crocodile tears.

16 Feb 2011 18 Comments

by mary kathryn tyson in hard truth: about calling, life abundant.

i need for you to know what god did in my heart last week. i need for you to know the impact of how he used you in my life.

*i hesitate to post this for worry it could be considered ‘false humility’. it’s worth the risk, though. i know what’s in my own heart and i hope i can communicate my gratitude in such a way that you hear & receive it into yours, unfiltered.*

i grew up thinking i would never be used by god. because i couldn’t be. i have told you this before - i grew up believing that i would have been content to eat scraps from the table, if i could just eat from the table at all. i knew i could never be first, second, or third best – i was fine to be tenth, eleventh or twelfth best. or twentieth. or one hundred and twentieth.

it took years and years and years of gut-wrenching, mind-changing, heart-healing, soul-freeing LABOR so that i no longer lived that way.

but i remember that girl.

and when i think about the sheer magnitude -the absolute, all-consuming weight- of what GOD has done in my life…

y’all. there are just no words. i tell my stories so that you can know…but i don’t know if you truly can know…

to go from being the girl who thought god only tolerated her and certainly could never use her, no matter how much she wanted to be used…

to actually being used…

i am on. my. face.

several weeks ago, when i went to the worship center, the same woman who prayed about and against the relationship-trauma in my life also spoke into me that i would be used to bring truth. to speak truth. that, when truth started bubbling up, to just speak it and don’t shirk back from it and god would use it because it was his truth for his people.

i never want to draw people to myself. that’s how cults get started. i am confident in the lord, cautious in myself. it is with holy fear that i ever say bold, hard things because i don’t want to preach from the gospel of mary kathryn. we’ve all seen what happens to preachers who get cocky.

my heart -my true heart- is to minister grace and mercy and love to women’s hearts that need to be set free. (i love when what i say speaks to a man, but since i know women well and men NOT AT ALL, my heart is mainly toward my girfriends.) all of my messages, all of my posts til now, have been based from this grace place. it is still the truest message of my heart. i normally shy away from hard truth because i’d rather let someone else do that. i am perfectly content to be the comfy couch where all are welcome to come and sit. also because i know i can sometimes get on a soapbox and hammer truth, forgetting grace. i don’t want to do that. {i also have this fear that i’m going to say something just completely theologically unfounded, as i am not a bible scholar, or that i’ll simply be misunderstood.}

i am still the same comfy couch, which i think is more of a testament to the family in which i was raised. i can still hear the screen door of our red barn house slamming from all the coming and going of friends, family & stray dogs. all are welcome at my door. {um…but call first? please? i don’t really like surprises. }

but then last week happened.

can i be honest with you? last monday’s post had been brewing for several months, but it came to a head through an email conversation i had had with a friend the week prior (she knows this). i was annoyed when i started writing - not necessarily with my friend but with the enemy who is so divisive and robs us of so much if we allow. i wasn’t even sure i was going to post it, i thought it might have been a rant. but once i got started, i couldn’t stop - you can hear it when i said that there was a series coming forth. and it did.

and truth was spoken. and you heard it. and not only did you hear it but your comments and your emails to me…i have not once in 7 months of blogging, or really in my life that i can remember…had the type of responses that last week’s impromptu series generated.

and i’m not even talking about the encouragement and support i personally received from my cheerleaders -i can’t even talk about that, i’m so overwhelmed. {catherine? just forget about it. i have no words for you, you beautiful child of god. what an honor it is to be your friend for so many years now.} i’m talking about what god was doing in you through the message he placed in me – that it wasn’t an affront to your pride, but that you would open your hearts to allowing the holy spirit to change you, to heal you, to set you free.

which set me free.

i received more hits last week than any other, which i certainly didn’t anticipate. i’m not telling you this to boost myself but because that’s how important truth is. truth matters. we need it. desperately. don’t we? truth bundled in love comes from a familiar place within the messenger and we, the recipient, know when it is pure just as we know when it is insincere.

i don’t know what direction to head in now, to be honest. i will continue to speak on grace, love and mercy but i will keep listening for the other. and if i never have another truth-message to share, i will always be blown away by how god used you to speak truth into me.

for all these things, from the bottom of my heart…i don’t know if you can ever really know…thank you.

and thank You.

if you’ll allow, i’d like to challenge you - to say the hard things, wrapped up in genuine love and undergirded in unconditional grace. you never know whose heart needs changing based on the message that god has given you to speak aloud. there may be no monetary gain or tangible reward but, as sojourners of faith, our reward is in honoring our father.

didn’t you know? we’re on the backside of this story, friends. the end’s already been written, the battle already fought and won. the price has already been paid.

we have nothing to lose, nothing to prove. speak truth.

{to the jews who had believed him, jesus said, “if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” -john 8:31-32, niv (emphasis mine)}

{then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, christ. from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. -eph 8:14-16, niv (emphasis mine)}