Over the last nine months, worship has taken on a whole new meaning for me. A new posture. It has become a time of healing. Of pouring out my heart in praise and pain. Of seeing and hearing.
Yesterday was no different. At first. Then slowly. Deliberately. God started a process. On my heart. On my mind. On my body. On my soul. A process I did not understand until He was done.
I cry during worship. A lot. I have ever since my daughter was born. I can’t help myself most of the time. But today, my tears were different.
As I cried and tried to sing, there was a cleansing happening.
The last few weeks. Months. Have been tough. Battle after battle. And last week. It left me caked with a heaviness so thick and numbing, I couldn’t focus or see how I could start a new week.
But as I worshiped, the heaviness. The grime. The hurt. The filth of the week. Slowly began to fall off. To shed. Like layers of clothing off my body and my heart and my mind. And the more I cried, the more it fell. The words. The thoughts. The lies. Things I should not have been carrying around. Things I chose to carry. Things thrown on me. Things I should have laid at His feet but held so tight too. He took them. Scraped them off of me. Cleansing me.
And quietly, He began to speak. A story. One I read to my students every year. A story I read two weeks ago to my kindergartners. “You Are Special” by Max Lucado. The story of the Wemmicks. Who place stickers on each other. Stars on those who they place on pedestals and dots on those who fall short. But one has no stickers. Lucia. She goes to Eli, the woodmaker, her creator. And the more time she spends with him, the less the stickers have the power to stick and wound and name.
But I am not Lucia. I am Punchinello. The Wemmick full of dots. Gray dots that mar and wound and give a false identity. And he hears about Eli. Bravely venturing to meet him.
And ever so quietly, God said. . . every week in worship, you meet with Me, my daughter. And I scrape and clean those dots and stars off of you. This week though. This week, there were so many more. That was the heaviness and weight and layers. The stars of pride you let distract you. The dots you let re-name you.
How His words sunk in to my heart. And as He scraped and cleaned. Letting my tears wash me. Preparing me for another week.
John 15:3 “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken over you.”
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