moving from fear to freedom

It used to be that when something worth remembering happened, I wrote it down. Now it seems that life is overflowing with memorable things and I am too tired to remember any of them. I want to blog and yet I'm faced with the choice of either writing well about one thing or writing not enough about several things. So I usually choose to not write anything at all. That's a bad habit, though, because it's letting my perfectionism give way to fearfulness.

So here's something.

I know I keep blogging about Rilla singing now, but it is just the most wonderful thing to me to hear her sweet little voice singing boldly and joyfully to the Lord. It is one of many areas lately in which I am totally humbled and grateful for the Lord's amazing grace to me in these years that He has been transforming me. I am not the best singer, and I am keenly aware of that. I wouldn't even sing in front of Keith when we were first married... and considering what an amazing husband he is and how comprehensively the Lord has used him to enable me to move out of fear and into freedom, that's really saying something. But no, it took Priscilla... at five or six months old... to really make me choose to be free in this area of singing. The thought of her being afraid or too self-conscious, as I was, was enough to make me finally choose to change. So I began singing to her. Quietly at first, then maybe a bit more confidently, and then gradually in our daily lives and not just at bedtime, until now our home positively reverberates at times with song.

My daughter delights to sing.

No, you don't understand.

My daughter delights to sing.

What that means is that she is not afraid. And she is not afraid because I am not afraid. And I am not afraid because God has, in this one small but big area, enabled me to put off the flesh and the fearful, former ways of doing things, and to be renewed in newness of life. To sing boldly with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs to the God of my salvation. To truly, freely, wildly, and usually off-key-ly just sing. To Jesus. Because He is good.

And so now my daughter sings. To Jesus. Because He is good.

The picture, the transformation, the wonder is not lost on me. Each time she sings, I stop and listen in awe. Because I could have chosen fear. I could have chosen to be too self-conscious, too insecure, too fearful to do this thing that now returns to bless me so often throughout the day.

It is a blessing to me in a deep, deep way. It is a challenge to my spirit as I try again to rustle up the courage to obey God in that one pesky area where I still continue to fail to obey Him. (Okay, there's probably more than one area, but there's one that He keeps whispering to me about lately.)

Hmm, see what happens when I start to write? That was just the first thing on my mind. And now that this post is so long, most people are ready to quit... and I feel like I'm just getting started. So I'll say the other stuff very much more quickly. Teething Abraham. Both kids sick. (Still. Does it ever end?) House-cleaning seems insurmountable this week. The contracts Keith and his dad had lined up for the year are suddenly gone... making this whole unemployment thing suddenly get a lot more interesting. Painting "hope" verses every week for that church thing I'm doing is getting really challenging... I really don't have time for it... but I think God is teaching me through it.