She walks around the house, thinking.  She is feeling purposeless, unsure, underwhelmed, overwhelmed.  She, not sure where to go, what to do, or what to think, wanders into the kitchen, and the one place that catches her eye and seems to draw her to it is ...
the corner.
She can't help but think this is a little strange because she is usually not the type who sees a corner and decides to go and hide in it, just sitting there, back wedged against the wall and a cabinet.  She especially shouldn't feel like this when the floor is cold and the space is slightly cramped because she both is not a fan of cold and is claustrophobic, hating to feel trapped and confined.
Yet, she is sitting here in the corner none the less.
In this corner she feels small but safe.  She feels that as she is considering so much and trying to find direction in life there is finally something solid beneath and around.  With her head resting against this cabinet, she wishes that all the answers to decisions would appear and that life could sort itself out.  If only she could just snap her fingers so that all of my life's fragments would arrange themselves and present themselves.
(Somehow she gets the feeling that this just isn't going to happen.)
Here in this corner, she wishes she didn't feel so empty.  Deep down, she knows this feeling is what brought her here in the first place.  The world feels too big.  Her dreams feel unable to become a reality.  She feels at a loss of what to do.  She feels agonizingly alone.  She feels small and pale and useless.  She feels very much like this corner, overlooked and not too extraordinary.  (After all, there are many corners in the world.)
She doesn't know how to stop this aching, empty feeling in her chest.

What would life be like without this corner?
If this corner disappeared, an exterior wall to the house would also vanish leaving the house exposed to all kinds of things - weather, intrusive strangers and animals to name a few.  The house would be practically ruined because who would want to live in a place so vulnerable?  If the other side of my corner - the cabinet - was gone along with all its contents, her family would be left without a lot of  food and storage containers.  That would mean she would be one hungry child.  It would mean frustration for her mom as she tries to find a storage place to replace that of the cabinet in our already small kitchen.
Those are just some negative things immediately apparent if this corner disappeared, and she knows it has more functions than those alone.
(It's a pretty awesome corner, after all, which is great for sitting in as she just found). 
Truly, the world would be a different place without this corner.

She can't help wondering if the same is true of her and all of us today.
Just as this corner has a myriad of purposes, we must as well.  Some purposes we openly see and realize, yet others may remain a mystery.  There are actions we preform with visible impacts - talking to a lonely girl and making her smile, sitting with grandma and listening to her stories, helping little sisters with homework, and giving advice to a hurting friend.  Yet, there are purposes for our lives that we may not be able to see just yet and plans that God is waiting to reveal to us.  He knows what He is doing in our lives and is working it out in His perfect timing.
Sometimes, we just need to trust Him in the meantime.

I stare at the picture frame on the wall.  I'm looking but not really seeing as my thoughts are deep and disconnected from my surroundings.  I sigh, momentarily aware of myself again.  I get up; I can't sit still for the life of me.  I need to run.  I need to climb something.  I need to do anything that will make my muscles burn, strain me, test my limits, and give me a tangible physical barrier to struggle against.
I let out a grunt of frustration because I know I cannot burn off this restlessness as I want.  In the darkness outside there is six inches of snow and roads so slick with ice I can only slide and not even walk on.  It's been three days since I left the house, got into the open air, and was immersed by people.  Three days, and I. am. going. crazy.   My sister sees it and has told me I need to run or something because I'm just not myself.  I sigh but feel the truth of her statement.  I can be devastatingly easy to read at times.
I look around my room and see the wooden strip of my bed frame.  It's sturdy and almost half as narrow as my feet.  Perfect.  I hop up and work on my balance as I move from one side to the other.
Life is just getting to be so much.  There is a bazillion thoughts rushing through my head like a scrap of paper that keeps blowing out of my reach and leaves me exhausted and dizzy.  My emotions, intense and immense, pulse through me.  I have wanted this time to work through things, to stop pushing my emotions away, and to stop dashing so quickly through life.  I need this time to think and have know that Christmas Break was the perfect time to do it.  Yet, allowing my emotions to really surface and working through them is plain 'ole hard work.  My intensity is both a great strength that can be channeled usefully, and a heavy, burdening weakness.  I lose my balance and hop to the floor.  Life could be a lot easier without this intensity capacity.
The world is so big, and I am just one small teenager.  The world is so big, and I am desperate to find my place in it.  My dreams do not pale in comparison to the world's size.
They pale in comparison to my fear and my doubt.
They pale in comparison to the emptiness inside.
You see, I've been waiting for my life it start.  Waiting.  Watching others.  Observing everything around me.  Analyzing myself.  I've passively existed in two and a half years of my high school, knowing I should be actively pursing something, but doubting what I should pursue, how I should pursue it, and why I really am pursuing it.  Frankly, I've been doubting the very foundations of who I am.
All my observations have fueled my passiveness turned discontentment inside.  On the big screen, I see heroism and sacrifice.  I read of friends that challenge each other to become more than they thought possible.  A love that heals, a faithful and united group that pushes against odds, a character fighting for truth all are tantalizing to me.  As I check my balance and decide that moving back and forth across the bar is getting too easy, my eyes alight on the pictures above my bed.  They are pictures from my life.  Still restless, I test how long I can stay perfectly still along this bar.
What do I see in my life?  These pictures over a year old show a girl who is more unsure and hurting than many see.  She is a girl who has watched others do awesome things and longed to do them herself, who has let opportunities slip by, who has been too caught up inside herself to live.  She is a girl who has dared to dream but not dared to try, afraid of failure and missing true purpose while doubting who she is and what she is worth.  I stare at the pictures at the wall and my heart hurts for the girl I see because I can feel her pain and have lived through her struggles. Waiting, always waiting. 
Waiting to act when the time was right.  Waiting till she felt she was ready.  Waiting for somebody to pick her out of the ditch and perfectly arrange life for her.  Waiting so that she would not have to find the strength within herself to push through.  Waiting, just waiting, for her life to start.
I am forced to hop down from my balancing game because my feet are aching.  As I crouch on the floor from landing, my head turns to the right, and I am faced with my current reflection in the mirror.  I stand and stare at myself while full of questions, scrutinies, judgements, frustrations, and longings.  Who truly am I at my core?  Where is my place?  Am I even valuable?  Will I ever belong?  Will I ever be free of my struggles?  My eyes move across my reflection until I am looking at my face.  My pursed eyebrows echo my raging discontentment.  I seem older than I often feel, yet younger than I sometimes think my self to be.  My eyes keep moving till they are locked with those in the mirror, my own.
I have always found a person's eyes to be the most fascinating part of them, and it is eerie to be faced with my own.  I don't know what I see; I feel I hardly recognize myself.  I see a girl who wants to hope again, who wants to dream anew, who wants to face the world and fight for the truth.  This girl has lived in numbing fear and paralyzing doubt for far. too. long.  I look at my reflection and know that, waiting for life to start, life has been slipping by.  Two and a half years of emptiness, discontent, and passivity.  Two and a half years spent questioning and watching and waiting.  Yet, at the heart, they were two and a half years spent growing up.
I move back to the pictures on my wall and look at little Deborah.  Her pains flash through my mind like scorching water.  The sting of her struggles I can still feel coursing through my veins.  The hot tears of agony that flowed down her cheeks and into her pillow countless nights have left an irremovable mark on my memory.  Yet the pain, the struggles, the agony were not barren.  Each pain I had to push through made me a fighter.  Each struggle I had to work through was emptying me into a vessel better capable of being filled by Christ.  Each agonizing tear I shed was like a drop, slowly chiseling my character so that I could come out stronger, so that I could come out free.
It was not in vain.
In the center of thes pictures, I have a canvas which an ancient proverb on it which reads "just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."  I feel those words resound deep within me.  Those two and a half years, God had a purpose for.  For growth, for strengthening, for preparation.  They are more precious than gold.
But God grants sesaons and works His will in different ways.
It is time to wait no longer.
I am collapsed in front of the mirror with tears wet on my face and vision blurred.  I am that girl in the pictures no longer.  I have emerged anew, emerged as a precious child on the King of Kings, emerged just as loved and valued by Him as ever regardless of my own self-condemnation.  I have emerged more fully understanding Him and our relationship.  So this is what growth feels like.
I lift my eyes once more to those in the mirror.  This time, a different version of myself seems to be meeting my gaze.  A fierce feebleness resides in these eyes, eyes which acknowledge the feebleness of her fleshly self and the long road ahead, and eyes which burn with a fierceness of awakening.  I am the girl in the pictures no longer; I have been growing up.
I am to wait no longer.  The lessons I have learned are like an invisible scar that forever will remind me of God's faithfulness.  Seasons come and go, and I now must take what I have been taught and let it flow into action, to awake to the call God has placed on my life, and to find that I belong in Him.  It's time to shape up and really embrace my growing up.  No more excuses, laziness, passiveness, and disobedience.  It's time to be real, to be really God's.  To fight, to push, to be driven, to challenge, to continue to grow, to embark on this adventure fearless and certain of who I am as a child of God.
As I am looking into my reflection's eyes, I choose to see myself through my Abba's eyes and believe what He sees: a girl, broken yet becoming more and more beautifully into the image of Christ.
There is no turning back.
Life starts
now.

God, get me off of my hypocritical high-chair.

Up there,
so full of knowledge, discernment, supposed wisdom, and seemingly vast experience,
excusing selfishness in the name of a healthy, balanced life
and
being too concerned with the
big things and
big people
to miss
the significant,
and too concerned
about establishing a name on earth - ahem, mine-
(but of course, not as consumed with self-establishment as others)
I sit:
actionless.

Up on the high chair -
head in the clouds
where thoughts are muddled
and
truth becomes tangled as doubt
mixes throughout -
I am kept in the high-chair
of infancy.

In reality,
I am a tool in the hand of the One
who claims the real high-chair:
the throne.

Yet, where was the enthroned One found?
Down
on Earth -
laughing, crying, sweating, walking, talking
with the people.
Love embodied who came not "to be served,
but to serve, and to give
His life
as a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28).

So, how can I
simply sit,
hearing Your truth, but doing
n  o  t  h  i  n  g.

{Father, forgive me}

Should not faith produce
action which brings
change which produces  
healing which fosters
faith again?
Should not this cycle of love
be compelling me to action?

{Father, forgive me}
Oh, LORD, we need You.

Instead of being "high up,"
let's get "hyped up" and sold out
for
Jesus.

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