Grow in the Wild Places
This time of year can be pretty depressing for me. I see a lot of my friends graduating, while I heavily avoid the standard mode of education. I see members of my family joining different highly respected organizations, while I sit and watch the Facebook videos.
I look at my life, and see that I just don't do the things that people deem to be great and respectable. Many times, I've done the opposite, and I tend to great treated like it.
I get questioned, sometimes I get mocked, I get looked down on, and it can be painful. Yes, I'm different, but I'm still human, human with feelings, human with desires to be loved.
Right now I'm reading this book called Hinds Feet on High Places, and at one point, the main protagonist, Much-Afraid, asks the Chief Shepherd while walking with him about the flowers that grow where no one can see them.
"It does seem strange that such unnumbered multitudes should bloom in the wild places of the earth where perhaps nobody ever sees them..." (emphasis added).
I often feel like that! I feel like I do a lot of good and interesting things. Still, I get spit on by people I care about, overlooked and cast under the shadow of other more "respectable" deeds done by others. It's human to want to be seen, acknowledged, and loved. That's really all I've wanted, but at times it feels as though I'm asking for too much.
I still had that feeling as I was reading this chapter of Hinds Feet. But, how I viewed my work and myself as a whole changed almost as soon as I read the Chief Shepherd's response to Much-Afraid.
"Nothing my Father and I have made is wasted," he said quietly, "and the little wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them." (pg. 26)
Why do we place so much emphasis on the opinions of others? Why do we give people the power to make or break us, power that they don't deserve to have?
I noticed myself doing just that on this blog! If I was talking about a topic that was very personal to me, something that I just wanted to share with the world because I wanted to, it wouldn't get very many views. But, my Fr. James Martin post? over 5,000 on it's own.
Don't get me wrong, I really love that article, but I don't want to be solely known as "The Girl Who Combats Fr. James Martin."
I want to share my thoughts on other topics as well, even if they don't get a ton of views.
Writing about topics that I love to help me grow spiritually, and maybe even help a few others do the same, was the whole reason I started this blog almost a year ago in the first place.
I don't want to just write about topics that'll get me thousands of views. That's not really going to help anyone at the end of the day.
But something that will help the world, is me just being brave enough to be me. There is never going to be another me as long as the world keeps turning, so I don't want the world to miss out on what God could bring to the table through me.
Later on in that same passage of Hinds Feet, the Chief Shepherd gives Much-Afraid another great piece of advice.
"I must tell you a great truth, Much-Afraid, which only the few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to Love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love." (pg. 26)
Just because no one sees some of the good things that I do, doesn't take away from their goodness or beauty.
I can still grow confidently and willingly in the wild places of my soul, where God so intimately dwells within me, and be the beautiful person that I am called to be, even if no one witnesses a thing.
I can radiate the face of Christ standing alone in a field where only He can see me, and He will still take joy in His beloved Daughter. There's nothing wrong with that! In fact, there's infinite beauty in that.
The process in which I will be made holy by God is a secret one, one where no one but us will truly be able to see. I stand behind a veil alone with Him -- I as the Bride, He and the Bridegroom -- and it is there that I can truly grow in love in order to be made holy.
Just because no one else takes notice of what's happening there, doesn't mean it isn't beautiful.