stage fright

Why am I such a dusty window for your light to shine through?
Why am I just a tiny star in a sky already blue?
Why do I offer everything with my heart closed like a fist?
I want to love You better than this...

[Avalon: "Renew Me"]

That ugly old friend of mine is back in town.

You may have met him: his name is "stage fright".

Every time I think I have figured out how to cope, I discover I haven't. When I think I have learned how to lean on God and revel in His strength through my weakness, I feel utterly terrified. Down to my toes, I'm nervous and preoccupied. Not mean to my family, just a bit, ...um, snarly. (I guess that is better than some adjectives I could think of...)

So as I pray (and cry) and have a small round of panic (and it doesn't help that I've had an asthma flare up today), I've come to 2 conclusions:

1. Even though I know it is not about me, I still have to grapple with my feelings and my body's reactions to fear. A friend reminded me to "let Jesus crush me into His heart". I love that mental picture. Every time I sing Jennifer Knapp's song "Hold Me Now" that is what I picture... and remember Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 12: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
2. He wants me to open my hands and take my fingers off His work in my life. I am loving Jesus with "my heart closed as a fist". He neither wants me to be lackadaisical nor overly controlling. He wants me to be whole-heartedly invested in offering my gifts, without giving Him meticulous directions for the outcome. I vacillate between being nonchalant or hyper-sensitive, introspective to an obsessive degree or flippant. And I think that He wants me to fall somewhere in between.

It's time for me to rest in the Father's love for me - - and know whatever the outcome, it isn't about my stage fright (or even if I totally blow it!)... It's about the One who gave me the music in the first place...

So renew me, remake me, undo me, unbreak me;
Come into the empty spaces of my broken places,
And consume me, complete me, pursue me, redeem me.
Let Your Holy Spirit living through me
Renew me...

Send over a kleenex, I just finished a box...

from our home to yours...
Deb