Sara Shackelford's Blog
...and we're back... / 01.14.10, 05:51 PM
To the desperate eyes and reaching hands
To the suffering and the lean
To the ones the world has cast aside
Where you want me I will be
I will go, I will go
I will go, Lord send me
To the world, To the lost
To the poor and hungry
Take everything I am
I’m clay within your hands
I will go, I will go, send me
Let me not be blind with privilege
Give me eyes to see the pain
Let the blessing You’ve poured out on me
Not be spent on me in vain
Let this life be used for change
I’ve been listening to this song, I Will Go by Starfield, a ton recently (and, yes, if you haven’t noticed, I probably often feel the most connected to God through music). I’m realizing that when I sing the words of this song, it puts into words some of the things I feel my heart crying. I’m finding for the first time that I really mean those words. But at the same time, my idealism is fading. I think that’s good in many ways….I sing the words knowing that while the song is powerful and moving; daily life doesn’t always look or feel that way. Issues are far more complicated than they appear on the surface. Real change is clearly going to require all of my life and the reality is that there will be many disappointments.
Being home for Christmas has shown me how hard it’s going to be to transition back when this year is over. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being home and had some cool experiences – but despite the almost culture shock I’ve had, I’ve also seen just how easy it’d be to become the exact same person I was prior to leaving. It’s a crazy realization to make when you’re discovering simultaneously where your passion really lies. That’s something I’ve really been struggling with. How much of myself am I going to lose? So much of who I am and what I was is being burned away – and while I don’t begin to question that it needs to happen, must happen…am I still going to be me? Are the people close to me going to understand and embrace that change? Am I going to lose some of them or not be able to remain as close?
It’s hard…I am beyond far from perfect; I’ve never seen that more clearly or painfully, but my desire is for my God, is for His Jesus. The more I feel that pulling at my heart, the more I feel like I don’t know how to live in the world. On the one hand, here in our neighborhood, it forces me to be aware of the brokenness around me – and makes it impossible to not go and do something about it. But the problems are so big and deeply rooted here and everywhere else that we often want to throw up our hands in exasperation at our own ineffectiveness.
And to top it all off, after feeling all of these things for even a space of several months, I don’t know how to explain it to someone who wasn’t there with me. I’ve certainly tried, but even listening to myself, I can tell that my words aren’t quite getting at exactly what I’m experiencing. Sometimes it’s hard not to get frustrated if I feel like my passion isn’t shared – I forget how different I used to be and the constant struggle in myself to pray the verses from my last entry “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
That’s really it…I’ve struggled to find a good way to somehow conclude this and have come up empty. I don’t know if and how it will resolve itself. I can only say that it’s amazing to me, that in the midst of this kind of upheaval of beliefs, I feel more at peace now than I ever have in my life, perhaps because I know why I am living it.
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Amen sister. Keep pressing into that Jesus.
By Ashley / Jan 15, 11:21 AM / #
thank you for putting into words what i’m feeling. :-)
By sarah / Jan 15, 04:07 PM / #