to endless day

I'm treating insomnia [ok. maybe it's not insomnia. maybe i had a troubling dream and don't want to try laying still anymore. tomato. toMAHto.] by catching up on my blog subscriptions. I've mentioned her a few times before, but I have a monster girl-crush on this one.

Ya'll.

I've been reading Annie's blog for the last hour and I'm bawling like a child. She talks about friends, family, and grace - how on earth God uses one person to speak truth and humor and comfort and encouragement and peace to me in the middle of the night is a.maze.ing.

I try not to be too fluffy a person. My emotions are seriously strong, but that doesn't mean I think they should boss me. So I don't like to over-fluff things and be really feely about things that shouldn't be. But I will tell you - I've spent enough sleepless nights in my life to know that sometimes God wakes you up on purpose. [sigh. and now I know why this has been a song in my heart for the last week.] So I've learned to listen when I'm awake in the middle of the night.

I'm so glad I did.

I need to know that people like Annie exist in the world. Women who have successfully embraced the seemingly cray cray calling on their life - using their gifts and talents and yes, even insecurities, to serve people. And serve them well. It makes me feel like someday I'll be able to use the things I know I'm good at and it will mean something.

That's a really exciting thing for me because today [or yesterday, actually] I haven't felt useful. at. all. I have felt completely useless. What on earth am I even good at? And even if I were to miraculously obtain the confidence in my goodness to do something with it, how on earth do I make it actually matter? How do I communicate to others that I can be useful?


See, Annie - in ways she will never ever know - breathes hope in me that my gifts, my goodness; it's useful. It's underrated. You know how? She consistently speaks truthfully about her shortcomings and beautifully assigns credit for her successes to her Creator. There is no other way to be useful. 

Reading through the last two months of Annie's post tonight, I found myself heart-singing this old hymn and man - you know what music does to me. Assurance began to trickle into my heart;

love cannot from it's post withdraw;

nor death, nor hell, nor sin, nor law,

can turn the Surety's heart away;

he'll love his own to endless day.

It's OK if I feel useless [and let's be honest. useless might just be the nice way of saying incompetent or disposable]. But it's not the truth. It just isn't. And it never will be true.

I think it's so great that God uses any method he wants to do what he wills - using a crazy dream to wake me up, and a series of blog posts to wreck me and pull me through the quagmire of unidentified mess in my heart. I might be a weepy, snotty mess but I am overwhelmed at the amount of grace given to me through Annie and her words.

Do yourself a favor, especially if you are a female, or if you know any females, and read what she has to say.