And I've been walking through this for quite some time. You could chisel the shape of it into my heart and fill it with all these dry bones. cut off from everything, cut off from hope. But I think I see something, think I hear something, think I feel something.
Take a deep breath.
The wind is coming.
And I wish I could put into words what these last couple months have been like. Like roller coasters, like rainy days, like mountaintops, like valleys.
And I've been searching and learning what it looks like to follow after Jesus, been trying to dig deep into what that looks like. and I'm seeing that much of my learning to follow Jesus is unlearning to follow myself.
Which is a hard lesson to learn by a selfish person. One who likes to think she deserves more than what she has. One who likes to believe she has everything figured out. One that too often looks nothing like Jesus and much like a valley of dry bones. Cut off from everything, cut off from hope, cut off from life. And I do it to myself, then turn around and blame someone else, something else. But only I can ask for this wind to blow through these dry bones, only I can ask for the tendons and the flesh and the skin to cover me. and only I can look to Him and ask for His breath, His wind of life to breathe through me. No one else can do it for me, only me.
I think it's easier to be in this valley and be dry, to be able to have excuses and complaints about things, rather than be walking through this valley filled by the wind and the breath of the spirit. It's easier to walk through a place when we don't stand out, when we blend in, when we are all bone and no life.
But that's not how I am called to live. I'm not called to walk through this valley of bones, dried up and hopeless. I'm called to walk through with breath, with life, and hope and let God speak through me like He did with Ezekiel and bring these other dry bones back to life!
Because without the breath of life, we will never really live. I mean we can even have the tendons, and the flesh, the skin, we can have everything but breath and look like we're alive, but without that breath, without that wind deep within us, deep within our lungs we're still just dry bones covered in skin, lying in a valley going nowhere.
We need this wind. We need this breath. We need life. We need HIM.
And I believe that life is made up of more valley's than anything and yet we constantly mope around in these, through most of our lives we wait to feel the wind once we get to the mountaintops, when what we should be doing is calling to the wind from down in the valley.So I think I realize what I've been doing. I see that I've been like a pile of bones laying in a valley waiting to feel tendons in me, waiting to feel flesh over me, waiting to feel breath through me. waiting to live.
And I'm like the house of Israel in Ezekiel, who kept saying their bones were dried up, that they had no hope, that they were cut off in the valley.
But God is calling to me, He's pulling me out of the grave I've dug for myself. He's put tendons on my dry bones, and has given me skin to cover them. and He's breathing His life, His spirit into me. And now I must walk.
Because I really do believe that it is easier to cut ourselves off in the valleys of life. It's easier to lay down like a pile of dry bones, then to continue to let breath fill our tired lungs and walk on through. to let God bring us forth from the graves we so easily dig for ourselves and guide us, and push us through.
We can't walk through these valleys and scale their walls to the mountaintops without breath, without God. We'll never survive this life we'll never survive the valleys.
It's been a crazy couple of months. And the valley's have been so long lately, and i'm exhausted and yet I am still moving, I can still feel His breath in my lungs. There are big changes coming, big goodbyes that I'm nowhere near ready for. this is one of the toughest valleys I think I've ever had to go through. And in the beginning I wanted to lay down, defeated, like a pile of dry bones. But He kept pulling me, pushing me through. His wind rushing through me in these moments in the valley.
And i've seen so much dependence, so much grace and so much love in all of it.
No it has not been easy, and I don't think it's going to get any easier. I'm standing on a bridge between valleys and I'm on my knees. I'm not going back to that grave, I'm not going back to dry bones. I'm moving forward through the valley, with Him.
Listen... do you hear that. the rattling sound of bones coming together, bone to bone. do see that. the tendons, the flesh covering bones. do you feel that. the rush of wind, the breath of life moving through?
He's given us life, so what are we doing with it? We have to get out of the grave and step into life.
Can these bones live?
HE alone knows.
HE alone can give them life.
Bone to bone, flesh to flesh, Breath life into me,
HIS and yours,
Cami
No comments:
Post a Comment