Thank YOU. For me

What if you find yourself lost?

What if nowhere is home and you feel as though you are aimless, alone, and have no safe haven, no place to take refuge? I have had many seasons like that, and each time, I strive to hang on to Jesus for my safety and comfort, but I usually fail. I get desperate, anxious, and mad. 

What I hadn’t counted on were countless of these seasons amounting to home. Countless desert nights amounting to a safe oasis. Countless tears of loneliness cried to a God who seemed distant turning into love. A Love so rare and so deep it made me wonder how I hadn’t known it before.

What I hadn’t counted on were the small, magical ways in which Jesus has given me a home inside myself.

I had not foreseen the almost insignificant but also the big changes that have given me this today. 

I hadn’t SEEN the smiles, the hugs, the tears, the laughs, the ridiculousness

I didn’t see the knowing nods, the prayers, the singing of songs

I didn’t notice the I miss yous and I love yous and the I SEE YOUs

I didn’t anticipate this feeling today, or the realization that Jesus brings me home to myself each time my heart feels known. In even the tiniest of ways.

People are meant to be loved, made to be loved. To be loved is to be seen. It is to be known, to be cherished, to be fought for. To be loved is to be brought back to yourself. 

This is what Jesus has been trickling into my heart through countless seasons of pain. His love, His pursuit, His word and promises, but oh, as if that wasn’t enough, He surrounded and flooded me with thousands of moments that even as I was unaware were returning to me what had been taken and seemed long gone.

Many glorious, broken, messy WONDERFUL people are a part of this tapestry of careful and deliberate healing.

I hope if you are reading this today that you KNOW you are a part of this amazing tapestry in my life, and what’s more amazing, in many other lives as well, no doubt, though I cannot speak for those. 

YOU have brought me healing. You have been used by God in wonderful redemptive and miraculous ways I cannot begin to adequately describe. And you may not have known it. It may just have been your smile one day. Or a silly joke, or a glass of wine…it could have seemed like nothing at the time…

This is what I know today. I am loved by my Father in Heaven so much He has spent my life surrounding me with moments. And you. Wonderful, broken, desperate, crazy you.

You have been returning pieces of me without knowing it. You have been helping to put back together a broken masterpiece. It will never be the masterpiece it was meant to be this side of Heaven, but oh…it’s going to be glorious someday!

Thank you. If you have ever SEEN me, and known ANY part of me, and if ANY part of me has delighted you, if you have ever gleaned anything good at all FROM me, if any goodness was exchanged between you and me. Thank you. I owe you….myself.