THE TETHERING PLACE

SHOES!!!!

Yes, after 12 weeks of casts and crutches and boots and scooters, I graduated today. I pulled from under the bed this little right-footed blue shoe that was still unlaced, tongue unfurled, from the day the doctor pulled it off just moments after the rupture.

It was an odd moment when I laced it up today and gingerly slid it on my foot. I sat on the carpet in my bedroom, house quiet, and reflected for a moment on this shoe that has been with me for miles and miles of running and playing and piggybacking and dancing. And it felt so foreign. Oddly fitting and tight in weird places, I feel so uncertain in it…

And I was reminded again of our God who takes our broken things and makes them new; He takes our broken selves and makes us new. And the first steps in new life are awkward and unsteady and a little scary. I am scared today, that I am going to stumble and fall and start back at the beginning. Without the support {physically and psychologically} of a huge ugly black boot, I am really sort of vulnerable and a little anxious. I am afraid of the unpredictability of little boys and toys – every day things that could represent casualty and disaster.

Is it not true of our life with Jesus? Not just when you first step into a life with Him and begin to learn what it is to be a new kind of human. But also in every ensuing season when he strips away old things, old attitudes, old habits, when He allows life to break us because he knows in the healing it will make us stronger and closer to Him and a little less clingy to this world that is not our home.  And in the wake of the wreckage {whether of our own doing, or just the result of living in this broken place} He remains by our side, picking up pieces,  discarding others, putting us back together, planting new attitudes and perspectives and the courage that ALWAYS coincides with the presence of the Holy Spirit. And new life comes.  We step cautiously, a little afraid, a little excited, a little more free, a little more aware… and we learn what it is to walk a little more like Jesus.

So here I stand, unsteady on my feet, a bit nervous in my heart, a little more free to ask for help, a lot more courageous to serve. I feel new and fragile. And I know the everyday stuff, if my eyes aren’t open, is going to be what trips me up. And so with eyes wide, two shoes on my feet, hopeful to be present to the God that is my helper and the light to my path and the shepherd of my soul, I am walking.

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland…”

Isaiah 43:19