Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Next Exit: Discernment

I am grieving at least half a dozen heartaches. And I am fighting my call relentlessly. I'm just barely beginning to understand that discernment is very active wrestling. It's intensely emotional and spiritual and just plain difficult! Can I say unpleasant? Uncomfortable at best.


You know you're in a period of serious discernment when your soul feels like it's stuck on the spin cycle.


This is not a pleasure cruise, some tunnel of love, sashaying toward ministry. No, this is the messy, ugly, tear-stained, teeth-out, fisticuff brawling of trying to tackle who it is I am and will become, how God loves me even and especially when I don't love myself, how God is using my giant, obvious flaws and brokenness for good in His name for His glory. Uses the bad for good?! Consistently. Do I still doubt? You bet.


I feel nauseous a good chunk of the time. A lot of times I just want to punch somebody's face in, if only to externalize the turmoil that's transforming me (or at least it will if I ever let it). I feel like writing a symphony, dissonant as all get-out, with lyrics to make Bernstein blush. My soul is stirring like never before. I know it's a good thing, a sign that God is up to something in me. But it hurts. The grief, the scar tissue, the fragments of memories I'm just now piecing together, it's painful. It's worth it, I know it is; but the process ain't pretty.


Ask me in 10 years how I'm doing. I know-- spiritually, emotionally-- I will be better than I am now.


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