To rip your skin off, you have to climb back inside it.
You have to stop running away from things that haunt you. You have to look God in the face and tell Him the truth of what you feel about Him. And then you have to wait, exposed, for Him to act, speak into your life, change something.
And if He doesn’t, if the treatment doesn’t work and the clouds move in thick overhead, if you still can’t move, if you can’t figure out what to do next, then you curl up in a ball on your bed with the tears and you tell Him again, tell Him you feel like He’s screwed you over, you feel like whether you’re sick or whether you’re healthy, He wins His glory either way.
That is when you know what the Incarnation was for. That is when you know that your soul is captive inside your body, that your sense of time-outside-of-time is eternal I Am in you, making you so you don’t fit in your own skin. That is when you know that He is the reason you rip it off, that His love is the thing that matters more than anything, that Gospel is the fact that Jesus’ death has freed your soul.
The sun breaks through, and you realize you’ve forgotten what it looks like, forgotten how its warmth feels against your face. How could you have forgotten when you just saw it yesterday? How does the light make you breathe? How does the scent of spring on Christmas tulips from Virginia release your hope?
There’s nothing left but “thank You” – and breath-catching response to beautiful things you couldn’t conceive – didn’t conceive. The soul birthed in you when you came into Christ takes hold of the hope He meant to give you when time began, the evidence of His presence and His glory at work in you.
I had an inkling of these thoughts yesterday while scraping off old paint at my sister’s house. There were scuff marks and chips and even bloodshed in the process, but it left a clean slate ready for the new….
Your words, the exquisite pictures are tangible reminders of what He has been speaking into my heart. Thank you Kelly.
Linda recently posted..Stopping and Listening
you have such courage.
i think that your exquisite tulips from virginia are modern-day lilies of the field. perhaps you will find secret messages there.
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rain recently posted..she ::
This is such a beautiful post, Kelly (words and pictures)! I think I’m learning it too: that even our ability to feel pain is evidence that we have souls, that God is born in us.
Lee Ann recently posted..Person of Interest
Such light in your pictures. Such glorious, glorious light.
Elizabeth Esther recently posted..The “telos” of God, the “telos” of me
These words with these images move my spirit so deeply. This is what you do, Kelly. You make us break out of our skin too and find that holy inside. With your art. With your words. Thank you.
laura recently posted..An Epiphany: Picture for the Year