Have you ever suddenly been awake (because we should never start a story with "I woke up" - Robert California) only to realize that today wasn't the same as yesterday? Something changed?
I have not experienced that, although through numerous testimonies I have heard from the mouths of others, this experience is not all together uncommon when your life is surrendered to Jesus.
In my case- it was the long game. The slow transformation that was the work of years upon years, tears, grief, and what felt like an endless surrendering. It wasn't a sudden experience for me; a moment marked in time as a definite memory. It was long days of prayer, long days of battling depression, anxiety, trauma. It was slowly finding a little bit more contentment and a little bit more peace that would ebb and flow throughout the days much like the tide coming in and going out.
I live by the ocean now. It is magic watching the tide come in or even the tide going out. We like to sit on the beach for hours prior to its coming or going to watch the waters slowly crawl up the shoreline. Minute by minute the water levels don't seem to change much. The waters so gently so slowly lap the rocky beach
leaving little splotches of water marks and tiny puddles which quickly sink into the ground. However, over time even though the change is not obvious moment by moment the water will rise and our feet will grow cold with the atlantic waters of the northeastern sea as our feet and legs disappear under the blanket of ocean.
In the same way I have changed. I have healed. So slowly, so quietly, I didn't realize what happened. One moment I was drowning in grief, self-righteousness, pride, trauma, loneliness, and depression; but if the years were hours somehow without understanding what happened, ounces of my old life, my old identity, my dead body, were being taken out to the depths of the ocean. Leaving a dry expansive beach bathed in light, and new living body, clean, bright and radiant.
I knew all those years that God was working a deep work in my heart. I just am not sure at what point the trauma stopped haunting me. I don't know when I began walking in more and more joy leaving behind the death of depression and desolation. I don't know when the pride and self-righteousness began to shed off my body leaving new skin. I just know that today looking back and facing forward I am no longer Leah. I am no longer the Leah who suffered, who felt unloved and unwanted. I am no longer the girl who walked in shame and guilt, nor do I believe anymore that I was more righteous or holy because of things said or didn't say.
I feel lighter and instead of death I feel alive. I am alive. But I wasn't once-
-Once I was dead, and sloughing on the shores of the ocean.
Sometimes the work the Spirit does inside us isn't a sudden and bold transformation. Sometimes we aren't blind and then suddenly seeing. Sometimes we aren't lame and then walking a moment later. Sometimes it is the slow quiet work and one day you will look back and look forward and realize that the person you were and things tied to soul like anchors and weights, are no longer there.
We wait for the big break-through, the moment when God's voice is loud, or the day we wake up and everything changes overnight. We wait in hope and anticipation for the revelations and the miraculous healings. Like Edmund we wait for God to meet us in the quiet and strip away all the scales, all the scars and all the baggage we don't need to hold onto anymore in a single night.
God is not in a rush. His work will be done in His timing and His plans are for our good and made with purpose and intention. So sit in the quiet on the shoreline. I promise if you are surrendering your life moment by moment eventually the waters with ebb away and we will be left made new.
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