9/28.

Laid Bare. That’s where true freedom is found. That’s where genuine life, complete with tears and tears, full of hopes and fears, yet governed by healing, by feeling inexplicable joy, and by the on who created and defined what freedom is. For freedom we’ve  been set free, therefore do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. But our view of freedom has been twisted.

We have nothing to lose and nothing to prove, fully seen, fully known, fully and unconditionally loved. What else do we need, what more can make us move with confidence into the restoration given freely to those who would let their opened eyes see and receive that which has been the whole time.

Laid bare. No longer trying to defend or justify, no longer trying to rationalize these comfortable lies everyone lives by. But allowing myself to be fully seen. With nothing to hide, standing strong under the penetrating, judgmental eyes of the world. I don’t stand firm on my own works, my own merits or reputation, but I can be seen in my brokenness, in my pain and hostility, I can let the cat of the bag, let them see how I struggle and sag under the weight our culture crushes me with. I can show my ugliness, and still be confident of this. That I’ve been fully seen, fully known, and fully and unconditionally loved by the God who created life and breath. In him I’m declared righteous, holy, and beautiful. Through sweet surrender to Jesus I’ve been made completely whole. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because of the transforming, redeeming Love. A Love made manifest on the cross that Jesus bore, a love that when received and surrendered to leaves us restored, finding fullness and needing nothing more than God himself.

Laid bare. I can stand up under the attacks of those who lack this transforming love because I know my confidence is not in my acts, not in my own mind or its capabilities. I have been redeemed, so now my own insufficiency points to the beautiful grace and is a testimony to the power of God, a God who has seen the depravity and horridness of my soul yet calls me beloved.

In this moment as I read what I wrote not too long ago, I see the sweetness of a reminder written to me through my own hand. For God knows that when I can barely stand, my instinct is to fall, to turn away cause it’s hard, but even reading over my own writing I can hear a gentle call to return to Truth, to return to Love, to return to the God who was and is and is to come. In the midst of my wandering, his word to me is a soft cry for me to return to true reality.