Strike Sparks

The new year finds me open and receiving, resting in these arms that long to carry me that I always seem to push away.

After all the clutching and striving. After all the cement stained floors cradling a thousand tears. I let him hold me. I let God love me back to life. I get off the crazed swirling monotony of days and empty hands and babies and dirt and sweat. Because Uganda, while I love it, takes my little heart and rubs it raw.
Too busy to tend it; I falter.

I need a safe place to be still.

Sometimes we have to come to the end of ourselves to finally come home.

No longer a mother. But allowing myself to just be a daughter.

One

who is loved.

I find this revelation hard to receive: God the Father loves me as I am, just as much as He loves Jesus. He loves me just as much whether I am sleeping, or yelling at someone, or praying for the sick and spending myself on the poor. Whether I feel far from him, or close to him, my identity does not change. I am His.

That His love is not a temperature gage.

Does not rise and fall with my good and bad actions. Not dependent on what I do, but just because I AM. I am His girl.

The Father's heart is a deep-boned thing, something that covers and calms every anxious voice, every fearful thought, every long to do list. It is life-changing.

To know this. It shifts everything. Because

I no longer have to do for approval.

I move from approval.

My heart learns the lesson again. And again.

How to stop and know. To know. And believe. And receive. His love.

I had a vision.

Me and Jesus on a beach.

I am a little girl busy building my sand castle. Jesus wants me to come join him for a swim in the water. But I refuse, because I want to build this castle to show him. To show him he can be proud of me. He insists. Come join me. Be with me. So I relent. We play in the water for hours. When I come back to the beach, my sandcastle has washed away. But I did not feel the pain of it. It was as if it no longer mattered. Because His presence was so real and so sweet.

I look up further on the beach and there is a large castle, built of stone, made for a princess, like a backyard play house. And as I enter I realize it's big enough for me and Jesus to fit inside.

And I did nothing to build it.

I come out of the dream, and I know:

Everywhere all of us dying on our knees, when we could be with Him.

This is His furious longing.

And He is able. To cover our hearts with His hands. All the dissapointments, and the shattered dreams, the betrayals, and the back-stabbing. His hands hold them and absorb them into His heart.

So much healing in this place. So much healing for me. So much revelation to bring back.
These women, these girls, are loved exactly as they are, regardless of their actions.

This is the most important thing in the world: To know we are loved and receive it. And to finally accept ourselves and be free.

The heart is where everything springs from.

And how we view God has everything to

do with how we are going to live our life.

From GRACE. Or from DOING.

This is the calling. The reason we are in Uganda.

The reason Zion Project was born.

A destiny of healed hearts walking in wholeness awaits us.

So much love received, to give away.

The truth becomes real. There is no other way.

And gratitude.

The gratitude of feeling His love. So much more than a thousand gifts.

The plaintive prayers find rest.

I am home.

Will you join me?

*If you are interested in inner healing/the father's heart, a great resource is Catch The Fire School of Ministry in Toronto, Canada. May you be blessed! http://catchthefire.com/