I DO! – Everything – June 15th

I DO
June 15, 2021

Everything

Song of Songs 3:4, ‘Just as I moved past them, I encountered him. I found the one I adore! I caught and fastened myself to him, refusing to be feeble in my heart again. Now I’ll bring him back to the temple within where I was given new birth—into my innermost parts, the place of my conceiving.’ (TPT)

He is now everything to me. He hasn’t always been though. I have a before and after story.

I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was four years old at an after-school club where this wonderful couple told me (and the other kids) how much I was loved, how I was seen, how no matter what, God was for me and not against me, how all the mistakes I had made already had been forgiven; if I accepted this free gift being offered to me that tomorrow would be a brand-new day. I held my breath and couldn’t wait to ask how I too could have this gift that was being offered.

Because see, I was a victim of sexual assault, and even at four years old, I felt dirty, crummy, bad, damaged. On that day, I had been handed a present, wrapped in freedom, forgiveness and grace and with tendrils of love and mercy trailing like ribbons from its bow of beauty. I would go forward to accept that gift but I would then set it aside and not feel worthy to open its contents for many years. I would journey through life wearing a flawed stigma of myself, blemished and undesirable, waging a war named ‘Unworthy’ for years to come. When I finally came to the end of me, when I unraveled and finally had come undone, when I eventually would stop holding my breath, waiting for the next shoe to fall, that was when I encountered…Him. That’s when I learned so much about myself, needing to be freed from so many untruths; when I would begin to understand what it meant to be a victim of someone else’s actions but also to own the poor choices I continued to make because it was comforting to be a victim…I had a lot of company in that place.

I cannot breathe apart from Him today. I no longer want to. I, like Solomon, have fastened myself to Him. Like a child, I have wrapped myself around His leg and begged Him not to leave without taking me too. I do not want to go somewhere apart from Him, and where He moves, I want to move too. I don’t want to pause too quickly and have Him move on without me, and I don’t want to be unaware that He’s braked while I have zoomed forward. I hope I never waver and hesitate in my life again and choose doubt and fear over His grace and love. He chose me, to rescue me, to forgive me, to purpose something greater out of my existence than I could have ever hoped or imagined. It is uncanny, impossible for this little nobody, this damaged good, to comprehend that He would go to such lengths to dream me into being, that He would conceive me in His heart, that His heart would beat for me, and I would be breathless apart from Him, that He would birth someone who eventually would feel sutured to Him, as if He is grafted to my injured places where He alone makes me whole. He is my Everything. He is my emphatic ‘I Do’.

What a promise ‘I Do’ is! Whether we are committing to a person or simply being intentional in life, our word should be a cherished commodity. This month, journey with me in ‘I Do’ moments which are an oath, a vow, a pact, a pledge, an honorarium.