The past few weeks I’ve been giving away my clothes and shoes, selling possessions I never thought I could part with, and starting to let go of emotions, hurts, and worries that I’ve carried for far too long. My stuffed closets are starting to take deep breaths of relief now that they can, and my mind is focused and renewed. But I’ve been met with this question a few times and haven’t been able to provide an adequate answer to it until right now, “You’re giving so much away, do you have anything left for yourself?”
And my answer is, I still have everything left to give.
The thing I’ve learned about growing closer to God is that when we let him start peeling away the layers of humanness that have grown up all around our hearts, He doesn’t just pull away the pieces that have died to us, He doesn’t just take the pieces we are ready to lay down, He takes everything. He takes it because He has to, He takes it because anything not of Him is not for us, anything we hold closer than Him means death for us, and sometimes He takes it because this life is simply not about us.
As I think about “my everything” a lump rises in my throat. I think about all I hold dearly to my chest, my family, my health, my mind, and surely that can’t be included in what God would ask me to offer up to Him. But then I look around at my friends who’ve lost babies and parents and spouses, my family who fights cancer and sickness, and all of the others around me who have lost these most treasured things, and I know that yes, God wants everything.
But what I’ve been forgetting and maybe you have too, is that this life and everything in it is a gift from God. Everything is His.
Colossians 1:16 “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”
Fit Grit & Grace 