My word for 2013 is Free.
It is for freedom that we have been set free.
The radical, grace-laden, completed work of the cross brings a freedom that cannot be comprehended, and one that I frequently devalue in my choices. There are broken elements of my life which I have laid at the foot of the cross time and again, but which I take back, pick up, try to redeem out of my own strength. It is high time I learned that this ransomed life should not be lived that way. Who am I to declare my sin too big for the cross to have dealt with? The hubris is enormous.
I struggle with depression, but that does not define me.
My family are broken, but that is not my identity.
I have a quiet presence and am softly-spoken, but that is not who I am.
I have never yet dated, but that is not the make-or-break of my life.
I struggle with low self-esteem, body image, food, anorexia, but I do not have to live in those.
I am a woman, and that in no way disqualifies me from Kingdom work.
I want to live and thrive in the freedom of what God speaks, rather than crumple under the weight of the labels and burdens I have taken up for myself.
There is a choice in this, and there is a commissioning. There have been hard things to deal with in my 24 years, but I choose not to live as a victim of those. I choose to believe the words and the encouragements (more in faith than fact right now, but it’s only January...) that have been spoken, and I choose freedom from the lies. I choose to repent of believing the lies of being unlovely, unloved, unlovable. I choose instead to believe that I am wildly loved and wildly free, and I accept the commission to love as Jesus loved, to be His hands and feet, to run through the world fire-filled and hungry for justice and mercy.
I have a voice. I have fire and passion and compassion, and my heart bleeds with it.
This is not easy. But I am pretty sure it’s worth it.
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