Awake

Source: 4.media.tumblr.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

With every day that passes, I long to be more awake to the sound of His voice and the beating of His heart. More, is my prayer. More of your heart, Daddy. More of Your heart for Your brokenbeautiful creation. I do not want to sleepwalk through my days. Jesus does not ask us to sleep; He asks us to raise the dead.

Raise the dead, Daddy, please. Raise all that’s dead in me.

I read Half the Sky and wept and prayed and raged over the ways my sisters across the world are held down and devalued.

I used Slavery Footprint to see how many slaves work for me, and the number echoes in my head thirtytwothirtytwothirtytwo and breaks my heart open a bit more.

I go to work and try to raise my voice for the teenage girls who are told in a thousand silent ways that they are too fat, too tall, too, small, too loud, too quiet, too fierce, too wild, too much... I want them to know that they are too precious to listen to the lies.

I go to work and my heart breaks for the women who are unexpectedly pregnant and terrified, or who had a termination and need someone to come alongside them and love them and whisper grace.

I talk to my friends, precious women who are hurting and blind to all the passion and fire and power they were created with, and I pray that they would be able to see.

I sponsored my first Compassion child (Yonah, from Uganda) and there's so much joy in that, but he's still a world away from here.

I am awake to it all, and then I have to ask - now what? I can choose to exist in the pain of the knowledge, with nerves raw and strained as I try to feel it all and bear it all. I feel like a small and lonely warrior, standing a prayerwatch and pushing on a rock that is far too big for me to move. Sometimes I believe the lies of weakness, and self-medicate with a (fairtrade) coffee, a book, a music download, and I hide from it all. I try and sleep away the knowledge.

But I can’t.

My soul is awake, and I cannot un-know His heart. So again, I start to pray:
More of your heart, Daddy. More of Your heart for Your brokenbeautiful creation.
Amen, amen, amen.

Written for the Shelovesmag synchroblog for September