Hey, I think the Lord wants to encourage you today. I think the Lord has been chasing you, pursuing you, loving you, and craving intimacy with you. The Lord sees your brokenness that only he can heal. He sees how the bones are made stronger once they heal properly. You have experience of hurt that your body remembers, and you have potential or capacity to empathize if you let the Lord fill you with empathy to pass on to others. The Lord has so much love and compassion for you, and your rejection of love hurts you and others unnecessarily.
The Lord loves that you haven't given up in this confusion. Seek the answers and the Lord will respond. He has the maps ready for you to look at and learn how to read. What Father would give his child a scorpion when he asks for an egg? Ask; seek; knock. The Lord is holding the answer. You can see it if you open your eyes. God is a loving Father who supplies our needs and equips us to be his tools in kingdom work. He knows what it means to be a good and loving Father, and he is teaching you those things.
Ask the Lord for your gifts, and don't refuse them when you see them. It might be empathy. It might be joy unspeakable. It might be beyond your wildest dreams. It might be worth sharing with somebody.
Today is a new day. Happy birthday. You're not crawling back into your mother's womb; you're starting life with eyes open to the grace and beauty and love around you. You were made for this. It's terrifying; it's exciting. You've got this - because it's the Lord at work in you.
There's still heavy stuff in my life, but just hours after my post last week, I had two students knock on my door with a cheesecake. They'd never made a cheesecake, but one of them had Brooks as a Chrysalis leader in middle school and wants to outdo the alumni's cheesecake making skills. Life has highs and lows, and I made myself a pumpkin chocolate cheesecake tonight (since the student made strawberry one couldn't last forever). I bought yet another book on prayer this week and was reading through it and practicing some of the exercises while praying Friday morning, and the passage above came out.
I typed it into the notes app on my phone and didn't have a title for it, but "Hey," is in bold in the folder on my phone. I thought it might be able to encourage someone else today. Can I ask a favor? If there was an encouragement for you in there, can you pass it on? Could you let someone know something positive that you see in them? Can you look for a feature to affirm and intentionally bless someone else?
"And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Luke 11:9-13