Dalaina May's Blog: Jungle Reflections - Posts Tagged "yielded-captive"

I think I’ve always been a little too impressed with myself. Independent and self-confident to a fault. I am told that as a three month old infant, I even refused my own mother after she went back to work. On one hand, my self-sufficiency and ambition have served me well, on the other they’ve been a curse.

For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately fearful of being insignificant. I have had a hard time letting people do things for me. I have struggled with this drive to prove myself even when no one is watching. And I shudder to think of the arrogance I have portrayed over the years.

In college, around the time I was getting really serious about this thing called faith, I ran across the famous words of John the Baptist about Christ – “I must decrease so that He may increase.” Honestly, they terrified me. How about we both increase? Yeah. I liked that a lot better. It wasn’t that I wanted to be famous, but it was deeply ingrained in me from childhood to shoot for excellence. Nothing less than the best was worth doing, and all the better if people could see you doing it. I was so scared to not be a valuable asset to God, and at that time, I was pretty sure He needed my help.

I became a God-chaser, and I found that as I chased His heart, He turned around and grabbed on to me. I asked Him to refine me and make me more like Him, and He sent the quadruple-wammy of marriage, depression, children, and full time ministry to cut the legs out from underneath me. In some ways , it felt cruel, and there were times when I really had no idea what He was doing other than completely breaking me apart. Then slowly I realized that my desire to be molded into what God wanted me to be required a melting down of who I am and a burning away of a lot of the junk that was completely unusable. My pride for example.

I remember being in the middle of the village, in the pit of depression and almost completely functionless as a mother, a wife, a missionary, and maybe even a human being. It was then that I got a little taste of what it meant to decrease. I knew that if there was anything good in me, it was because of grace. Anything that I had to offer God was put into my hands by God Himself; there was very little of me that was lovely.

And yet God seemed to be affirming me even while He chastised me. At the same moment I was learning how small I am, He kept whispering to me that He found me worthy – worthy enough to die for. I realized that although God has no need of me, He has declared me valuable. Though my pride was shrinking, my confidence was growing.

It is a strange paradox of God that I have found myself in the middle of. My desperation for significance has shrunk, and I am no longer preoccupied with accomplishing great feats in the name of Christ, but it has shrunk because I know that I am significant regardless of what I “do” in Jesus’ name. I am so much more aware of my limitations as a mom, a wife, a friend, and a minister but I am less apologetic of them because I am convinced that God put me in those roles knowing full well what I lack.

Strangely enough, the idea of decreasing so that God can increase doesn’t petrify me at all any longer. Because my decreasing is not a sentence into insignificance and uselessness. My decreasing allows me to play safely in my Father's enormous shadow, where the enemy has a much harder time finding me than he did when I wanted to stand out so badly. My decreasing has brought be rest, confidence, peace, and the assurance of my value to my Creator. Who knew?

“Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

It is one of the paradoxes of God---life from death. The one who loses his life will find it. Our very salvation is because of death giving way to resurrection life. Yet, even God does not delight in death. Death is unnatural to the kingdom of God and the very last battle He will fight on our behalf.

The agony of death, though, is real. Sitting in the middle of the excruciating pain that comes from a fallen world’s piercing reality, from injustices so devastating that they threaten to undo us, how is it even possible to see anything but the black sheen of death? When is the color of life coming?

Oh Beloved, it comes! Long after the grave seems sealed shut and forgotten, the power that brought our Christ rushing back to save us breathes new life in us. It is not the life that we remembered for we are forever changed by the scars that we bear. But it is life. It is a life re-birthed in growing confidence that our security is not in what God does, but in who He is. He is a God that hates yet allows death. He is a God who invites us to participate in His suffering. He is a God not content to leave us clinging to our own visions of how things should be, but stretches open our cramped fingers to take our dreams and replace them with His purposes. He lays down His life and invites us to lay ours down as well so that we may live.

I am a mom. Because of that I think about my kids… a lot. Pretty much all the time. I think about the cute things they have done, their needs, and their desires. I think about who they are becoming and wonder if I can ever be the kind of mother that I want them to have. I am head over heels in love with these dirty, playful, independent spirits that live in my home. I hope they know it.

I hope they know that long after they are in bed, I think about them. I plan ways to delight them the next day. I confer with their dad to make sure we are doing our parenting job to the best of our abilities, and I pray for them often and specifically. I cry for their hurts and laugh with their joy. I hope they know it.

Even more than I hope they know my affections for them, I hope they know that I love my God. I hope that they see the fondness on my face when I talk about Him. I hope they notice that when I’m hiding away in my room doing “Bible study,” I am happy. I hope they know that as important as motherhood is to me, my faith is even more important. I hope that the most accurate way they come to describe me is “in love with God.”

My children have defined my role in this life, but my God defines me. I want them to know that, to know that my love for them is endless, but my God is the lover of my soul. Motherhood is significant, oh so significant, but my God is who makes me significant by His creative word. My children give me joy; my God IS my joy. I hope when they think of me, they think of faith because they can see that it is my essence. As they grow, I hope that my excitement about a life’s journey with God spills over and washes them away into their own. I hope they know because they see it in me, that nothing else even compares to being with Jesus… not even a band of beautiful, hysterical, lovable little boys.