the eighth month
With the passing of another month and a heart heavy with words that I’ve yet to express, I wanted to share something reflective.
We’ve all experienced some kind of reckoning in our lives. Whether it’s “small” or “big,” there’s a push that’s leading us into deeper reflection and relationship with God. My push came in the form of one simple question: “Do you trust me?” It’s the question God asked me in June in a dream, and He's been asking me every day since. I want my answer to be a firm “Yes”, but my honest answer is, '“I want to.”
I live in the tension between belief and unbelief. It’s so easy for me to trust God with the bigger than me, in His hands things. The “I want to” comes when the ball is in my court, and God wants to work through me. I call these things “smaller than He,” although God is showing me they’re not so small to Him.
Change has been challenging me these past few months. Change that became very clear to me in July. There’s a shift taking place, and God is leading His children into the land they will possess, where they will live in abundance and fruitfulness. Where the harvest is ripe, and the mustard seeds all grow.
God has not only been challenging me to trust Him through the process but to also take stock of exactly who I am and who He’s transforming me into. I’m no longer who I was and have been. While the shedding of those skins continues, my old self has been taking her last breaths while trying to fight off who I am and will be.
Figuratively speaking, it’s like having a conjoined twin and being separated from them completely. The process, long and tedious, builds patience for the moment of separation from your, quite literal, other-half. But imagine this other half is extremely toxic, dysfunctional, and harmful. Once finally freed, the freedom now attached to you is big and otherworldly.
In the process of being released from my tethered, I learned that I don’t completely know who I am in the midst of all of this. I don’t know my place in this world and among people. I know what God tells me I am, His beloved and beheld. I know whose I am because God is my Father. But I don’t know who I am.
I’ve lived most of my life as this person. Although she never completely felt familiar, she was still me. She was still loved by me and I knew all of her details, bones, lines, and structures like I know my ABC’s. Her identity is what I know best, yet I know I’m no longer that Jazzmine.
My desires, my interests, my mind, my priorities, and my goals are all changing. Honestly, if I may, my name is changing even if God hasn’t told me yet. It’s as if the wait is over, the weight has been lifted, and overnight I became this Jazzmine. Though the freedom is wonderful, I’ve been afraid to be honest about something: I don’t know who I am.
Admitting that at my age feels bad like a gasp and clutch my pearls kind of sin against nature, so I’ve been slow to admit it even though it’s hard not to. With everything that’s been happening this year, it’s clear that change is eternal. God does say that we will be transformed to His image, so I’d figure that much.
God is changing everything about me, and it’s all for my good. Even the song of my life is playing on a different tune. Her melody is sweet like honeydew, fresh like holy water, and lovely like lilies. All of these wonderful transformations, alterations, and evolutions and I still don’t know who I am.
After just realizing the timing, it’s no mistake that revelation and evolution spanned seven months of this year, and I’m writing this on the eighth. Eight is a number of new beginnings, seven is completion. As I sit and wonder about all of the possibilities of what new could look like, I wonder about this new me and who I am.
I know what, whose, when, why, where, and how… but not who. It’s the last question of the series. It seems so small a thing to be concerned about. No matter how insignificant, it’s become the most important one to me. I think about how He gave so many people new names and new identities, and know that if He could then, God definitely can now. I sit in high hope and eager expectation that He will give one to me and make it as clear as day. “My new identity is in Christ, so who am I, Lord?”
As I’m finally finding myself positioned to close this long text, I’m brought back to that dream I had when God asked me that one, simple question. “Do you trust me?”
A truth God has shown me: He cares about the “small” things.
Although my faith is rather small, God can do wonders with it. All I have to do is be obedient to the call to trust Him.
I live in the perfect tension between belief and unbelief. It’s the space between hope and action where I’m met by a compassionate, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-possible God. It’s where my dependence on God helps me to rest in His capable hands while walking out my salvation with fear and trembling toward the promise. It’s where I’m able to see that God is there and everywhere, and He’s still here and near. It’s where I can see God, and He can see me.
This eighth month marks a new beginning, and as I step out to live in this perfect tension, I know that God is with me. And if you’re reading this and can relate to anything I’ve just shared, I want you to know that God is with you too.
