That which we have in common.... that which we don't

I do a weekly morning devotional on Tuesday mornings at 9:30am (est).  It was a project I wanted to undertake to teach how God interacts with us through the senses.  How if we see, hear, taste, touch, smell in the natural what does it look like to engage in such in the spirit?  I planned and scheduled out the sessions.  Only to hit week after week  feeling led to walk a different path, then that which was planned.  I have gotten used to it, at least I thought I had.


Until today.


Finishing up the month of April, the sense of touch, I had planned out a path I wanted to walk down upon and yet I began to feel pulled once again in a totally different direction.



Maybe it was the questions that started to pop up, or maybe it was the heart of God that I was feeling... but the doors flung wide open and so did any and every place/story within my heart.  The questions kept flowing and I wanted to honor those asking them.  My heart aching to convey the love and tenderness of God to a group of people so thoroughly hungry to know Him as He truly is.



The questions were pure and beautiful and it filled my heart with a sense of awe and wonder and respect for the people that God calls sons and daughters.  I kept feeling the Lord pulling me further in and further up into His heart.  Then there was this place I stepped into talking about places of my life, of my marriage, of being in ministry, of journeying with God, of struggle, of doubt, of fear, of needing time to learn that the ways of God are truly the ways of God and that He really can be trusted.


And the tears flowed and the questions flowed all the more and the comments and the gratitude that someone .. anyone .. would share and speak of such things.


And while the level of disclosure upon a recorded meeting was beyond anything I thought  I would normally do, I felt the leading of God absolutely clearly. And those lines get crossed more and more often these days. What is my life?  What are the things that would scream shame on me?


I don't want there to be those things any longer...


There is no more shame...


I find more and more upon this journey that we all have similar fears, we all have similar questions, we all have similar needs, hopes, hungers....  There are places in all of us that seem too dark and twisty to ever share, and so we don't...  Thoughts we have, things we have done, assured of the fact that if anyone ever knew we would be disqualified.  Disqualified from what I ask?  It is those very places that make us the most touchable and the most real.  In sharing our journey people get glimpses and can take the parts they need to help them navigate their roads.


Sure there are those moments out of the place where the flow of spirit leads and I pause and think .. I just shared what? And it was really recorded?  Then I think... Great!  Really! That is what  I think.  My life is what it is.. and it has been what it has been. I can't change yesterday.  I can't change the fact that there are aspects of my story that I wish didn't exist.  But they don't get to dictate or determine my present or my future.  They are no longer places of shame or embarrassment.


When someone asked a question that I knew would be wrong or presumptuous to answer, I stole a line from a good friend... and said the answers to such questions don't come easily and anyone who would step into that place lightly should be run away from...  While we do have things in common, the emotions, the need, the fears... that which formed us is unique to each of us as is our finger print.


I walk fiercely towards freedom but delicately with the hearts of His sons and daughters....  His treasures... handling each other with great care...