navigating life's shadows with chocolate & reluctant yoga

The Gift Has Been Given

The Gift Has Been Given

Welcome back my faithful reader (s). As promised, a deeper dip into seasons of my journey. I was told some time ago by a trusted mentor that i have this horrible habit of stuffing my feelings. Kind of like a green pepper stuffed with raw hamburger meat. The green pepper is my heart and the raw hamburger meat is the feeling I stuff. I don’t know if you have ever made stuffed green peppers before but it always amazes me how you can fit so much meat into that little pepper. Somehow it just keeps fitting. However, after you put it in the oven to bake oh so nicely, it begins to ooze and run all over the place. Once it’s cooked and processed, the taste is delightful. Now not to give a gross analogy but the heart is a little like this too. It can only handle so much stuffing of feelings until the heat is turned up and eventually it cannot handle anymore and it begins to run over into all areas of your life. This is exactly what began to happen to me. After undergoing so many tough experiences and pressures all in the same season, those feelings began to run over into other areas of my life. They were affecting me in ways I did not even see. I am certain I am not alone in this but at the time of need, I felt very much alone.

Ever since that season I haven’t experienced God the same way. Today I am grateful for that. While going through the first year after this season I was very frightened as it was something so foreign to me. God was in pursuit of me but in very different ways then what I had been used to. Little did I know that a lot of that had to do with me and my willingness to let go and surrender fully to the things I could not see and to stop believing lies. I was raised in a small community of which I am so blessed and grateful but with all upbringings there is always the negative with the positive. In my situation, my community was a very religious community. As long as you served God by living by the law, everything would be fine. However, if you even think of stepping outside of that, the sky will surely fall and hit you right in the head. I have nothing but love in my heart for my community. The people who live there today are beautiful people but out of love for them, I see how they strive and micro manage their lives away. I see this because I was once this way. The Lord loved me enough to allow me step outside of the community long enough to see deeper inside of myself. The stepping away had nothing to do with the community but everything to do with me and God’s pursuit of me! He was in pursuit of the deeper places of my heart. The rooms that had been closed off because of pain and i had not been given the software to process the pain. So my survival mode was to install an application called Stuff Deep and when that application became obsolete and stopped working well, I installed the latest upgrade called Stuff Deeper 2.0 and so on so forth.

So I’ve been journeying about a year now since learning that I was a habitual Stuffer. I’ve had some pretty good days and some fairly rotten days. However, in the good days, fairly rotten days and all of the days in between, I am reminded that I am being pursued. The Silent Retreat was a good reminder of His pursuit of me. He pursues me when I am silent and doing absolutely nothing. He pursues me because He cares deeply about the darkest places of my heart. The scariest places of my heart that I am slowly inviting you into.

I am learning from this season and hope to never forget, The incredible gift cannot be lost. The incredible gift is not mine to obtain. Let me share with you the words I have been hearing my Father speak to me in the darkest places of my soul. Please read to the end, I think you will be glad you did. I have learned that there is absolutely nothing I can do to get the Holy Spirit. There is nothing I can do to attain the divine indwelling. (Romans 8:10, Galatians 3:1-5). I cannot try to believe in the Holy Spirit as one doctrine among others, instead I must practice drinking from this deep well within me and then and only then can I believe. I have learned there is nothing I can do to lose the Holy Spirit (anointing). The most I can do is to grieve and be deeply saddened by the existing Presence that is stuffed deep within me. All of this leaves me ignorant of the gift that has already been given and thus I cannot enjoy the wonderful fruits it provides. I know I am not alone here, I am a sinner. So God forbid there ever be a time you are tempted to tell me or someone else that they have lost the anointing, it might serve you, them and i better to be called a sinner. Please do not hate me or look down on me for being a sinner, rather feel sorry for me and what I might be missing out on. The wonderful, precious gift that has been there the whole time!

Now I cannot look back and condemn myself for believing the lie that I had lost the anointing because I was not fully aware of the gift that cannot be lost. I see more clearly today, how necessary this painful process has been in my life. I would not change it for anything but out of it I have a deep passion and hope for us to be more kind hearted to those who do not yet understand. Please do not condemn, judge a matter prematurely or shut a person out because they appear as though they lost something. Instead, please, help them find it. Point them in the right direction. Reassure them of loves pursuit of them and then, don’t try to fix them, let the gift that has already been given heal them one layer at a time.

Reflectively,

Sparrow