Image Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/nateks/
It was strange being home for Thanksgiving.
Not because people have changed. Not because family members have aged in startling ways. Not because the main rhythms of life have stayed the same and I see the same people sitting in the same pews, flirting with the same people at church.
But because I’ve changed.
And going back this time, I’ve had to come face to face with who I was.
By anyone’s standards, I’ve never been a horrible person. I’m punctual, pay my bills, my taxes, and like to make people laugh. I fight for the underdog, love dramatic storytelling, and have been know to cry with strangers. I’m a Jesus, coffee, and skinny jean sort of a woman.
Ask any of my family or friends, and they will tell you that I’ve radically changed in the last year and a half. The evolution, the “Tex-i-fication” of who I am. But it goes deeper than my golden tan, my views on protests, and my turns on the catwalk.
There’s been a lot of things undone in my life. A lot of hopes dashed, dreams murdered, and plans that veered violently away from the direction that I had tried to pinpoint everything on. Things that used to be a big deal, earth shattering stuff, I don’t even blink at any longer. But at the same time, a lot of things have been redone.
Like my definition of grace. My grasp on what it means to forgive people. And what I’m looking for in relationships.
I’ve quit trying to be a “good girl” who knows the answers to everything. The good girl is the cousin to the Stepford Wife. The one who sold their soul in the quest for perfection, never realizing the freedom there is in imperfection and forgiveness. Sometime in the last year, I’ve been able to see the beauty in the brokeness. It’s like seeing the Rockies or the ocean for the first time. There’s a wild beauty that can’t be found in anywhere else. The smudges on the soul becoming part of a bigger picture of God’s grace. That doesn’t mean that I take my fingers and purposefully smear the work of Christ. It means realizing that He can take my mistakes and work them into something bigger, the ultimate Artist at work.
This year, I started focusing on what it meant to be a good woman. What it means to become whole and holy. Healing happens when you take off your masks, look at your baggage head on, and lay it out before Jesus. The last few months is when the deepening really started to happen.
When health failed. When work drama ensued. When my lungs struggled to expand. When friends faded. When dreams dimmed.
That’s when Christ became everything.
I’m still far from perfect. But like the Velveteen Rabbit, I’ve become more real and more whole in the last year. It’s a beautiful thing.
