Sing Your Song

A couple of years ago for Christmas I received this beautiful, soft green leather journal with a bird on it embossed with shiny, gold words that read, "Sing Your Song".  I've picked up that journal a number of times and written in it but for the most part it only contains a few special things, unlike my every day journal.

The phrase on the front, "Sing Your Song" has been a source of angst to some degree.  As a young girl I didn't have anything that I did really well.  I could do lots of things but I didn't seem to excel in one area to the degree of excellence that brought accolades or applause.  My mom would occasionally say, "you just haven't found your niche' yet".  As I grew up I wondered what my "niche" was.

When I picked up that journal a few months ago and read those gold words strewn across the front, my heart knew I had a song, and I would gladly sing it, but I wasn't sure I knew the words.  I want my song to be special, something beautiful and excellent, honestly something that would give my life legitimate purpose.  We all want to be thought of as special and in my mind and heart at times I believe if I can find that one thing, THEN I'll be important or have something special to offer.   The lie I am tempted to believe? That being valuable to God and others revolves around what I do, something I can accomplish, something with a legitimate outcome to be measured.  For years I've believed this lie.

Listen to what Sally Lloyd Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible:

Jesus knew that God would always love and watch over the world he had made ---everything in it---birds, flowers, trees, animals, everything!  And, most of all, his children.

Even though people had forgotten, the birds and the flowers hadn't forgotten -- they still knew their song.  It was the song all of God's creation had sung to him from the very beginning.  It was the song people's hearts were made to sing: 
 "God made us.  He loves us.  He is very pleased with us."

As I held that green journal and read the words Sing Your Song, I wondered what MY song was. Today, as I read these words, my heart melts into tears that run down my cheeks.  I was made to sing the same song as the birds, flowers, trees, animals and every other good thing God created. My life is a song of God's love for me and the pleasure he finds in me.  As I am filled up with this truth, that I'm loved no matter what, there is a shift happening in my heart.  I'm remembering that God created me as a human BEING not a human doing.  My value is safe and secure simply because I am created in the image of God.  Nothing I do can give my heart the legitimacy it craves.  I don't need a niche', I just need to stay tethered to Jesus, my brother, savior, friend and live in the reality that I am enough, because Jesus is Enough.

As God continues to heal my broken heart so I can receive His love, He will continue as well to point me to the truth about my identity.  I don't have to fret about what I do.  I can "do" whatever He leads me to do, because doing from that perspective changes everything. Instead of the doing telling me who I am, I can BE who I am and everything will flow from a place of  rest.  Until we take a good look into our hearts and become aware of where we are striving, as long as we are living for approval, no one will see Jesus, they'll only see our performance.  

If you're wondering about what your life is supposed to be singing to this world, you're welcome to join me and simply sing Jesus Loves Me.  As we believe the words of that song, like little children who trust their Papa, we will begin to be filled up with love so that it spills out all over the people God brings into our lives.

Perfect? Not Even Close

Piano lessons - I had years of them.  I remember walking the six blocks after school to Mrs. Bennett's little brown house across the way from the little league field for my weekly piano lesson.  I tried to hide my plain brown zippered pouch as I waited for the girl who carried the beautiful blue and green clear plastic tote with the mod flowers to finish her lesson.  The piano seemed to play itself as she laid her fingers on the keys.

As I sat nervously waiting for my lesson to commence, the angst in my heart grew.  I knew I wasn't prepared for my lesson, I hadn't practiced very much the week before. For a little girl who desired to be perfect I didn't seem to grasp the "practice makes perfect" mantra preached by mother each week, at least not when it came to piano lessons.  The Dozen A Day book didn't get more than a dozen a week and Mrs. Bennett's scowl and red pencil dates strewn across the top of the page indicated the unpleasant task of repeating the previous weeks' assignments and my little heart registered "still not good enough".  Oh, how I desired to play beautiful music on the piano.  I just made too many mistakes.  I couldn't play perfectly the first time, it felt impossible to my 4th grade self and so I gave up trying.  I gave up piano.  It never seemed good enough and it was definitely never going to be perfect.

As I read The Nesting Place 40 years later, along with the author's tag line "it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful", something began a shift in my thinking.  For the very first time, it seemed another woman was pulling for me.  She was suggesting a new way.  I didn't immediately love it, although I wanted to.  It wasn't familiar to me, it was a strange and different concept, other worldly even.  No other women that I knew had ever lived out to me that something less than perfect could be good and acceptable, let alone beautiful.  But that truth dumped buckets of refreshing cool water on every dry and thirsty place in my middle-aged, weary soul.

And so I pick up my writing practice again after long months of procrastination and attempt what I wrongly perceive others can accomplish effortlessly.  The good work of practice, continuing on, making mistakes, learning as I go.  What a lovely thing.  My heart still desires perfect, as it was made to by my Father, but the permission I give myself to try, knowing Jesus was perfect so I don't have to be, is a beautiful way to live.