Isaac

Just to give y'all an accurate time frame, I wrote this over Spring Break last week.


Honestly, I don't know where to begin with this post, but I want to share what our Father has been doing in my life. He's thrown so much at me lately and I am so thankful for Spring Break because a lot of the distractions in College Station didn't follow me home and I'm hearing Him speak--the sweetest thing to my ears.

I listened to the latest Breakaway podcast on the way home and it has completely shaken up my life the past few days. Ben Stuart spoke about Abraham's faithfulness to immediately obey God's commands even when it meant sacrificing Isaac--Abraham's greatest treasure. Ben ended the sermon by challenging the listeners to question what their Isaac is and if they would bring it to the alter if God asked them. Now, questioning has filled my thoughts since Saturday afternoon.

As I took another spin around the Sunnyvale backroads, I began hashing through my life to discover what my Isaac is and if I would lay it at Jesus' feet. In the deepest parts of me I knew exactly what it was but I didn't want to admit it. My Isaac is an event that runs deep with confusion. I have never been able to understand my Isaac, but I hold onto it with the death grip of 3 year old. I starting losing it when I was 11 and I've spent almost all of the next 10 years hiding the parts that lacked. My Isaac is my hair. If God took it away, made me completely bald, for no reason that I could immediately see... my life would be shattered.

Sunday night I broke but very much unlike the many other times I have been broken by this. I spent a good portion of the night thinking and feeling through my Isaac and all my other worries. I spent tears of tiredness, frustration, and simply just being done with this struggle. I cried out to my Savior to free me from my preoccupation. To free me from my constant obsession with what my hair looks like. To free me from needing to hide what He has created. That night, I laid my Isaac at His feet.

See, something that my beautiful Savior kept speaking to me Sunday night was that He created me the way He wanted me to be. And what He creates.. it's beautiful. He spoke that simple, yet so hard to grasp, truth to me. But more than that, He reminded me that my identity is now hidden in Christ--my identity isn't found in my hair, how well I excel at school, who my friends are, how many good things I do, or even my failures. My identity is found in Christ; only in Jesus Christ. For the first time in my life, in my 21 years, this is finally starting to sink past my head and into my heart.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting on Guatemala, how God has directed my path through college, and now. I don't know exactly why I'm sharing all this with virtually whoever stumbles upon it. I just keep having the sense that I'm supposed to say something. That I'm supposed to share my story, at least part of it. Please know that I write this all for God's glory. I get nothing in return for telling you this. My hope.. only hope.. is that you will come to see Jesus face to face.