For Laughter, Spotify And The Flap Of A Hummingbird’s Wing

I was listening to “Have It All” by Bethel. It is a beautiful, simple song of confession and surrender. Its easy to listen to and the lyrics are well written. However I had never really listened to the lyrics. I never thought about them or let them sink into my heart. Until today, I was cleaning and put it on for background music. The first line started,

“You can have it all, Lord
Every part of my world
Take this life and breathe on
this heart that is now yours”

Then I heard God say loud and clear, “Sadie, do I have your all?” Then I realized that I don’t give Him my everything. I’m good at looking at my problems and my circumstances and saying, “God, I can’t do this. Hold my hand. Take my burden…” etc. But I never think to give Him the ‘good stuff’. I know how to give Him my issues and take rest, knowing He takes care of me. But why don’t I give Him my good things?
I realized I hadn’t given Him my relationships. My parents, my closest friends, the person I love, acquaintances…it never once occurred to me that I should give them to Him. I hadn’t given Him my passions. My passions, which He is so involved in, I was still holding for myself, feeling I need to be accountable and responsible for all my goals and visions. (On a side note: I do think its important to be accountable and responsible in your life. Giving it to God is not an excuse for complacency. Its an action of receiving strength from Him and letting Him lead you and love you)
   I need to give Him my little good things. Things like coffee in the morning, making someone laugh, going for a run, capturing that perfect shot, sunsets, busy city streets. To give Him my all really means all. He graciously takes my issues and burdens and throws them in the sea. But He wants to take my everything so that He can be my everything.
So what does that look like? Gratitude. Thankfulness. Awareness of how incredible He is. To spin off of my last post, to have childlike wonder. I mean, this is the God who created galaxies full of flaming balls of gas, musical scales, the rainbow, lightning, mountains and caves, complex nervous systems, and knee caps. And He wants so badly to be my everything. Do you understand that? He is desperate for you. He wants for you to give Him your all, so He can give you all of Him.
So I thank God for my parents, for Bethel music, for Spotify, for my close friends who listen to me and whom I listen to. I thank God for sushi, for fog in the mornings in the country, for happy tears. I thank God for the passions He put in me, for people, for neurology, for art, for beauty, for newness. I thank God for dreams and visions and plans and ideas. I thank God for mountains in all their grandeur, for the oceans in their vastness. I thank God for complexity in rain, and in thoughts, and in emotions, and in the flap of a hummingbird’s wing and in my beating heart. I thank God for the simplicity of loving someone, of wheat fields, of frequencies and of laughter. I could go on and on.
I recommend taking time out of your day to write down, say out loud, type, or whatever you need to do to get out the things you’re thankful for. As I’ve written in posts past, declaring is powerful. And being truly grateful means letting Him know. Being in relationship with Him is beautiful and breathtakingly wonderful. He wants your all so He can give you His all.

Being Still Isn’t Scary – Pt.1

  This past week I spent in Sophia, North Carolina. On 52 breathtaking acres, lovingly named A Place For the Heart, my heart was reminded. My body was remade. My thoughts were realigned. My creativity recaptured. My confidence re-established. I learned what my story meant and how to tell it. God can do a whole heck of a lot in five days.
When I signed up for the 18 Inch Journey Youth Camp (hosted by Cageless Birds), I had absolutely no idea what I had committed myself to. First of all, when I was driving up the gravel roads into the land, underneath the green summer canopies, seeing the people who’d become my family the next few days, an overwhelming peace came over me. Peace can be tangible. I had no idea, but thats probably because I had not felt peace in so long. In fact, peace and stillness scared me.
Thats one of the many things I learned in Sophia. Stillness is not scary. Stillness does not mean complacency. It doesn’t mean giving up. I was afraid to be still because I thought to be still was to give up dreams and ideas and stay at home, do nothing but be a good Christian, only love those who came into my vicinity, into my small bubble of being good. But no, stillness is an action. Stillness isn’t giving up on dreams, its giving into them. Its giving into the thought -the truth- that His dreams are your dreams, and that you can trust Him with them. Peace is the action of trusting God and stepping into where He is patiently leading you. Peace takes movement and complete trust.
Along with peace comes happiness. To trust God you have to know Him. To know Him is to know His smile. Even if you’ve never necessarily thought about it, you’ve felt His smile over you when you worship, when you cry out to Him, when you listen and let Him speak to you. His smile is yours for the taking. Thats one of my favorite things I discovered this week.
During the first dinner, the gave us all a specific place at the table. Intentionally gifting us with the place to sit, enjoy the meal and talk about ourselves and our story. Then they took turns excitedly reading over us. Each staff member had been praying over us for weeks ahead of time, asking God about what He wanted to say to each of individually. They wrote letters about what He desired for us and what He wanted us to know and read them aloud after the meal. Mine stunned me a little bit. It was specific to me in a way that only I and God could know.    We continued the night with worship sessions and dance parties until 11:00, when they sent us with our new acquaintances to our cabins, bellies and hearts full. There’s a lot I could talk about in the first full day but I’ll skip to the nightly worship session. I stood there, swaying to the beat, singing out loud and praying in my head. Then something happened that I’ll never forget. God basically dropped a love bomb on me and it gave me the hugest grin. I literally could not stop smiling. My cheeks hurt and my eyes watered but I didn’t care. He told me “My smile is yours”. And the lyrics were:

“Your love has ravished my heart
And taken me over, taken me over
And all I want is to be
With You forever, with You forever
Pull me a little closer
Take me a little deeper
I want to know Your heart”

I heard Him start singing those words over me and then it all clicked. I believed Him. For the first time, I believed Him without hesitation, without fear that I am not enough or that I am too much for Him. I made a subconscious decision in that moment to be open to Him and to allow Him to know my heart.
That night, back in the cabin with my journal open in my lap, I looked at all the words He spoke to me that day. I was telling one of my counselors about it when she said “You’ve changed. You’re radiant. I can see it all on your face and the way you carry yourself.” And I realized how little I smiled before. My mom had always commented on my countenance but I never really considered that I was noticeably sad or fearful. I was. But thats all I knew. I hadn’t been genuinely happy in so long. I thought I didn’t deserve it. I thought that because of the things I had done, the thoughts I had daily, even the actions I considered doing, that I didn’t deserve to be happy. I thought I would have to go through a process of growth, that I’d have to get to a certain measure of maturity before I could be truly happy. And because of this I hardly smiled, I didn’t love myself and I pushed away God.  All it took was being still enough to see His smile and to hear Him sing over me. I could go on and on about this but I’ll save some for later posts.

Photo by Cageless Birds
Song: “Closer” by Amanda Cook

True Joy

You are created in God’s image. You are like Him. You came from Him. He made you intricately, deliberately, carefully and when He sees you He sees Himself.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27 ESV)

So when He looks at you He doesn’t see sin, ignorance, brokenness, nothing like that. He sees purity, creativity, purpose, He sees His child. You are like Him so that means you are meant to be full of joy. Joy is a funny thing, but only ’cause we humans tend to have it all wrong. Joy is a simple fact, but with the way we’ve been twisted and confused, it can be complicated to understand.
King David, the David who wrote the Psalms that we all know as the songs of the Bible, wrote from the heart. And the human heart is not always clean and elegant. Sometimes, most of the time, its messy and childish. Its never easy to understand, never matter of fact. There are always many moving parts to it. Your heart is the most important part of you. God cares about it most. He intended it to be this way. He wanted us to be raw and real and to love Him with all the mess and all the child-like wonder. So when David wrote from the heart, sometimes it was clumsy, his thoughts and anger often came up in retorts, even arguing, at God. David wasn’t careful to talk to God with only reverent, fearful words. He talked to God like He was a friend, a protector, a Father. We know David had respect for God the King, he talked about it many times. However, David understood that God delighted in David and all his creativity. God loved is realness and the way he spoke with abandon. David spoke from the heart and God responded with His own heart.
David and God had a relationship as it was meant to be. Real, open, intimate, unashamed, respecting, a friendship between the closest of friends. In this kind of relationship is the only place you can find true joy. Joy that surpasses all understanding. (Love and joy cannot be separated) Joy doesn’t always mean happiness, although happiness is a common side effect of joy. Joy is trusting God and knowing with everything in you that God delights in you and He’ll take care of you. Joy is knowing He created the tiniest details, from fractals, to atoms, to the largest mountain-scapes and the deepest oceans just for you. Joy is knowing that despite your mistakes, He will never turn away, He’ll never change His mind. Joy is knowing He doesn’t give up. Joy is knowing that despite your circumstances, He is still good and He is still worthy.
Joy takes knowing. Really knowing. Not just knowing in your head. You can know and tell yourself these things, speak and preach them all you want but if you do not believe and your core does not understand it, you won’t have true joy. Joy is yours for the taking. He longs for you to enjoy Him, to experience Him, to love Him. He wants you specifically, personally. He is in wonder and awe of you and all the little details of you. He is infinetely good and wise and playful. And He said “Ask and you will receive” (Matthew 7:7). He wants to give you Him, so let Him show you true joy.