Beauty in the Empty

March 2016

My fear does not serve God well.

My fear of the woman that He has molded me into and is molding me into does not serve God well. My fear does not serve making known the Glory of God. My fear is the anchor at the bottom of the ocean; not holding onto anything, rapidly being compressed, marred by the pressure of being my own savior.

Simultaneously the pressure applied from my lacking of riches from which strength should come is such a terrible weight on my heart and yet my lacking is testament to the surplus of riches that He gives to me. I feel misunderstood on a daily basis. I fear being a burden on others because I believe that we are all burdens in one way or another. One being the kind you wish you didn’t have to endure and the other a privilege.

God uses our burdens to lighten others. He redeems lives with brokenness. He takes years of pain and in one conversation takes all the anger and pain and turns it into privilege; the privilege to see how God prepared you for this moment and many more by giving you the pain you’ve endured. When we endure pain we rarely see it as a privilege to endure it. Without intimately knowing pain, the vessel He chose to work through would not have been prepared to be used.

October 8, 2016

I wrote these first two paragraphs about 7 months ago. At that point I had experienced a lot of pain but in comparison to the physical and emotional pain I now know, it was so so little understanding that I had for pain and for the beauty of being emptied. I hadn’t been emptied.

I was a glass container with beautiful flowers in it and every day was given less water to sustain myself.

Now, as I am, I am but the container. No flowers. No water.

I am completely transparent and empty of all things I once defined myself by and found value in.

3 years ago, almost to the day,

I prayed this prayer:

“Remove all that is of me within me and replace it with You. Take my heart and make it Yours. Take my mind and make it new. Take my thoughts and make them thine. Take my self and leave me out. Take all of this that is Yours and make it so that the world will see You and not me. Take all of my selfishness and make it Your spirit of giving. Take all of my whole life and make it a tangible testimony to your will. Take the feeble falling frail thing I call strength and make it strong in You”.

Over the past few days I’ve been collecting glass bottles that I think are beautiful. Of course they once held certain things, but now they rest on my dresser empty of what had once filled them, just like me.

They are overflowing with possibility, free from valuing only what lays inside them, and open to seeing the beauty, value, and meaning in what could be, what was, and by the gaining of perspective from every angle inside of, outside of, and all around themselves.

They are beautiful in their emptiness.

What is full cannot be filled more. A cup already full cannot be filled again until it is emptied.

Beauty is not just one thing.

The same way we tire of the same taste, the same way iron writhes inside of itself in being melted and reformed, is the same way in which we writhe within ourselves to be emptied and filled and given a new appreciation for beauty and new perspective of it.

We could not have gained the new perspective without first being emptied.

There is an indescribable beauty in being empty.

This is the preparation for a new beauty.

You are beautiful now, just as you were before.

There is beauty in the emptiness.

Sincerely Yours,

The Undefeated