Meditations from the heart

Many years ago while I was attending Christ Community Church in my hometown of Ottawa Illinois I was taught that God gives us a word. A word for the direction of our lives. A word for the year and ever since then I have looked and listened deep within me for what that word would be. A few months after God had spoken to me and asked me to come out of hiding and I was back at my job at Kiddie Academy an opportunity came for me to study and become a lead toddler teacher. I had been approached several times within the 2 years that I had been an assistant teacher but just never had the confidence to say yes. I just wasn’t ready. As Ecclesiastes 3:1 says: For everything that happens in life—there is a season, a right time for everything under heaven: I was a few months back and my lead toddler teacher was ready to move on to begin working in an elementary school and I knew I was ready to fully embrace the dream God had given me. At this time God gave me the word Shine for this season and I was ready to receive it. Psalm 34:5 says Look to Him and shine, so shame will never contort your faces. I knew plenty about shame and how it had pushed me down into hiding. First God had asked me to come out of hiding and now He was asking me to shine. That was quiet a jump for me. I felt like He was asking me to jump across the sky. Sometimes we think this is too much but really its just small little steps built one on top of the other. The truth was I had been shining within my job for quite some time. Although I was an assistant teacher I was already doing the work of a lead teacher. It was just a matter of saying yes. Another yes. But first I must work. So last summer I spent every evening studying. I knew how to put in the work. I knew if I did my part God would do His and I just had to trust the results. I have seen this work over the years as I put in the work to recover from childhood abuse. I also knew that whatever I put in was what I was going to receive. So I worked at it with all my heart for my dream was all heart. I put thought and dedication in all I did. I took my tests and was observed and each step of the way God directed me and in the end it didn’t feel so hard for me because it was what God made me to do. Now it was just time to feel it, to receive it and to embrace it. For with these children whom I love with all my heart I am most myself. I see and feel the best of myself and I shine just as Christ has shined upon me all these years and pulled me out of a childhood where I felt unseen and unsafe. He has taken my wounds and used them. Just as he promised many years ago He said Mary I will bring you to a wide and open space and indeed I have tasted and seen that it is good and it is indeed beautiful.