This Is A Me

Orchid Praying Mantis

This awesome little creature does a fantastic job of exemplifying some of the characteristics of my time in The Pursuit, Fall 2008.  So, as a moment of belated closure, I share them with you:

• Bold: I took the Lord up on His offer.  He offered me the zeal to do an internship, to be violent with my time and my money, to interrupt my education and be still.  And, I did.  I suspended my psuedo-normality for a taste of reality: the eternal pleasures of God.  I moved out of my home into a townhouse with seven other girls.  I didn’t watch any films or TV–basically kept my eyes away from moving images.  I stayed away from my favorite escape with friends, The Shakespeare Tavern.  And I sat in a room waiting on God.
• Beautiful: The Lord gently answered my decision with a beautiful three months.  When I reached the end–and only then, haha–I turned and saw a stunning array of His beauty.  The beauty of His love.  The beauty of my own heart.  The beauty of consecration.  Most importantly, throughout the internship, I was arrested with the beauty of the throne of God Himself.  I could pass delicious hours imagining the swirling emerald rainbow (greens of every hue? different enough to look like a rainbow? the covenant of Noah? mercy!); the pulsing carnelian of His pure spiritual desire for us (God is passionate? No way!…wow…); and the crystal clarity and radiance of His person (justice, the rays of light, splitting down to the molecular level, the motives of the human heart…).
• Beggarly: Who was I apart from Him?!  I had nothing to offer.  Time?  I got bored.  Passion?  I got exhausted.  Devotion?  I cut corners on the commandments.  Repentance?  I needed His kindness to lead me.  Beauty?  I corrupted it with sin.  What could I do?  Son of David!  Don’t pass me by!  For…I am naked.  Poor.  Blind.  All at the same time.  Don’t pass me by…like the mantid, I could but hold my hands before my eyes and beg.  And, He–glorious truth!–actually answered!  He counts my acknowledged nakedness as intimacy.  He counts my acknowledged poverty as humility.  He counts my acknowledged blindness as faith to be given eternal eyes.  *listen to Closer by John Mark McMillan*
• Belligerent: inclined to or exhibiting assertiveness, hostility, or combativeness. Praying mantids actually eat each other.  It’s quite a terrifying demonstration…and I was a terrifying demonstration of the darkness of my own heart during my internship.  Not that I ate anyone, haha   But, when I was wounded, I found hatred in my heart.  I was angry.  I was protective of my soul.  Perhaps I relate here more to a hermit crab: I withdrew my attention, affection, affectedness.  But, true to Himself, when I turned this belligerence to beggarlyness before God, He answered with beauty.  He set it up so that my roommates would push all my buttons; and when I was pressed on every side, I yielded to the Sermon on the Mount–gentleness, meekness, peacemaking, patience, mercy…and I became BEAUTIFUL
• Distinct: I couldn’t find a word that was similar in meaning and started with a ‘b’…but I suppose that the ‘d’ emphasizes the point   Through these three months of delving deep into my heart, deep into the heart of God, I became distinct.  I was no longer ‘Jessica’ defined by her talents, defined by her relationships, defined by her performance.  Although I spoke, wrote, danced, and drew, it was not a reflexive motion but rather an expression independent of people’s expectations and usually for my own eyes and heart before God.  Although I never ceased to be the daughter of my mother and the sister of my siblings, I lived apart from their tempering influence and found the way I really felt about things.  Although I participated in classes, meditations, and devotions, I no longer performed.  I did not do anything, in fact, simply because it was expected of me, by God or humans.  I did things because I found them put in my own heart to give to God.  And, just as a tree that falls in the forest still makes a sound even if no one hears it, just as a mantid arrays itself in wild colors even if no one ever sees it (sometimes, especially so that they won’t see it)–I, I will still give my spirit, my personality, my soul, my self to God even if no one else witnesses it outside of my skin.

This is me: And, just as a tree that falls in the forest still makes a sound even if no one hears it, just as a mantid arrays itself in wild colors even if no one ever sees it (sometimes, especially so that they won’t see it)–I, I will still give my spirit, my personality, my soul, my self to God even if no one else witnesses it outside of my skin.