My New Self

I have been trying to put my thoughts and feelings together for the last few weeks. They are a scattered mix of hope, grief, longing, deep gratitude and pain which I've come to expect with any great time of change. 

I could of never imagined the live I'm living even only a few short years ago. And it's exciting and wild and scary and I feel nervous about it. Because it's new, this life I'm living is all new. And it's not even about a new city or new community or even new people. It's about me, I'm new. This state I'm living in is new. My view on the world is new. It's fragile yet resilient. It's soft yet solid. It's mature yet naive. 

I remember back to my last few years, living in Central Wellington in intentional community and the fear and pain that drove my life. That deep, paralyzing fear of being not good enough, being rejected and alone. The pain from how I saw the world. I saw the world as unsafe, a place I didn't belong and there is nothing that could change it. I believed I was unloveable. 

But God. But God. And somewhere inside of me and outside of me, But God. 

Today in a lecture I was reminded of how God's grace knows no bounds. There is nothing that can stop the grace of God. And I started to wonder for myself when did i go from believing I was unloveable to But God and his grace?

That maybe i am loveable? 

Was it when my community continued to love me through my mess? Was it after 1.5 years in rehab? Or my 4 close friends who see and know me in my inner being? All my own personal counselling? Or now 3 weeks into training to become a counsellor myself?

Because I'll be honest, I still toil with this worldly thinking, that I'll be good enough to be loveable when I attain what the world says. When my body is a certain size, When I have a good job and a relationship. When I make a social impact that changes the course of things for others. It is so human to have this type of thinking. 

I think as Christians we can try and slot it into our theology to make it more valid. 'God will bless me because I bless others' or 'God will give me what I desire because of this person I helped save and come to christ or through this social justice Initiative?' I just want to say it's human and normal to have this thinking.

What if God just blesses us just because he created us? How would I feel if I done not one thing more in my life and God loves me just as much? 

I believe some of us have been privileged enough to be broken and stripped back to our very core. Struggling isn't a weakness it's actually a symptom of being so very much alive, fighting for your life. That same fight Jesus has. It's strength and it's courageous.

When I stopped fighting the world's view and started to honour myself, all my feeling and emotions, all of my hearts hopes and desires, all of the pain and suffering that is when I start to become a human being fully alive. 

I keep coming to this scripture in 1 Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things." For me this scripture highlights that this old way of seeing my self as unloveable served and protected me but now it's time to grow into my new reality. It's time to put away my old thinking that served me as a child. And now live in the truth and reality that I am worthy of love because i am. I am worthy of acceptance, care, relationship, hopes, dreams and desires because I am. 

Because I am. 

Nothing more nothing less just because I am. And I am because he is I AM. 

In the Anglican prayer book, Thursday evening prayer in the Epistle reflection it says "our hearts and minds must be made completely new; we must get rid of that old self, which made us live as we did; we must put on the new self, created in God's likeness, revealed in the true life which is upright and holy." That call that our hearts and our minds must be made new, it can't be just one or the other it must be both. If we remove part of an infection it might give us some relief for a time but it will come back. 

And I think that's whats been happening for me with this scattered mix of hope, grief, longing, deep gratitude and pain.

Leaving behind my old self, which I lived because that's all I knew and choosing to step into my new self created in God's likeness, his care, tenderness, compassion, empathy, righteous anger for the injustice things of this world and even silly little humor and funny dad jokes with friends. 

All of this is me and me created in God's likeness. I've left those things of my past that once served me but no longer do because I've grown, matured and I guess bloomed into what God originally created me to be.

 Loved. 

As I am. 

What a gift. And I now get to gift that to others.

Beautiful.

And He has this same hope for you, for all of us. Created in His likeness. Loved.