fighting the resistance

I sometimes wonder what it truly looks like to humble oneself before God. God is testing me right now, stretching me. I can almost feel his voice in the wind, saying "trust me, just trust me." I feel like for so long I had a back up plan. I have resisted trust, and resisted humility and even more - vulnerability. I fear vulnerability more than many things, I fear it, but i also crave it. In wondering how I can explain this, I am reminded of something, an article I once wrote about my first season my first few weeks living in Harlem:

For the first time in my life I was thrown into a new culture and a new world...My new apartment was run down and we had mice. My street was littered in garbage and people were outside in gaggles for all hours of the night. Spanish music clung to the air on high volume and you could always smell a steady stench of garbage. Families hung out on the street, kids played in the fire hydrants, guys crudely gazed in my direction, everyone spoke a language I did not know, and it was the first time in my life I ever felt white. It was almost like that dream where people wake up naked in school. I would walk down my street and I would feel vulnerable; I could no longer hide in a sea of people.

I share this, because it is those feelings that drew me back to NY. I want to stop hiding. I want to feel alive and inspired to get down on my knees. I feel open to possibility to feeling something. This place draws the emotion out of me - the willingness to risk. It is not an easy life but its a satisfying life. There are some days where I do desire a life of splendor, I do want the pretty car and the big house, but I know it will never satisfy ...
... It makes me smile, thinking of perhaps living in a walk up in Harlem, always.


*The end of this post originally had some lyrics from the Kutless song, Sea of Faces...I gave it its own post, feeling like God's message in that song is too big to put at the end of a post.