breaking down and building up

There are a few people in my life who know how to relax. My brother, Patton, is one of them. I’ve always envied his ability to kick back and take it easy – I wondered if he ever got stressed about anything at all, and then one day I saw him start to sweat over something. It took me back a bit. He quickly returned to his rather laid back self. Patton and I have a lot of things in common, but the ability to relax and rest is not one of those things. In fact, in the area of stress and I am completely uptight and he’s never been wound up at all.

I had today off, and I’d been contemplating a rather big change with my hairstyle, so I went to my first ever hair appointment (in my memory anyways). My mother has always cut and styled my hair, and she’s ridiculously good at making it look good. I asked a local coworker where she got her hair done, and she pointed me in the direction of a really great salon. I walked in and it smelled anything like my kitchen. I sat in a twirling chair and my stylist, Carly, showed me a few bottles of oil that they use in their complimentary head/shoulder massage. I chose the first one, and she went to work on the knots of stored tension in my muscles. I couldn’t even relax during that because I couldn’t get over how embarrassingly tight I was! Then she washed my hair – the combination of the shampoo and oil created this tingling sensation all over my head and neck – I was in heaven.

My preceptor told me this week, “Alex, if you start stressed – you’ll end stressed.” Anita is wise beyond her 29 spunky years, and she was right. I gave whoever holds the most frustrating employee award a run for his money that shift, letting my pride and feistiness rebel against that quiet voice calling me to trust Him. For the fourth time over these past seven days, I left work with a very heavy realization of the depth of my arrogance in the light of God’s grace and faithfulness.

My sister Lexi posted a very true, but weighty saying on her Facebook profile recently. Essentially, it said this – “You exist right now because God wills that you exist.” That hit me with an impact that knocked the breath out of my lungs. I was spiritually winded. Because the truth is, I exist right now – with air in my lungs, blood coursing through my veins, fingers typing at this computer sitting on a little blue desk in Nashville on this fall day in October – solely because the Living God wants me here. I drove home sobbing Sunday night, because I had a hopeless woman weep before me in incredible brokenness and confess that she believed God hated her. Maybe no one else knows the extent of my junk – the ugliness of my heart and the impurity of my thoughts – but I do. I wept for her, I wept because I wanted so badly for her to be prayed over by someone, anyone who had it more together than I did. I wept because she was stuck with me – not out of self-pity but over my hypocrisy – and I wept because God, in His extensive grace, used me to comfort her and pray over her in spite of my mess.

The truth is, my inability to relax physically at a hair salon is rooted in my inability to throw my entire weight into the arms of the Living God. Worry is me trying to figure out what to do to save myself, rather than trusting Jesus for my deliverance – a nugget of wisdom that I can’t take credit for, but for which I can thank Joyce Meyer. I feel like I’m sitting in an uncomfortable wooden, straight back chair before God, rather than jumping into a bean bag… the chair being a self-righteous, performance driven mentality while the bean bag a comfortable envelope of grace and mercy.

You know you’re in a war when you don’t want to spend time in the Word – not because you don’t want to spend time with God, but because you know that what He’s leading you to read is completely convicting in your current attitude and circumstance. Every morning I’ve wanted to turn back to a “light and fluffy” Psalm instead of to Romans – but there’s a pull like the ocean tide drawing me into Paul’s letter – into the truth of the Gospel. You also know your perspective is skewed when you find the Psalms “light and fluffy.” J

I hope that you leave this post encouraged (if you made it this far).  I hope that this is an honest picture of where I’m at right now, without being overly negative or hypocritical. I hope you see the fibers of God’s grace running through this as the foundation for the tapestry He’s weaving in me. It has been an incredibly painful, but much sweeter, few months of transition for me. I fear only giving you the heavy parts and forsaking the lighter – as though my life sucks and God isn’t showing up at all – or giving you nothing but daisies and roses as though I have life all figured out with no struggles whatsoever. On the contrary, I hope you see that God is replacing and rebuilding the parts of me that He’s been breaking down with pieces of Himself. Grace and humility are the mortar to these bricks of truth – and it’s not an overnight project.

Much love,

<3 a

PS: pictures of new hair to come…