what you love...

for some reason this Lent has left me feeling more alive... more curious... more aware... and more reflective, somber. there is something growing inside of me this Lent... a curiousity for intimacy... a longing to know and be known...

gratitude grows within me for this "letting go" and "taking on" practices of Lent which has been the key factor in the awareness. my eyes and heart seem wider, more open than usual... i feel like i'm seeking in fresh ways. words and ideas have been coming up of pages and computer screens and out of people's mouths in a 3dimensional-sort-of-way. there is something to this practice of surrender that lends one a deeper experience of the Incarnation of Christ. i don't know what all yet, but i feel it growing something new inside of me.

"For when there is a question as to whether a [person] is good, one does not ask what [they] believe, or what [they] hope, but what [they] love." Augustine

this idea of what i love being the defining feature of my life has had my mind moving and churning over the last 10 days. (that's how long it took to finally write this sucker.) what is my goodness defined by? hopefully not what i do, but WHOSE I AM... WHO I BELONG TO: Christ, the lover of my soul. but is that what people see? experience? or do they just see me?

"Lord, Jesus Christ, lover of my soul... send to me your Spirit to sculpt my life and my love into a beautiful reflection of YOU. come and have your way with me. make me less, so that YOU might be the MORE in my life... the ONLY of my life."

i have so much growing up and maturing and wondering left to do in this little life of mine. i'm grateful that YHWH is so patient... and for his invitation for me to wait patiently on him: "Wait patiently on me, Shelby,... be brave & courageous, and again wait patiently on me, the LORD of all the universe." (Psalm 27:14, my paraphrase) Like Advent, there is much waiting in this season of Lent.