For what brings grace and liberty to one, condemns with weight and death to another.
I'm going on week three, this phrase pounding in my heart, prying apart duty and calling. Embracing this truth is unwinding miles of knotted wandering, years of struggling to find where my lines fall. From every angle, an opinion for how my road should travel. I could take these early years of my babies' lives slow and steady, pour every ounce of my attention into their souls. I could run hard and fast after the dreams (big or small) that keep me up late into the night. I could let my house rest in mess. I could work my body hard, trained to fight laziness and apathy. These wouldn't be in vain or waste, causing my life to shine, and yet my soul could be dying.
If these last eight years could say anything, most likely, they would say don't doubt it. About a dozen things I expected (or outright declared) I would never do, I've excitedly and whole-heartedly pursued. These divergencies could bring dismay, but I'm clinging tightly to the grace I've received. It's the grace to work outside the home, sow into my children by exampling a woman who loves life. Grace to stay out way too late, squeeze in a few hours of sleep, and make up the difference later. Grace to lock the bathroom door for five minutes to regain my sanity. Grace to believe things that aren't popular.
There are overloaded bookshelves of self-helps and blogposts cheering us on, but somehow I still feel that we're missing one cosmic gap. A hundred thousand wild spirits are beckoned to follow a calling only intended for a handful, and a pile of knotted cord is benching our best players. Tragedy is a life lived in fear, turning all-stars into bench-warmers.
Many days I've wished for no burning heart to tame. But I'm no good at that. It's just too much weight and I've never been good at faking. I love change, progress, finding solutions, making improvements. Right now they carry me out my front door and don't let my mind rest. What seemed to be so hard, is too hard to ignore. I can't tame this heart.
And it's truly amazing how this letting go of law has caused truth, the real 100%-don't-doubt-God's-opinion truth, to go so much deeper. Where tangled up roots made my mind hard and rocky, liberating love has allowed my convictions to go deeper still.
Fear wants to speak filthily that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, but God always rushes in to show His great Love that isn't threatened by our wandering off the beaten path.
"A great gift of any adult to a child, seems to me, is to love what you do in front of the child." - Fred Rogers
