For Such a Time as This

What seems like a whole life time ago, I was asked to participate in leadership training in Pawley's Island.

Really.  It seems like an eternity ago.

A lot happened that week.  A lot of crying and unpacking and examining.  I was repeatedly told a lot of things about myself I already knew.  Some words put to some knowing I already had.  I already knew about my ability to listen, to hear.  They wanted to put a name on it.  Wanted to make it a game.  All I remember is I kept hitting this glass ceiling above my head.  So close, my breath clouded the window.

At the end of the week, I was emotionally spent.  Too much time with people.  Too much time talking about myself.  A lot of salt water and a lot of sand and a lot of heat and a lot of introducing myself.  This introvert was tired.  And my spirit was wrung dry.

On the last day we were standing in worship and I looked up to find Mike staring at me.

This is not what you want to happen in a room full of prophets.  No sir.

I can spot a prophetic nature as quickly as I can an asshole.  And when I looked up and saw Mike looking at me, I realized he knew quite a bit more than I wanted him to.

He wove his way in and out of the crowd and came to stand beside me.  He whispered to me, told me he'd been watching me.  And that I was Ruth.  That God knew how much I loved Him.  And how hard I was working.  I'd found my field and I was being faithful.  But Mike also wanted me to know that when he looked at me, he saw a vision of me laying at the feet of the Lord.  With all my wants and desires and dreams.  Specifically, he said, about relationships.  Especially the ones I hadn't even voiced out loud.  And God had reached to lay His covering over them.  All of them.  To bless them.

At the time, I thought this was phenomenal.  It was what I needed to hear -- this promise that God had heard, God saw, knew what I needed.

Amazing the things that slip through the cracks in the moment.

A few minutes after the session had ended, another leader walked up to me.  This leader had made fun of me during the whole week.  Specifically about how much I smile and being pretty and charming.  He approached me afterwards and apologized.  "I try and break down the defenses of people who think too highly of themselves," he admitted.  "It's my own coping mechanism.  But I see that is not the case here."  I turned blood red.  He told me I was beautiful.  Inside and outside.  Another leader approached him and interrupted, talking to me.  He saw the crack in me. He saw what everyone else was overlooking.

He talked to me about my outward beauty and my insecurity.  The deep, nasty thing that seemed to seep from the marrow in my bones.  He saw it.  The way it debilitated me.  The way it slowed me down.  And he called me out on it.

And then the first man said the words I too quickly forgot.

"You are beautiful, on the inside and the outside.  And I feel as though God is going to use your outer beauty like He did with Esther.  Not yet.  It's not happening yet.  But it's going to.  He's going to use your outward beauty, for such a time as this."

I had no idea what this meant.  And it seemed highly unlikely to be true.

Until last night.

Until last night when I was standing in my familiar place.  Surrounded by people I love.  People who have hurt me, used me.  Men who flirt and men who pursue and water guns and goldfish.  People who know my face and not my heart.  A few who I'd die for.  A few who I'd run to for comfort.  A few so strangely familiar.

Chaos happens in the blink of an eye.  Peace.  A fast moving body.  Broken glass.  A pile of men on the floor.

I am not the one who goes running to the rescue.  I'm the one who gets mad when people cause more problems by getting too close.  I'm not a rubbernecker.  I know what I can do, and in a crisis situation there is rarely anything my skills are useful for.

Rarely.

I didn't want to go last night.  I am sick.  Infected lungs and a tired body.  My heart is worn out from all the false hoping.  And as my phone beeps incessantly in my pocket, I just shake my head.  I am so over this.

You see, for the majority of the people in that room every week, all they see is what's on the outside of me.  Six months ago, seven months ago, that's what brought me there.  That's what kept me coming.  The friends, the music, the silly attention.  I shake my head as I think about how good I've become at deflecting an advance.  Prophets and assholes.  I see them coming and I run.

But had I not kept coming to this tiny hole in the wall, there are a few things that I never would have seen happen.  I have no doubt that God would have brought them to fruition in another way, with or without me there to witness.  But this was His plan.  To bolster my self confidence.  To build up what had never truly developed.  And to put me in the right place at the right time with the right people.

Because He's doing a mighty work here.

He's put me here, for such a time as this.  Not because of anything I can do.  But because of what He wants to do.  Through me.  Through us.  Together.  As witnesses to each other's lives.

A pile of bodies.  Broken glass.  I didn't want to go last night.  And as I saw it all rapidly unfold, I stopped.  Wait for the dust to settle.  Assess the damage.  Do what you can do to help.  Cause less harm.

And I found myself standing there.  Two inches away from his face.  Talking calmly in his ear and watching the tension leave his fists.  This is what I do.  I'm not good at picking bodies up off the floor.  I'm not good at breaking up the fight.  I'd don't pull you out of the burning car or pump life back into your chest.

I am the mediator.

I am the soother.

I am the one, given the soft voice, the steady eye contact, and the stubborn patience.

I am the one that talks you down from the ledge.

There are days when I still don't believe it.  When I catch a sidelong glance in the mirror before leaving and just shake my head.  When I kick myself for all the mistakes I have made.  When I bemoan my deformed back and my crooked teeth and my ugly knees.  When I wonder if I will ever be loved or wanted.  Ever again.

But the story is playing itself out.  And God has used what He needed to get me where He wanted me.  I continue to find Him in the most unexpected places.  This is how I know it is Him.  I hear the creak of the door and I look up and feel Him everywhere and I know.  He still hasn't left us.

He brought me here.  Using the very thing I did not believe I had to get me to stay.

Intertwining me into a story about His faithfulness and His desperate pursuit of us.

The story of our lives.