So Will I

 GAH. THIS SONG HAS SPOKEN TO ME UNLIKE ANY WORSHIP SONG HAS IN YEARS.

Because you don't know the vast lengths I have gone to believe that there is even a God. Let alone one who loves me. Let alone one who cares. This song brings life into my soul. I have doubted God's existence. I have questioned my purpose. I have questioned my entire life's choices. This song. It brings deep focus every single time I listen to it. It's brought me deep awareness. It's brought me back to a purpose I can get behind.

"God of creation

There at the start

Before the beginning of time

With no point of reference

You spoke to the dark

And fleshed out the wonder of light."

I have been in a grey area where I have screamed to God, "Why the hell would you make me this way?"

Why would you create with in me a passion for ministry? Why would you create within me this person who likes these things and give me the call for this position?  "And why would you wire me and will me to work my entire life towards this calling, when you know I will never make it there? When you know that I will not ever be a person qualified because of how I am made? Because of the things that make me tick and the way I speak and life I live and the person I am? What kind of God are you to torture someone that way?"

"And as You speak

A hundred billion galaxies are born

In the vapor of Your breath the planets form

If the stars were made to worship so will I

I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made

Every burning star

A signal fire of grace

If creation sings Your praises so will I"

You see, I was a little girl sitting in a giant church watching the worship pastor sing. I wanted everything to do with that.

The very movement of the church gave me life. The way they did things for families, the way they intentionally produced an experience, and the way they made my heart fly for Jesus. This church set it in my mind that one day I would work there and one day it would be me making people's hearts fly for Jesus.

And so, I worked and I got involved in my own church.

I pushed myself to be someone qualified.

From the young age of 11, I worked with children's choirs and youth choirs. I sang in the youth group band. I played the keyboard in the adult services. I started to create singing ensembles and special worship bands for our church. I worked alongside our worship director and watched as she produced giant Christmas Cantatas and Easter Sunday Services. I did everything she asked. I learned as much as I possibly could and did everything I got asked. I steam ironed choir robes, built choir cubbies, organized octavos, recorded SATB practice cassettes, typed up lyrics, programed lighting cues, watched as the production guys would hang lighting trusses and sat in her office for days and listened to Christmas music, watching her decipher what was possible for our church or not.

This was what I wanted to do with my life.

I lived and thrived off every moment. It was what brought joy to my heart and life to my soul.

"God of Your promise

You don’t speak in vain

No syllable empty or void

For once You have spoken

All nature and science

Follow the sound of Your voice"

I worked and worked and worked. The more I worked, the more I hid pieces of me.

The more I put myself in a box to please my family, to please my church, to be a good mother, to be a good wife, to please God. I volunteered to learn, I went to school for that field, and I got jobs in churches to make a path till I got where I needed to be. Which led me to failing miserably because I was unhappy.

And boy, did I fail in the worst of ways. So much so that I lost so much of what I worked for. I messed up so badly that I was pretty sure I risked everything I worked for. I got fired. Lied my way through it. Lost all of my dignity and all of my friendships. I broke my family. I fucked up my path and made it that much harder to get where I needed. All because I sought happiness in someone who let me be myself. I was deemed a failure in character and integrity. And they weren't all wrong. I was a liar and I did hurtful things.

But I don't regret it. I learned a bit of why I felt unhappy. I figured out why I made the decision I made and why I chose to build a relationship with a person I wasn't supposed to be with. I grasped why I chose to lie about my life and I learned some things about myself that I couldn't see clearly if I hadn't crossed those boundaries. It took a lot of people to tell me all of my failures for me to shut down. It took a lot of people walking out on my life and in the end, deeply disliking me to focus in on why I did the things I did.

Deeply depressed, I sought out wholeness and started to recreate a truer me. A new, real me.

Because I was living in a lie that I was telling myself was necessary. And in that lie, I was not only hurting myself, I hurt everyone around me in a couple moments of reality. In a couple moments of pure truth, when I followed my heart. When I listened to myself instead of pushing my whole being back into the clearly defined box I was given. I became the realest me I had ever been and I started to seek out things that made me whole and happy.

Yes, it was a fuck up. I see that now. I see what a mistake it was. But I don't regret him. I regret not listening to myself way before he became my fuck up. I regret taking so long to figure out who I was and having to fail everyone I loved miserably to find me.

So I tried again. I tried to make myself fit into the church culture after I finally started to recover from the severity of the pain that is losing a church family and watching people you love hate you. I stepped into a new church home, very scarred and beaten to a pulp, willing myself to believe that God exists. Willing myself to try one more time. But then I found myself willing myself to lie again to accomplish my goal of getting this position. For the sake of accomplishing my "call". And this job, it was finally at the place I had worked so hard to get to. It was that church I sat in as a little girl. I finally made it closer than I ever thought possible.

But that box, that clearly defined and labeled "Christian" box. I had already opened it and the packaging tape wouldn't reseal itself.

And the version of me that this church got, it was cynical and hard hearted towards church people. And I ended up hating every minute of being in that building with people who were mostly fake and didn't really care about much, but their ministry. And I didn't hate them for anything but the fact that they reminded me of myself. The me before my fuck up. They reminded me that ministry was mostly climbing some invisible ladder to better numbers and more tithing, to get that paycheck doing "something I loved" while forgetting to love myself, to help people around me while forgetting the people with my blood, and to sacrifice myself into exhaustion on the alter of ministry.

So while I worked there, I gave up my dream. Because if this was what I would become to work there, then it no longer motivated me. That's when I changed my everything and shed the light on, not only my pain, but also my history and true personality. I became the most real me I had ever seen and I watched as people misunderstood me and slowly start to classify me as unqualified for ministry. Knowing that I only had so much time before they stripped me of my paycheck, I decided to stop hustling for the ministry and I started to use my time to learn what made these people who they were. Stopping by offices to say hello, or asking about the little bit of their lives that they would let me get to know, I took my time there learning to love on these people the best they would let me. I shifted my focus from accomplishing enough to get me to the next higher position and instead saw people as humans hiding to keep their job and I let them feel all their human emotions as they chatted with me, hugged me, and went on with their day.

“And as You speak

A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath

Evolving in pursuit of what You said

If it all reveals Your nature so will I

I can see Your heart in everything You say

Every painted sky

A canvas of Your grace

If creation still obeys You so will I

So will I

So will I”

Because that's the point. "If it all reveals Your nature, so will I."

As I was watching my job crumble before my eyes, I stood firm in who I was made to be and what God had called me to. It was in those moments when I was being robbed of grace from the very people who sold it for a living that I realized that God had not called me to a position on a platform, but to reveal His nature.

And then I was fired for failure to fit into the culture of the church.

“If the stars were made to worship so will I

If the mountains bow in reverence so will I

If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I

For if everything exists to lift You high so will I

If the wind goes where You send it so will I

If the rocks cry out in silence so will I

If the sum of all our praises still falls shy

Then we’ll sing again a hundred billion times”

I cried. Because my dreams were gone. And there was no looking back.

As I walked through the front door of the church, something happened that I had not expected. I breathed again. I had peace from my oppression. I had freedom to be. I breathed and I remembered...me.

I was fired for trying to be all of me and to serve Jesus simultaneously.

And in that, I learned what love looked like.

I changed the lyrics to this to suit my heart.

"If the stars were made to love so will i

if the mountains show your reverence so will i

if the oceans roar your affection so will i

for if everything exists to lift love high so will i

if the wind goes where you sent it so will i

if the rocks cry out in silence so will i

if the sum of all our love still falls shy

we will try again a hundred billion times."

My bosses ability to love me fell short that day. She did not represent Jesus to me in any way when I worked there. It was all about building a bigger church, a better church and don't let anyone get in the way of that. And working with her made me introspective because she reminded me of myself before. I used to treat people with the same indifference to make sure my ministry looked good and made us more money every Sunday. It was about the number of people I could fill the seats with, not the individual souls along the way.

And now, I don't want any part of that. How can I impact thousands if I cannot love the few souls that have been placed in my hands?

I have learned that I cannot worship God fully until I love who He has made in me. And more so than that, I have learned to look at people differently and to love them regardless of whether or not they are worthy.

“God of salvation

You chased down my heart

Through all of my failure and pride

On a hill You created

The light of the world

Abandoned in darkness to die”

I failed. Yes. I am human. Yes. But He came to show me that regardless of any possible human flaw I may have, that He loved me. He loved me enough to display it for the world to see. He loved me enough to become human and to live a life to show me what it means to love and to love well.

“And as You speak

A hundred billion failures disappear

Where You lost Your life so I could find it here

If You left the grave behind You so will I

I can see Your heart in everything You’ve done

Every part designed in a work of art called love

If You gladly chose surrender so will I”

And I am watching my failures disappear constantly as I live the life God made me to live. As I live in all of who I am, loudly. I see His heart in how He made me this vibrant, curious, wild, creative, brave woman and now that I can acknowledge how beautifully He made, right now, I can encompass the calling He has placed on my life.

It's work. Hard, tenacious work to look at someone as human.

But He designed us to love as He loved. And so, every day I am becoming the most me I can be as I surrender to this calling and let go of the dream, my call to ministry, I held so dearly to my heart. Because this is why He made me.

I am here to remind you that failures happen. That you are human. That this world we live in is scary and sometimes cruel and that though you have been made to feel as if who you are isn't loved completely, you are indeed loved and qualified exactly as you are. In your wholeness.
All of you. THE REAL YOU. The one you are currently ashamed of.
“I can see Your heart

Eight billion different ways

Every precious one

A child You died to save

If you gave your life to love them, so will I."

I give up my want to be that worship pastor at that church now. I give up trying to work at any church at all. I don't want the position.

But I won't give up on you.

And Jesus followers, Christians or just really anybody...I want to urge you, in every moment, decision, and interaction, to say “so will I”. To choose a life of “so will I”.

“Like You would again a hundred billion times

But what measure could amount to Your desire

YOU’RE THE ONE WHO NEVER LEAVES THE ONE BEHIND”

He didn't leave me behind when I fucked up. Over and over again.
I believe that.

And you. He's never left you behind either.