Our experience with the world can't, and shouldn't, be the same. I admit that it's frustrating to me at first. I'm more frustrated with myself than anything, wrestling with this feeling that I can't make sense of it all. But with much grace and love the Father walks me a couple more steps to see that he's teaching me how to live. Each day here is another part of him redefining my understanding so that I know love in the deepest parts of me. He is teaching me what it means to trust, to love and to forgive. All over again. Restoring and redefining.