A Stranger in Stranger's Shoes

It's taken a while for the words to flow, and still to some degree and in some aspects, they don't. I've been realizing that's fully where I was supposed to be. I would say that silence has been my song, and will continue to over the next week. Sometimes I feel like when I don't have anything to say or can't write, then that means I am being apathetic...and sometimes that is the case. But in this, things have changed so much that I don't have the words to describe it. Things are different to the extent I feel like I need a new language invented. I've had the concept of the above picture in my head for a couple of days now because it's the idea that I'm bringing myself into focus. I can see myself in the mirror and I know I am there, but it simply doesn't look like me. I have to allow the new lighting conditions and environment to create this new picture of myself, and then when it's fully in focus I can see it for what it truly is.

Redefining the gaze could be a good way to describe it overall. Over the past few months, circumstances changed drastically in different ways in that God could shape my character through it. There's been a refining after the chaff has been burned away to bring me to the person I am today...and I don't recognize that person at all. It seems so often I am looking a stranger in the mirror or thinking a stranger's thoughts because I feel so detached from who I am. Yet at the same time I know that the air I breathe is the same, the eyes I see through are the same, and these hands that type are the same. Nothing physical on the outside has changed...but that even seems impossible when I am understanding the magnitude to which everything else about me has changed or at least shifted.

Or perhaps it's finding the raw essence of myself. Perhaps all of the fluff and masks and words and activities I used to hide behind have been stripped away. Perhaps my armor and self-defense is finally gone in such a way that only God alone can shape me and I am able to respond. How can one fight a battle when he or she has no weapons of self-defense and has placed them all in the One who stands before him/her? It is greater than simply losing the battle, but choosing to lose it by giving up the weapons possessed. It is recognizing the fact that there is One before self that is far greater and not one we are to conquer; instead, the other is supposed to conquer us. It's the Other that brings the light that allows us to finally see ourselves for how ridiculous we are and how big we have made ourselves to be. It's the Other's shield in which we can see the reflection of ourself for how small we really are. It's in the presence of the Other that we realize it's truly been a battle against ourself and not choosing to surrender in the presence of something greater.

I see now that I've been coming before my God in this way as of late...and I simply surrender at the presence of something greater. No words need to be said...I am simply to lay down my fight and acknowledge the One who is greater...for He will always be.

The battles I used to wage are far gone now, because I know those battles are not my own. They never were. Even the battles I used to wage against myself are gone because I know now that there's simply no point in fighting my Creator's grip. I know not what to do or what to say or how to live, all of that is lived and breathed by the Spirit alone. He is my guide and source of life, dare I heed it? I dare say I will...

Because though I feel a stranger in stranger's shoes, I know that it is still myself, and I am created in the way my Father knows I ought to be. My understanding is frail and small and will always be. I am a finite creature, and God is doing an infinite work within me. That will never change. I must simply respond by laying down my armor and seeing the light of One who is far greater than myself. There is nothing else I need to know about myself other than I am His. He has conquered me.