Daughter

I write pretty much every day.  I read my Bible.  I jot down notes, reflections, prayers, irritants, hopes, fears, and other letters that form words that attach themselves to how I'm feeling on a particular day.  So therefore, my journals that these words are written in are sacred time capsules.  I don't hold back.  I fear the day I am absent from planet earth and someone begins to flip through these windows into my soul.  It's raw.

So when I use up one journal the hunt to find another always proceeds.  And because I like to consider myself a plan ahead kind of girl, I've always got a new one on hold ready to go - just waiting to be used and written in with new secrets divulged.

This morning, after a two week hunt for another replacement journal (long story but have hunted for two weeks for a new one to no avail.  I have found no happy medium.  They've been either way too expensive or way to cheap in quality.) I found a new one tucked into what I thought was used books only to discover that it was a blank, perfect, lovely new journal.  Happy day.  Happy writing.

I went to a place that has become my sanctuary.  It's a place along the canal about two blocks from my house.  There is a tree.  There is a bench.  It's private enough.  It's decieved me into thinking that I am not really in the middle of city but rather in a quiet corner of the world where I am alone with my thoughts.

Today I sat there, tears streaming down my cheeks as I face a struggle and muster the courage to lay it down at the feet of Jesus.  It's a struggle too hard and too personal to put into words.  As I sat in my sanctuary and let the tears flow, I read.  I read of a woman who had a struggle for 12 years.  She took her struggle to Jesus.  He called her "daughter".  He took her struggle and left her with peace.  I cried some more.

I cried most of all over what he called her:  daughter.  He could have called her woman.  But he chose to call her daughter.  This meant something to me today.  I need a Father's comfort.  I need to be reminded that a Father loves me - and my struggle.  In my struggle, I feel hopeless.  Somehow knowing my Father knows the struggle makes it better.

I then flipped over to Psalm 9.  I read that my Father "has upheld my right and my cause" (verse 4, NIV).  My right - as His daughter - is authority and victory.  When my Father sent his son to die on a cross, death and sin were forever put under Jesus' authority.  Because I am IN him, I, too have been given authority to conquer that which seeks to destroy me.

As a daughter, I choose to invoke my rights.  I choose to lay down this struggle and trust my Father.  The hardest part is believing, like I read the woman did in my above example.  She believed.  It was not her belief in the healing that healed her.  It was her belief in the One who could heal that healed her. She knew who held the authority in her circumstance.

My struggle, in my own eyes and logic, seems too big for God.  But, I lay it down.  I choose to act in faith that a Father loves me more than I understand and has given me authority over this ... And for that I am grateful.

Resting in being a daughter,
Christina