A Heart Unmasked

Kay Verse: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 (ESV) 

Maybe I am the only one.   And if I am that’s ok. I will be my own audience of one.

Because Y’all I will be honest and admit that I am having a hard time processing  some things right now. Things my tired eyes are seeing and my heavy ears are hearing. Hate and division is just plain hard to witness from every angle. Finger pointing is not changing anything. Name calling is only making things worse. 

So many things I want to know. So many things I long to understand. How did we get to this place?  Where do we go from here? 

But this is the one thing I do know.  Big News Breaker…..We don’t have the answers and our own ideas and plans won’t fix our problems. Not this time. 

But that’s only part of it.  There is more.

I have been doing some wrestling with God over these same things. Wrestling like Jacob did.  Anybody? I feel weary and tired but determined to hold on throughout this dark night.  Determined to see daybreak. Jacob held on till he was got his blessing. I want a blessing too. I need a blessing. 

It would be nice to be able to wave a magic wand over this whole mess we have made till it goes away. I want God to fix it. All of it. Fix it or rescue us. Truth is God didn’t make our mess. We did. The cold hard reality is that we did it with Him warning us not to. What do you do with that? 

The hardest part for me is that as bad as it is life just seems to be spinning around and around as normal. Same IG posts.  Same perfect happy faces.  Same sparkly FB stories. Same picture perfect families.  The world is spinning out of control and people are still posting happy faces. I just couldn’t do it. Not today. 

Because honestly, it isn’t the same for me. I need to stop the merry-go-round of perfection for a while. I felt the need to rest my feet on some familiar soil of just being me for a while. Messy and all. Heavy heart and all. I’m tired of spinning.  I had to step off and take a much needed break from all the noise. I needed some fall before Jesus and just be real. Wrestlings and all. 

Because when you get down to the heart of the matter, I can’t say I have ever seen God playing charades. He won’t let us play that game either. He always waits till the masks come off and we are ready and willing to listen. It made me ask a very hard question. Is that what the masks have truly been about all year?  A reminder of how suffocating it can be keeping all our scars and diseases hidden. The truth is healing can begin but not until we first allow our hurts and wounds to be exposed. Exposed and open to the one who is our Great Physician. Sometimes I forget the invitation is always open to “Come as we are”. 

If we will just be honest and admit that we have gotten so many things wrong. And we so desperately need to remedy them. 

Surprisingly, we are all so familiar with the cure for all our ailments. It has been etched on flyers and billboards. We have heard it spoken in too many speeches and sermons to count. The sad thing is that it has been staring us in the face but we haven’t seen it. Really take a hard look at it.

It is so like our God to give us the answer. But then God’s great mercy has always given us the answer. The thing we seem to forget is that the answer also comes with one stipulation. It requires change.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 (ESV) 

Healing is up for discussion and on the table but there is no magic wand. Healing that can move us forward is possible but it requires first going back. Healing will never come without it. Healing will never happen without a trek back to Calvary and a heart searching journey down on our knees. It is a journey we desperately need to make together. And it is a journey so worth taking. 

Happy for a little while can wait. I am still determined blessings are going to come. Healing is possible. Change can happen. Hope still abounds.

I am praying we all make the right choice soon. We so need healing in both our land and in our hearts. 

The choice is ours to make. Healing is waiting.  Hope is cheering us on. The invitation is still open. 

And as for me, I will…..

See you in the field and down on my knees, 

Susan