Belonging to God - Part 2

So I'm leaving tomorrow morning on a flight to Phoenix. I'm packing, thinking about the questions I need to ask while I'm there, wondering what this leg of this crazy journey will bring...

It's a really weird thing to be terrified of what will happen next and still trust that God knows what he is doing (I'll be writing more on this trust later... I've realized what a big issue this is for me right now). This uncertainty grips my heart and seizes nearly every waking moment of my life right now. It's all consuming, unforgettable and just plain hard. When I start to articulate my feelings to those I love so dearly, I realize that whatever happens, happens. If I don't have a job after I graduate, the world will not stop turning. (A friend sent me an email on Tuesday saying just that, reminding me that I told her that when she was going through something similar. Oh, how we easily forget.)

So much of what I am feeling right now plays into my story. The story I've unpacked and unraveled in the last 9 months. It's the story of my past, the story that made me who I am today. The way I think and behave and feel is all connected to what I've already been through.

But it is my story. I cannot change it. I can only seek to live well through it and understand it as best I can. I've learned why I react the way I do when I'm critiqued, I've learned what it means for me to be in process and how to be okay with that, I've learned what it means to be a saint... and so much more I haven't even posted about.

Something you may notice, if you see the labels off the the side of my blog, is the label "Identity" has the largest number of posts. There is a very important part of my story connected to that, which I don't have time to fully write about now. But here's what God has to say about identity:

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be q a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices s acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

and

“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. -1 Peter 2: 4-10

I am a people for his own possession. I am uniquely created for something. I belong to God.

As I sat as Osage Lake two weeks ago, in silence (save the birds and the wind) the Lord whispered to my heart and said, "You belong to me." There are so many reasons why this statement is huge - because of what I've already been through in my life and because of my own story. This matters. This is big. I am chosen and precious, I am set as a seal upon his heart, I have been called out of darkness into his light. This is a truth to which I will cling.