Can it be different?

Can it be different?

That question echoed in my spirit, when I found myself dragging my feet to the altar to surrender a dream I was holding onto. "Can it be different God?" “Can you redeem this?”

I often find God answering in small whispers, nudges, and new conversations. I want signs in the sky or blinking green lights. My love language is words of affirmation, deep knowing, and absolute certainty. God has a sense of humor, He loves to challenge our familiar through an invitation to the unknown. Holding on tightly to anything erases the beauty of what can be. It often imprisons me to only what I want, what I desire, canceling out what God wants, what He desires, and what He hopes for.

For the first three years of my walk with Jesus, my prayers were dressed heavily in petitions, complaints, and wants. Throughout my journey with God, I have learned the pure innocence of a need over a want.

Does God care about what we want?

Absolutely, but can we trust that He also knows what we need?

I find myself knocking at the door of my wants more than recognizing my needs. It is often after knocking on a closed door, or pleading for the same thing, that I choose to surrender. I fall to my knees, and I whisper "God, give me what I need. "

He delights in our wants but desires to give us what we need. The tension here is, will it always be what we want? No, and that can also be the beauty, the wrestle. That is the walk of faith.

There is a story in the Bible of a man named Jacob wrestling with God. He pleaded with The Lord, and in his own way said "I will not let go until you bless me!" The Lord blessed Jacob, but He was never the same because He saw the face of God. How often do we tend to run away and let go before the blessing?

How often do we sink into the despair of what we don’t have over what we do?

I’m guilty of this. I’m the one who will knock on the door that will not open till my knuckles bleed, but He’s merciful. He’s patient, and He's always there to tend to my wounds.

I’m learning how to be like Jacob, the one who will not let go until I receive the reward of God's presence. Even if I walk away differently.

Story referenced

Jacob Wrestles With God

Genesis 32: 22-32

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[b] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel,[c] and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

NIV

Photos taken in 2020.

In this moment I want to scream at the sky.

I ache for my voice to be heard in a way where it doesn’t feel so small. 

I have found myself cursing the ground and burying my face in the realities of what I cannot change. 

My God, 

I have found my heart at the bottom of the well and in the hands of The Father.

I have found myself beating down doors, and ripping out the seeds of the gardens that are taking too long to grow. 

I have found the Light while I throw up my hands and scream silently into the night. 

I have found my faith on my knees and the answers to my prayers in tear soaked confessions. 

I curse God more than I praise him. 

I run from God more than I run to him. 

But in those moments. 

The ones that break my knees and steal my voice I find peace.

I experience the eternal. 

I dance in the idea of forever and trust that it’s mine.

I am forced to believe in a greater Love than what I can see right now. Feel right now, Trust right now. 

So I hold on. 

I wait. 

I release. 

I let go. 

I choose to keep planting flowers in the gardens that are taking their time to grow. 

Believing that I will see the light in my eyes the way I believe in the light for others. 

Believing that I too will dance a long the tops of hillsides. 

Believing that the waiting,

While it breaks me, will build me. 

For I am a piece of clay in the potters hands. 

A piece of clay that understands this world is not mine, and my life is not one to hold onto, but to let go of. 

LPM

Poem written in 2020