A Story Yours to Tell
Daughter, where do you run? How do you doubt? What do you see when you look for Me?
Oh, girl, it’s not silence. No, it’s not empty space. No, it’s not memory failing. No, you don’t need to be smarter, quicker, a better listener. Maybe, you could be more you?
Please don’t run away from the girl I’ve made, hand-stamped with beauty, with talent, with a way to see Me and hear me unlike anyone else.
When I wrote your story, your beginning made me smile. You captured Me in how the details of your story were crafted.
You were held far before you were born.
Your story gives life with my voice. I know there are things you’d like to forget, details you wish weren’t part of your story. But the story is still beautiful, girl.
So, listen, how might we, together, look at your story through my eyes? I speak, and light appears. My hands crafted your frame. My breath is your breathing in and out. Let Me show you beginning again, and how the jagged points when you feel your heart breaking are places where you can be made even more beautiful and strong. The pruned branch grafted onto the vine.
I’ve never lost you.
You have always been in my sight, your story on my lips and the story yours to tell. To whom can you tell your story? Whom do I bring to you? Who needs to know what it means to breathe the beginning, breathe the story of Life?
God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good and He validated it completely. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Genesis 1:31
What Your Heart Knows
Oh, darling, I know you want to touch Me, to reach out your hands and feel Me tangibly. Might I feel more real, then? Might I be more easily recognized?
Look again.
Look again.
Where is your restless heart? To what does it turn, if not to Me?
What can you see more tangibly that distracts you from Me, when all my creation calls out my name? What calls out something else? What does not cry out holy? What does not cry out these words: I have you. I want you. I rescue you. I redeem you. I claim you. I made you. I beautify you. I hung on a cross for you and faced death and won?
What tears you away?
From what do you get your self-worth? How do you decide the value of a day? How do you choose what is yours to do? What is your rhythm? How do you receive energy? How do you find rest?
Oh, girl, where do I fit in?
My daughter, I did not come to play second. I did not come to trick you, con you into loving Me. You only know who you are and what you’re worth through my love for you; my dying for you on the cross. I would do it again for you.
I would, you know.
But here’s the thing: I did. I did. For you.
I do not ask you to love Me out of guilt, out of obligation. I give you a heart that knows its way to Me. It knows its true self. It knows its name. It knows its place. It knows by whom it was made. It knows the giver of all good things and how things began and how ending isn’t an option until the time is finished here.
I say ‘it is finished’, and the beginning began again. I called ‘Father, I commit my Spirit to thee’, and that Spirit is now yours. And your heart knows my Spirit. You know Me. My children know their name.
So touch these scars. Touch these hands. Let these fingers wrap around yours. My Holy Spirit—Me in you—holds on tight.
So, come on now, sweet one, you hold on tight, too. We’ve got things to do together.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17
For You, I Have So Much More
I know the word story carries with it so many emotions, so much heaviness, but relief, too. I know in your head you want words and memories to make sense. You want things to line up, and it is tough to not have answers, to not be able to explain the reason behind this happening, the cause of this event.
What if you knew more than you did? What if you could give an answer to the whys of your heart? What if you didn’t have to struggle with weakness, with inadequacy, on your own? Can you imagine where that would lead you?
Do you trust how I protect your heart?
I protect you, and I push you on, too. I lead you, but it is your choice whether or not to follow. I give you vision, just enough, to see where I am and know where I go, with you. One foot in front of the other. Why do you need to know more? Do you? Do you need to know more to believe Me more? Do you need to see more to know I am here, whispering to you, loving you, guiding you?
My daughter, you are not alone.
My daughter, you have what it takes, my creation, my dear one, to follow Me.
My daughter, you are the only one of you I’ve made. There is just one. Only one, my dear. You are my crafted jewel, my sparkling flower, my glistening water as it falls from heaven.
You delight Me, child.
Please don’t look away, believe this is too good to be true. You feel that way to Me, you know. . . too good to be true. You are radiant and captivating and you need only stand with Me, watching where I beckon you, knowing I am the sure place for your legs to stand.
So, rest now. And then rise up. When you believe, a little more, choosing these words, my love for you, as true, you are on your way to a deeper place I have for you.
I have so much more for you, child.
I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Jeremiah 29:14
What I Want to Show you (in your Story)
Daughter, you can listen for Me. You can seek for Me. And you’ll find Me, right here.
I am right here.
You can work hard to find Me, search pages in your Bible, soak up my truth, study scripture and memorize passages until you know them by heart. But I want you to know Me by heart, my love. I want you to know that the women and men in the Bible, my daughters and sons, were my children whom I loved and pursued and wanted to be with, just like I do you. They are not unfamiliar to you. Their stories, their mistakes, their trials, are yours too. And that is why I wrote them down. For I want you to see Me and where I was and where I am and be encouraged.
But there are pages being written now, my love, pages of story with you as the protagonist. You are the center of the story I am writing with you. And you get to decide, so much, of what happens. You get to work with Me in the shaping of your story, the rise and fall of the details of your life.
No, you don’t have control over it all. No, you can’t change the setting sometimes, or the other characters with whom you interact. For sometimes I bring those people in and these events into your life, for you to see Me more, love Me and pour Me out a bit more. But you do choose how to enter into your story, or how to dismiss opportunities I bring, reject people you could love. You have a say in what you do within the story. You have a say in whom you love and whom you don’t love, in where you go and what you do with your time.
Oh, your story, my love. . . Do you see it written out? Do you see my fingerprints upon the page? I love looking at it, all the good that has happened, all the places in you where I want to bring hope, all the places in you that still need healing, still need freedom. There are places in you where you still need to see where I was, how I loved you in each place of heartache, disappointment, and pain.
So, let me show you the story of your life through my eyes. I have some new things to show you, some rises and falls you have not yet seen. And it’s good. I will show you the places where I come, with my presence and my hope and my love, to make it good.
Does this sound good? Let’s look, together, at your story.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
To Go Forward, It’s Time to Go Back
Oh, restless one, I bring you peace now. These years go by, and I stay. These images in your memory, pages you flip through from the past, I make them beautiful. I show you beauty, and I want to show you more.
You can’t change the past, no. But you can look at it differently. You can’t change those moments when you were little, when you were the little girl with the tender skin and pink lips you used to bite. You can’t change that time, the one that hurts so much. Or, that one, the one you say you’d give anything to rewrite.
Oh, daughter, I want to show you what I see.
So, while the past can’t be rewritten, it can be made beautiful, even now, as you look back. I know what it means to not see one thing beautiful about a moment, to be filled with pain and sadness about circumstances. There are things that break my heart, too, you know.
But I forgive, and I will help you know how to forgive too: as you look back at the pages of moments you wished you could change, the people involved. And yourself, my love. I need you to forgive yourself.
Let Me come for you like you need Me to. You can’t even know how much you need Me until you get a taste of what I have to offer you: healing for your heart, a past washed white. I make you clean, my daughter. I bend low and wash you clean with my very hands, my heart beating for you, my love. My grace covers you. My love covers you. My life restores you and makes all that you carry so light, so light.
You are made to be free. You are made to see and live in the beauty of you I created. You are beauty because I made you, and you were not meant to live in fear and regret and sadness; especially about the past. Close the old book now. A new one is written for you. I have new pages to show you. The pages of your past are in this new book, with a fresh, clean cover, white pages, pressed new.
And then turn the page.
There is so much more to write in this book, so many more stories and pictures to add these pages are not flat; they are not one-dimensional. For you are in the story, my love. You are the story I am writing. You are the love I have made. You are the daughter who stirs my heart and who I have redeemed and who I show is worthy and beloved and whole.
So, grasp hold of my hand. For the new book to be presented to you, you need to let Me take you back to the places where you haven’t let Me go with you before. You need to let Me show you the light in the dark places, the hope in the despair, the presence of Me in all the times you felt so hurt, so sad, so alone.
And I will be holding your hand the whole time.
The whole time.
I promise.
'Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. '
Psalms 139:7-10
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Until next time, be good...