Becoming

I dropped my oldest son off at practice for the 2nd grade musical the other morning.  As I watched him walk through the doors laughing with another boy I had to hurry to put on my sunglasses because I was crying...again.  Each time I have dropped him off, and watched my silly eight year old walk down a hallway with other kiddos who love to perform, my heart pounds.  I think, "Not last year...this would have never happened last year."  Last year Jake was picked on, and ignored.  He endured the daily torture of feeling out of place.  Kids would not play with him on the playground, and no matter how Jake tried, they did not talk to him.  It was a sad year for all of us.  When we moved to a new city this summer I prayed tirelessly for Jake to have just one friend.  Anyone can make it if they have just one friend.  Jake was nervous, and we talked a lot about how great he was.  How much God loves him.  How he was created in God's image.  God blessed Jake's life with a new classroom filled with sweet, goofy, loveable boys and girls.  I have fallen in love with this entire class because they serve as a reminder to me that God loves my son, and hears my prayers.  Jake is changing here.  He is more confident...he's a crab in a musical for crying out loud!  He is happy.  He is silly here.  He is becoming who God wants him to be before my very eyes.  It is beautiful.

There is a hot pink, glittery star that hangs above my passenger seat.  It hangs there to remind me of my daughter, Grace.  When I picked her up from Sunday School one morning her teacher told me they had made the star the wise men followed to find Jesus.  Most of the kids made yellow stars...some went so far as to add glitter.  My Grace could not be swayed.  Her star had to be hot pink and covered in sparkly glitter.  It is beautiful.  In her precious mind there is no good reason why the guiding light could not have shown down from a hot pink, glittery star.  I asked her why she chose to make her star so fancy, and she replied, "It makes me think of Jesus."  So it now hangs in my car to remind me daily of my girly girl who has a view of Jesus that I had not noticed.  Her Jesus is bold, catchy, out of the ordinary and unexpected...just like my girl who is created in His image...beginning her journey to become the woman that God intends her to be.  I think, so far, she is on the right track.

I was bowled over by these two thoughts as I sat in the most simplistically beautiful wedding I have ever attended.  My husband and I made the four hour treck to see our friends walk down the aisle, and I could not wait because God is always so present at godly weddings.  When I walked into the church you could feel the joy of the Lord everywhere.  Each detail was so unique:  handmade paper flower bouquets, yellow bow ties on the ushers, pictures of the couple that so captured their honest love for one another.  I grabbed a program and sat down, excited to see every tiny detail of the day...as unique and out of the ordinary as the couple getting married.  It was beautiful.  Instead of love songs during the ceremony, those gathered sang praise and worship songs.  Instead of lighting a unity candle, the couple gathered with friends and family to pray joyfully together before following Jesus in their next step of faith...marriage.  They were becoming who God intends them to be...unique, special, crazy about Jesus...every step of their life pointing those around them to Him alone.

This is what our lives are SUPPOSED to look like:  beautiful, unexpected, confident-in-Christ-alone, joyful journeys that lead on-lookers to want to know what is different.  We are called to live out loud.  We are promised He gave His only son so that we "...might become the righteousness of God (2nd Corinthians 5:21)."  It is the "becoming" that is beautiful.  It is the discovery of who Jesus called us, personally us, to become.  How He speaks to each of us, and is allowing us to find Him as He is shaping us.

It is in the becoming that His righteousness spills out of us, and all over those watching our journey.  It is in the becoming that we get to see God's joy as He answers our heartache and lonliness with musical theatre for eight year olds!  It is in the becoming that we see God smiling and nodding at the hot pink stars in our life...reminders that He is as unique as a little girl in Texas who sees her Jesus so clearly.  It is in the becoming that we hear a sanctuary filled with praise and worship songs sung to Him alone as a couple starts their life together with a Savior who brought their lives together.  It is in the becoming where we see glimpses of the joy awaiting us in Heaven...joy that comes after pain...joy that comes from standing alone...joy that comes from knowing that we might just become His righteousness.  And that is everything.  And it is beautiful.

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."  2Corinthians 5:21