Faith Under Fire November 23, 2022

I missed You, Lord,

my Creator and Sustainer.

As I was traveling,

my rhythm was

off,

my quiet time was spent

asleep,

my awareness of

You

was

dimmed.

Eventually,

I became aware…

of this missing…

this missing of

You.

You

had faded from my

life, thoughts, and moments.

I knew

You

were there,

but my awareness of

You,

my thoughts of

You,

my need of

You

had dimmed.

This experience of

being “away” from

You

reminded me of

the critical importance

of having a

Christ-centered community.

A community of others

who also love

You,

want to serve

You,

and desire to live out

Your will.

Being with others who love

You

helps me remain

connected and aware of

You.

You,

the Trinity,

are community and

have given this gift of community

to us.

Without

You

in my life, thoughts, and moments,

my living feels

empty,

lacking purpose,

leaving me wanting and

wondering

what

else

there

is.

There is…

You.

I want to live with and for

You.

There is no other way.

To those who don’t know

You,

this can sound crazy.

There are those

who think this choice

is really out there

as they watch people

who claim Your love,

seek power for themselves,

spew hate towards those

seen as “other”,

and sow fear in

Your name. 

I’ve never felt that I

had to qualify my faith before,

but at this moment in my life and

in our country’s existence,

I want others,

I need others,

to know that I worship

You God,

follow Jesus, and

cooperate with the Holy Spirit,

not a

human leader or

earthly power.

I strive to love all people,

not only those like me.

I believe we are called

to love others,

not judge,

mistreat, or

minimize people.

I do my best to

seek Your will,

not my own,

and choose Your way,

rather than create a false reality

to support my

desires or needs.

Loving

You

is counter-cultural.

Loving all others in Your name is

counter-cultural.

I am not here for myself,

but for

You.

Help me hold on tightly

to Your hand

as I walk my path.

I will never live perfectly for

You,

but I will give

You

my best.

You don’t seek perfection.

Help me shine

for

You

in such a way that

others will consider

You.

Help me share

You

gently with others

in the hope they will

choose to get to know

You

more today than yesterday.

Each day I pray

I will love,

not try to be right.

I pray

I will love each day,

not assess and

categorize.

I see the ongoing

assessment,

judgment,

persecution, and

categorization

of those seen as “other”

to be a

distraction

from what God truly

wants us to accomplish.

I choose to love because

You

first loved me

and always will.

I am Your broken,

beautiful,

lost, and

precious child,

and yet

You

love me

without qualification or limit.

Your love is a

gift of grace.

Your love cannot be earned,

only received.

May someone experience

You

in a new, powerful, and lasting

way today.

In Your hope and power,

not my own.

© 2022 Brooke F. Sulahian

The Middle Path – Continuing on the New Way October 11, 2020

“I am learning that it can be hard to discern surrender from giving up.” Brooke F. Sulahian

“Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain.” Vivian Greene

Back to my journey…

God has walked with me the entire time. His constant message has been one of gentleness. He consistently invites me to be gentle with myself. It always sounds great and makes sense, but being gentle is not how I am naturally wired. I didn’t fight it. I just didn’t know how to find it or if I would even recognize it. The operative word here is “I”. I was unknowingly relying on myself first. My will. My abilities. My plan.

As shared prior, I unknowingly expected to fix my focus on a goal (health), figure out how to get there, get there, and then move on, with no resulting changes. Today, almost a year later, I still have all of my symptoms, every day. They are less intense, but still very much a part of me.

As I look back, God’s invitation to gentleness was an invitation to journey with Him to a new place, a place of quiet, gentleness, peace, and calm. Without realizing it, I had once again chosen my own way, my own abilities, my own will. God showed me this along with lies I had allowed to make a home in my heart. Slow is weak. Busy is strong. Limits display weakness. Doing all shows strength.

God was constantly at work. Again, He invited me to be gentle. He spoke through pictures, His word, devotionals. What did gentleness really look like? Where do you find that?

God, through my journal time and quiet time, “showed” me a picture of how I was walking my path. I kept seeing something shiny in my back pocket. (God talks to me with pictures.) One morning during quiet time, I saw the item fall out of my pocket…it was a compass. What was I doing with a compass? Rather than berate me, God invited me to give my compass to Him, be gentle with myself, and walk with Him as the lead and eventually step away, step out.

God was to be my compass.

I saw myself give Him my compass, but I know myself. I can always find a way to take it back…as if I need it.

God had another thing to show me. This same morning He showed me in a picture that I was trying to live “the perfect day” to keep all of my symptoms at bay. I was trying to coordinate EVERYTHING…I spent all of my time trying to keep all of my plates spinning, all of my balls in the air, it was all up to me…right?

This vision broke me open…as a recovering perfectionist, this is an easy temptation in which to fall and I didn’t even notice I had. But this day, I laid it all down and put it all aside. I knew what being gentle meant for me right now. It is giving everything to God and only carrying what He asks me to carry, only owning what He wants me to own.

And God was not done…

© 2020 by Brooke F Sulahian