Fair Colored Stones and Sapphire Foundations

This will be difficult.  This will be my story.  My very particular, personal messy story.  I shake in my boots....the rubbery kind I wore when I was a kid that you pull over your "real" shoes?  Because that's what it feels like to talk out loud and brave; like my nine year old self standing in front of class.  Except, then I was trying as hard as I could to look as good as I could to all of you out there, and that's where I lived for the next many years.

Rule following was my "savior".  It was a way for me to measure my acceptability to God and to others.  I could mark my place with them, know where to stand and how high to jump.  Rules made me feel safe, because the truth was I didn't feel safe at all.  I'd been told God loved me in my sunday school class but  I lived with a nagging sense of walking into the midst of a party that I hadn't been invited to, at home and out in the world.   In a sense, rules became the "person" that made me feel loved and I trusted them.

I grew up and got married and the world became even more confusing to me.  I compensated for what was happening in my marriage that I did not understand by keeping tight company with my rules.  When I couldn't find a way to win the approval of my husband, I sought out other rules and gathered them up around me like so many bricks and began to build a wall high enough and thick enough to keep out the confusion. It's a shameful feeling, not thinking you're "enough" and so I found myself hiding behind my rule wall, smiling big and bright, in hopes the brightness would keep people at a distance so they couldn't see the cracks starting to form.

The years went by and the rules became ammunition between my husband and I.  We lobbed them at each other like grenades and they left bloody gashes on our hearts and spirits that left us weak and wounded and open to attack.  The enemy of our souls drove a stake in the ground of our marriage and I gasped my last breath and chose to raise my white flag and walk away.  I was reeling, and as I staggered for a rule to hold onto, I looked around and found nothing with which to build a bed to lie on and rest.  Romans 8:37 says that those of us who love God are "more than conquerors through Him that loved us."  As I struggled to find a reason to keep breathing during those days, I felt more conquered than a conqueror.

I'd lost the ability to raise my smiling mask and looked around at the broken rules laying all around me I had no way of redeeming and wondered what to do next.  "God?"  I said, to what felt like an empty room.  "Help."  That's all I could muster.  I had no idea what to ask for. He reached out and swept up all those broken rule-bricks and helped me to start over, learning how to trust how much He loves me, rubber boots and all. He blew my nose and washed off my face and set me aright and I learned the freedom in living authentically.  I trust Him now, instead of my rules, and that has made all the difference.  I live because I love God and I love because He loves me.

"Oh you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold I will lay your stones with fair colorful gems, and lay your foundations with sapphires." Is 54:11.  That bright light you see shining from me now?  That's not my smiling mask.  That's my fair colored gems and sapphires He promised.