{guard the good deposit}
I didn't grow up learning about God. I don't know church camp games. I went to VBS once when I was in 1st grade I think. I remember planting a bean seed in a styrofoam cup. I can vaguely remember my teacher saying that this seed was God's love in our heart. It was to sprout and grow and spread. I took it home. I placed in my window sill. It died. I watered the sucker. Too much? Perhaps. Not enough sun? Maybe. I can remember how it felt when my Mom told me to throw it away. I felt empty and unaccomplished. I felt failure that my bean didn't grow.
I can remember in high school being a member of FCA {Fellowship of Christian Athletes}. I remember attending prayer meetings in the bleachers before school and rallies in the auditorium. I can't put into words how empty and clueless I felt as they asked for heads bowed and eyes closed. For hands raised for the lost. My bean plant died. At 6 years old. Confused. Awkward. Weirded out. Those were real moments for me during those times.
Tossed. That's a good word for my faith. Away in a garbage can. That's where He found me. Overwatered & undernourished. Dead. God's bean plant didn't take root until I was 22. I was over heads bowed and eyes closed frankly. I had had enough of feeling secretly insecure for what I didn't know. For what I didn't get. For a family that didn't attend church regularly and never prayed together.
I didn't understand religion. And I couldn't grasp why my parents, who loved me more than anything, left out this big portion of all things eternal. Did they show me Jesus? Yes. Resoundingly so. They were God's hands and feet so many times to so many people looking back. They lived outwardly to lift others.
And now here I am. An adult. A wife. A mother. A Christian. And still, I feel tossed. I am His bean plant. Even when I overwater and undernourish, I am His little sprout growing. So are my boys. And my husband.
God doesn't speak to me in real words, but more in feelings. He is already aware of my failures well before I am. I want to tell you I am a steadfast reader of His word. But, I can't. I go in spurts. I read for months everyday and then feel like I've over-analyzed and overwhelmed so I take a break. My prayers can last for hours. And then there are somedays I can barely muster out a "thank you." Intentional living with Him is well, every bit intentional.
I still struggle with what religion really is. I can name differences between them all, but that just makes me sad and overwhelmed again. I sit centered in His hand when I am truthful. So truthful is what I am choosing to be here. Because maybe someone reading this felt like a dead bean plant at 6 or felt completely weirded out when they were asked to bow their heads and close their eyes in some high school auditorium.
God is personal. He has rules. He understands faults and most likely put them there for a reason. He is love in every sense of the word. He is ability and emotion and reach. He is connection and effort for life. Lived well & hard. He promises nothing but forever. How He moves in each of us is as different as the color of our skins and the tint of our eyes.
Me? The Christian wife & mother? I praise Him. In my smile. In my hands and how they move for myself and others. I dance and sing for Him. I choose to be completely vulnerable to Him regardless of what others think. And I can rattle off a laundry list of blessings that He has heap-piled in my lap. And yet, I still feel the toss of faith.
I am writing this for realness sake. For the sake of the fallen and the damaged. For the ones, like me, who don't have all the answers and who slip slide fumbling through to find faith from the inside out. I dare not write this in criticism of God or church or religion. I write simply to say of those 3, I cling to One.
This morning I read in 2 Timothy. Verse 14 jolted me. It's Paul's last lettered words to his son, Timothy. It's an imperative sentence. "Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you-guard it with the help of the holy spirit who lives in us." That's good stuff. God's deposited a good in each of us. It's motion outward is Him inward in us. That's the beauty of a bean plant.
I don't have all the answers. I don't know a slew of Bible verses by memory. Don' ask me to sing you a middle school church camp song. I can't. I am just a broken one loved and forever held by Him. Even before I knew it. Don't fear the bowing of heads and closing of eyes. And don't move until you know of His love inside, little bean. Look for it. In people. In the hurt. In the empty & in the ones who bleed out His light. You'll know them. They're the humans you gravitate toward for rest and for comfort and for a peaceful feeling you can't quite explain.
There. Right then. That's when you'll realize His deposit in you.
.mac :)
