On Letting Go and S'mores

Friends circled around a bonfire, and God had a victory in their presence.

Magnificent victory. Victory glorious and as I toasted marshmallows and fashioned s'mores in true summer celebration, I longed to be back in the vulnerable moments as my faith family of young believers and seekers and radical grace-tasters found the victory in that fire.



Each held reasons not to trust God in our hands, symbolized by fragile twigs cut from the branches overhead. Each friend held the twig, turning it over as voices wavered revealing the stories deep, the wounds deep, and revealing why the weakling sticks in our hands were actually monsters, rock-solid and growing and growing, not twigs, but towering tree-trunks endless.

 

But it's not until we receive the invitation to burn these reasons we do not trust our Maker, our Savior, our Strong and Mighty.

We could actually be rid of these sores, these wounds, these reasons that turn into fears that turn into lives not lived in fullness of grace.

In the darkness there, as friends rose and let go of the burdens, I realized that these reasons not to trust, while they may seem daunting and insurmountable, well, they become what they really are when we know the fire that promises to burn them.

When we know the fire that promises to destroy them, we see them for all they are: weak, and insignificant.



And we rejoiced in the freedom of letting go. Letting go of past abuses. Letting go of broken hearts after being cheated. Letting go of friendships ended after giving so much. Letting go of eating disorders. Letting go of addictions. Letting go of shattered homes. Letting go of abandonment, of the not-belonging that makes us believe healing is impossible.

In that moment of tossing the twig, hearing the crackle and watching the golden flames waving int he darkness, burning my hurt, I realized that in my lack of trust for God, I denied a full recovery.

I had always just assumed my disorder would never be healed, that the insecure thoughts and torturous obsessions would always be a part of me.

Oh, but it's not. Healing is real. And the trust is the key.

Because the fire of Heavenly Victory has won. Trusting Him, I walk gingerly into the fullness of life, where I ask and I receive from the Father whose glory is all around and whose love is never-ending.

So I sank my teeth into the sweet s'more I had made, laughing with friends as we debated on whose marshmallow was most perfectly cooked, and knew the sweetness of surrender.