Change

just enough light for the step i'm on.
stormie omartian

Recently I had an epiphany. Most of you already have this truth tucked away snugly in your hearts where it radiates warmth and makes you secure and happy. Until this epiphany popped randomly into my mind one day, my heart was hypothermic, my attitude dismal and gross, and I was succeeding only in making myself and my husband and anyone else who had to live with me fearful and miserable. What's even more embarrassing is that the truth had made it's way to my heart before, and if I'm honest, it never really left my mind. But maybe you know what I mean when I say the cerebral, intellectual understanding of some truths is nowhere near as potent as the profound, deep in your heart and gut identification with them. When a truth becomes part of your makeup, of how you exist, a thread in the fabric of your being, and not just the words of a sentence strung coldly together in your hazy thoughtspace. And so I'd like to change the mode and location of transportation: everything shifted when this epiphany melted it's way through the layers of slushy sleet and hard-packed snow and solid ice of my heart and lit everything on fire.

The epiphany is this: God is powerful.

So powerful that if He wanted to, He could today make one of several things I know of and a few million more I don't happen and completely turn everything around for us. That is not hard for Him. When He looks at our situation, He doesn't say, "Well I'll be," and sit down stumped, fist to His cheek, trying to figure out what the heck to do next. No that's what I do, and usually my choice of words isn't so benign and flailing would more accurately describe the motion of my fists. Because I had forgotten that although right now everything seems weird and somewhat scary and out of my control, that's not how it seems to God at all. When did I decide projecting my mental state onto the Creator of the Universe was a good idea? (Whole other issue.) This epiphany, like all great and important ones, is multi-faceted. Not only is God powerful, He loves me. Or should I say, is in fact powerful enough to love me exactly the way I am. And so it follows that if He is able to change everything instantly but doesn't, because I know He loves me, that means right here is exactly where I'm supposed to be, where He wants me to be. Which changes my responsibility to the present. If God's as flabbergasted as I am at the latest turn of events, we can both be kinda moody and upset and complain about it. But since He's not, since I am convinced now that He has me exactly where I am on purpose, and He loves me and wants more for and from me, my conviction becomes that I not only have to survive this season, I must find a way to thrive in it. Make no mistake, He could move me with ease. And make no mistake, He has promised me life and that more abundantly every second of every day, not just when I get to where I want to be. And so my charge is to do it here, to do it now, to thrive where there are no answers and not a single, tiny thing has changed.

It's called being faithful, and He has set a perfect example for me.

And so, imperfectly, I have set out to adjust not my circumstances or my future but my outlook. To approach each day not as one more meaningless box to check off on my way to real living, but as the organic, moving, breathing, essence of my real living. It's not a mistake. God doesn't make those. He's far too powerful, and to believe otherwise is to discredit Him. And it's for my good. He loves me and has promised me that, and I have never known Him to be a liar. With this gift in hand: knowledge of the intention and lovingkindness of God in every situation, what choice do I have but to walk in faith and joy? Releasing my claim to the future, trusting Him, hoping in His sovereign power, believing that He knows what He's doing, and that He loves me. Seeking the ways He wants to use me to be a blessing to the people He places in my path every day, and the specific purposes He has for every beat of my heart and every breath from my lungs. For there is much He has for me, but I'm usually too busy doing anything and everything else to notice it. Killing my time, not using it.

And therein lies the change. Not of my circumstances, because that's not really the point. The change is in me. In how I view my God who is in control, and His loving expectations of me. Want to know why I'm so convinced they're loving expectations? Because when I wasn't requiring much of myself but was instead just passing through life as though I were sleepwalking, well I've already described what life was like for me and those closest to me then. Since I've begun holding myself more closely to His requirements of me, I've been living. And it's been beautiful and good and I've been humbled. I have to admit, a big part of that humbling comes from the fact that I can only do it with moderate success. Even though I know exactly how great life is when I keep myself in this holy mindset, I still falter and have to recalibrate and keep coming back to the epiphany. Often.

But the change has begun - and that's something.