RETHINKING YOU

Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

NEIL GAIMAN, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK

I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.

SARAH KAY, "AN ORIGIN STORY"

YOU

It's all about you. And it's all about what you do next. It always has been. I know you've been told otherwise your whole life — but it is. It has to be. Your life can be no other way.

Does that sound somehow ... wrong? Stay with me.

Where you've been and where you're going can only happen with you involved. What you do with yourself only you can decide, but make no mistake — this air in your lungs, this next beat of your heart, the stirring in your chest when he or she walks in the room, this life — it's yours. Yours to unfold, unpack, screw up, crash, revive, stumble through, master, flourish, thrive in, discover. It begins with you, and if it ever ends, you'll be there. It's yours to steward and yours to give away, and no matter where you go, you are there.

Maybe God is everywhere, but being created in His likeness makes you like Him in fascinating ways. You are omnipresent to yourself.

Let that one bake in for a minute.

You are everywhere you are. God's image is embedded in you. It is as inseparable from you as you are from it. You are a constant, living reminder of who He is. You can look away but you can't get away. You can purify yourself or you can destroy yourself but you can't escape yourself. Nor can you escape God. You're made this way. You're made for God.

Perhaps you had no control over your creation, but you have momentous control over what you create. There's unbelievable power inside that. You matter. Really, you do. You are a creator. You fashion what becomes of the world you live in. You are finely crafted in the image of the Almighty, and He is beautiful beyond description. He has unquestionably created beauty within you. You are His absolute masterpiece.

That you are here is a gift. A beautiful, extravagant, decadent, overgenerous, excessive gift. Something precious given by One who is hopelessly in love with you. Desperately enamored of you. Fascinated beyond words with you and longing to collaborate in what comes next for you. God is so invested in you that He put His own breath in you, molded you in His image, and stood back and said that you are "good."

God was dreaming about you before you ever showed up. When the attraction and rhythm and motion of your parents' union was complete, God was there providing the spark of life that has become you. You're supposed to be here. It's a good thing that you are, because there's a lot riding on it.

God didn't just stop with the gift of life, though. How could He? When you've fallen in love with someone, everything, everywhere reminds you of that person. You can hardly walk down the vegetable aisle in the grocery store without wanting to buy them a ripe red tomato or a head of broccoli just to show them you can't get them off your mind. God has heaped gifts on you that are beyond extravagant.

You've been given the gift of the Holy Spirit to tell you the truth. You have the gift of the Holy Scriptures to guide your every step and decision. You have the gift of a gorgeous, lavish, exquisite planet to live on. You've been given the gift of companionship. You may have the gift of precious children. You've been given the gift of an existence that will never, ever end. You have the gift of God's own Son. And that's barely scratching the surface of the generosity that God has bestowed on you.

Think about ears. What a gift! Without them you hear no music. No soft lullabies, no tender word from a friend's lips, no ecstasy of a lover. And what about the mountains? Oh, their beauty as the sun dips toward the horizon and engulfs the snow-capped peaks with fire, dancing and crying out worship beyond words! And think of eternity. A span of time that cannot be described by time at all. A never ending. A forever that insists and persists, promising discoveries that cannot even be imagined. A bottomless, topless, naked expanse waiting to be filled with the radiance of every experience we will ever have. And this has been placed in your heart.

Then there's love and water and green and coffee and toes and paint and sex and water lilies and chocolate and skin and dogs and motor oil and vitamin B and the smell of a newborn baby and rain and London and almonds and silk and bread and wine and the endless, endless cup of salvation. Gifts that are so extravagant and so endless that they can't possibly all be named. And they are all for you. You are beyond precious. You are beyond cared for. God has loved you well.

Maybe hearing this is like a cool sip of water when all you've been doing lately is swallowing sand. Maybe it's the other way around because you can't find any sign in your life that this could possibly be true no matter what the Bible or anyone else might say. That's okay too. No matter where you're going, you arrive by putting one foot in front of the other.

And right now, maybe one page after the other is just as important.

THE ACHE

So if all of this is true, why do you feel so empty inside? Why the struggle with anger? With depression? Why does every day feel the same? Or why does what is true feel as if it's not true at all?

There's a hunger that never quite goes away, right? An itch that doesn't quite get scratched. Life isn't working quite as it's supposed to, especially if we're supposed to be loved by God.

We think we know a lot about many things, including God. And we've created a box or a frame for this knowledge because it gives us some sort of context to explain what is unexplainable. But what if all that knowledge won't fit in the box? What if we get a bigger box and it still won't fit? What if all that we think we know has been forced into the wrong frame? We can keep looking at the picture, knowing there is something off about it, or we can take it down from the wall and reframe it.

We need to rethink what we know about God and how we relate to Him. Then perhaps we can reframe the relationship. Maybe we can give it something a little roomier. Possibly a bigger frame for our understanding of God will mean a bigger life for us. Probably if we get just a glimpse, just a taste of what's really going on, we're going to be fed up with the narrative that's been passing for our life. It won't be enough. You probably already know this. It's been the problem all along, hasn't it? You'll want to restart your story. A new story that feels like you. One that fits you.

And that's where we start.

GOD'S RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU

So if life is such an extravagant gift, what are you supposed to do with it? As believers, we filter this question through the lens of a relationship with God.

If I were to ask you how you know...