This is the story of “going all in,” giving all to try to make a difference because of the difference He made in us.  It is the launch story of our personal life-mission, and the fears, tears, and triumphs that brought us to the culmination of a God-dream.

Was it just some months ago that we stood on the precipice, ready to jump off into His future, His vision, when foreboding crept into our souls?  It was.  And it is often this way when we stand on the edge of surrender.

We know His voice, after this long love affair where He has wooed and waited and we have flirted and teased.

We have let the warm waves caress us, lap at our toes, refresh us with their nourishment, whisper suggestively to let the waves wash over us, take us fully immersed.  Why is the surrender so long-fought? And why, in the moment of hearing when we draw in our breath to yell back eager response, does the knife slice so deeply to steal that breath from us?

For we also are aware of it, that soul enemy, and we know how it lurks, manipulates, deceives, and acts violently out of desperation when we stand on the precipice.  Instead of pushing us over the edge (for over the edge of this precipice is wild abandoned grace), this time Fear clings to our souls, dirty talons digging in to keep us from jumping wholeheartedly into the Father’s arms.  I see Fear sneering at me as it clings, when all I want to do is drop, drop, drop and fall… into the arms of the Lover of my soul, waves of His perfect will.

The Potter had been birthing this vision for some time, from things so painful to us that they break us, because birthing greatness comes from deep pangs within our core, because giving until it hurts– well, it hurts.  Our life-mission came from something placed deep within us, a vision seen through the Father’s eyes.  It is this way so often: the things most painful in our past give birth to the greatness of God shining out from within. It is from this pain, the surrender, and the Christ above it all, that we learn not to despise the journey, and we come to accept that His way, while better than life, is beyond our own understanding.

At that moment of surrender, on that precipice, we knew our lives would change.  We felt it deeply, hope wild mingled with foreboding, anticipation of joy with expectation of pain. Deliberately, slowly, mechanically, we peeled talon after talon, Fear’s dirty nails…

The scars and pain occasionally still haunt us, remind us, but this is the recounting of our fall into Him, and the tidal waves of His holiness, greatness, love that overwhelmed us, and the beauty left behind when the ocean of grace meets the horizon of hope.

Our dreams, our goals, our life-missions, they come from this, the Son on the water glistening like prismatic diamonds, forged by pressure and illuminated by the cutting away. And so we follow it, that “holy discontent,” over the edge into the waves of His grace, the One who dares to use me because of my weakness and through the empathy it creates.

By Johnna, Sanctuary Ministries

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