race you!

Confession: My self-consciousness is getting in the way. It's getting in the way of my building new friendships, and being honest in old friendships. It's getting in the way of my feeling free to worship in the way I want to. Most dangerously, it's getting in the way of my dropping everything to follow Him fully.

The practical outcome of that is living in a place of willful, and knowing disobedience. That's no place I want to be.

I was having the longest conversation of my life last night, and as this friend talked on about the implications of living in His freedom, I kept seeing this silly moment from the week before. I was at the River fitness center with a couple of friends, and as we walked out of a Zumba class, en route to showing one of them the weight room, a spark of playful over-confidence hit me. "Race you!", I shouted to her, dropped everything, and burst forward towards the other end of the track.

The effect was actually far more fantastical--as though I just threw down my purse, and sprinted. She was like some sort of high school track super-star (and I get lapped in the park by women jogging double-strollers), so my illusion of speed only held until she started running, and passed me in about 2.3 seconds. But for a moment, it was all very dramatic, and awesome, and hopeful.

That moment, though, played through my mind again and again during this ginormous conversation last night, I think because of the forcefulness of it. I dropped everything. Didn't just drop. Threw everything to the side, and not to run. To sprint.

I have a pretty living personal relationship with God. I love the prayer We have. I read about Him (you would not believe what the Israelites are [were] up to!). I spend time in His body. But I'm afraid that in the same way that I've created a god for myself in the past, I am running that same risk now.

What does it mean to seek God if I won't then throw everything to the side to join Him, to worship Him, to love Him? And what does it mean to say that I've accepted salvation if the reality is that I am too uncertain and self-conscious to trust that He thought I was worth saving?

One of the more interesting and difficult points to navigate through in all of this has been the "new creation" part of being "born again." Born again (no quotes). In the two years between college, and moving here, I had become this incredibly confident and strong person with such a clear vision, even if I didn't know exactly what the future would hold. I had everything worked out--this whole moral, philosophical system, that fit so well into my peer group, and my academic reaches. It was perfect. I had such complete trust in myself to come through any situation, to handle anything. I had laid to rest most of my religious insecurity in this beautiful metaphorical version of Christianity. Golden. So good.

Then I moved here, and, planning to find a church that fit MY specifications, I instead found one that has caused me to fit myself to God. Now, I don't have that identity that I had. And I'm not sure what's happening with a new one. My self seems to be in transit.

That is, I think, one of the great uncertainties of salvation. You say yes without fully knowing. You give up who you are without a solid plan for who you'll become. And you trust that He'll take care of that. And He does.

He does. He is.

Unaccustomed to trusting outside of myself, I forget that. But, now in the middle of a transformation, I turn to myself on uncertain footing. I'm not solid. But He is. Not to the left, nor the right, but forward is the Truth. Better to drop everything and sprint towards His safety, than to sit in danger.