known one.

it's tuesday.
it's 8:40.
I'm early for work, for once, and I find myself with thoughts and thoughts and thoughts, and for once, time.
last night I was reading a book that long wedged itself into my heart, ages ago, when I didn't know half as much as I do now, and yet, it still carries the same weight for me as it did then. these strange ashes, an account of Elisabeth Elliot's first years as a missionary, deep in the jungles of Ecuador. a single woman, with a love secretly stowed in her heart, awaiting a word from Jesus himself. it's very much a story about patience, about holding on and not letting go, even when your fingers feel like they are being literally pulled away by exhaustion and disappointment and fear.
and I think, maybe, that is why it has so much influence over me. I feel that. I feel that down to my toes. It is gut-wrenching, but the kind that is utterly painful until you start rushing down the other side, totally thrilled having promptly left all misery behind all of a sudden. (I feel the same way about ziplines?)
the past month has taught me much about that. and Jesus himself has made me worthy of this calling by the strength and goodness of His hand.
I am His servant, here I am. But those three words


here

I

am


they take on a different personality when I understand them not so much as, I am waiting in this place for you to take me somewhere, I am ready
but as, here I am, here is all of me, every part I like you to see, and every part I would like to just hide away in the closet, thank you very much. here I am. use my life as an example.
you know, I meant for this blog to be a place of thoughts, but I also, at least in my head, implied to myself a certain honesty that I have been lacking. and not because of readership, either.
It's scary to be known. To be really, truly known by others. When someone points out your quirks and your insecurities that keep popping up in conversation when you begin sentences with "I feel the same way but for me...." - that is scary.
In the Bible, the Hebrew for "to know" is "yada."
Adam knew Eve. He knew her so well, so intimately. She was made for him, a part of him. He yada her.
To talk of insecurity, of habits and quirks and mistakes and failures - it is difficult. But those are the things that have made me the woman I am. They do not define me, but the journey of arranging and letting go and rearranging and gathering up of those things - THAT. that is what cultivates velvet steel in me. that is what I mean when I say, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." that is what I mean when I say, "in loving-kindness, Adonai, Abba, has made me, knit me in my mother's womb, known me before time began as well as He knows every star in the sky." that is why I say, "let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee." those are the defining threads of life that weave in and out of my regular life.
because of those things. and why I would rather hide those things, when I think about it that way? 
 be brave. let yourself be known. 

then, revel in how God uses that for astonishing good. 

"She is clothed in strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."