The Ride of Your Life

Live...with great grace, no expectations, and lavish love....

give away what you wanted most...

Love never gives up but lays itself down...

go find your soul by losing yourself, in the muck and mire and the beauty and the love and the way down, in the impossible made possible, straight through the fears that always turn out to be mirage —
grabbing everything you ever wanted by pouring everything right out.
The ferris wheel and the fear and the world spinning on—
and you getting off to have the ride of your life. (Ann Voskamp, www.aholyexperience.com)

So this is the way to live full and free, to really live...it's not climbing up, but bending down. It's falling again and getting back up. It's giving what I want to clutch tight. It's being willing to hurt; it's being willing to take the hurt that cuts deep and hold it and not turn it to hate and not pass it on. It's forgiving - letting people off scot-free - not because they deserve it but because I let go of the responsibility of punishing them, and because most of all, I let go of the responsibility of protecting myself. It's walking back in, despite my disappointment, not because I trust that I won't be disappointed again, but because I am willing to take the hurt. For what? For what deep purpose am I willing to accept rejection and insult? Only for this:

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings... (Philippians 3:10)

And learning the Christ is the ride of my life. It is hard, and sometimes tiring, and it hurts, but it's surprisingly good. It is altogether worth it. He is worth it.

My soul yearns for you in the night;
in the morning my spirit longs for you...
Lord, you establish peace for us;
all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us,
but your name alone do we honor. (Isaiah 26:9, 12-13)