Of growth //

"Turbulence doesn't scare me."

"You trust the plane."

///

The turbulence of life doesn't scare me like it once did. I used to dread the unknown so much that I hated it. Dragged through the twists and turns of life kicking and screaming and trying like mad to make the ducks line up in a straight, type-A row. I needed to know, I needed a say, I needed some control of this ride.

The story of my life is Perfect Love driving out fear, jealously + relentlessly. The story of my life is awakening to the freedom for which I was set free. The story of my life is how discovering my true identity released me from being an alphabetizing, organizing, controlling, neat-freak. Messy-haired, risk-taking, challenge-embracing, life-living, deep-feeling, over-analyzing me is marked by illogical peace, unconditional love, strength through vulnerability and foolish grace.

I used to be driven to desperation apart from my temporal + fleeting security. Then the One my soul loves showed me Who, not what, holds me secure. freedom. He draws me and I come as close as my trust will allow me to. I take another glimpse of Him and the resistance falls. He draws me again and I draw nearer still. Perfect Love driving out fear day after day, year after year. This has been happening for 21 years.

His timing is perfect. How the unfolding glory of Jesus living in me finds me perfectly weak + dependent but also exactly as strong as I need to be for each season He brings me to is beyond me. I know stress. I know pain. I know loneliness. I know sadness. There is trouble in this world. My heart is breakable. My body is too. Yet I am beyond despair. Death is a tool of mercy in the hand of my God. Fruitful branches are cut back, pruned, that they might become even more bountiful.

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; // 2 corinthians 4:16-17

 "Heart-break changes us," my Mom said. Pain, loss, death -- changes us. Sifted through His loving hands it changes us for the good though. It's tests, tries, refines. It doesn't unsettle Him. He is sure and in Him I am secure. So trouble has it's way and my faith stands unshaken and a little more of my weakness is changed into strength and how I'm unarguably carried through the fires testifies life and truth to on-lookers. My heart knows His heart better through each passing season and the witnesses see it.

See, the story of our life isn't success + failure, it's growth.