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When I started Mustard Seed Year, I had planned to operate with a focus forward. Leave the feelings and wounds of the past behind me because they were most of the sources of fear of failure. Then the year began and MSY didn’t start the way I thought things would go. I found myself fighting feelings of insecurity because of something that Alece Ronzino had been doing on her blog with “One Word 2011.”
“One Word 2011″ is a community of people who are doing what I had done the previous three years…get a one word theme you feel God impressing on you and live it out in the next year. Be open to how God is working that theme into your daily life.
I have nothing against the idea or how God used Alece to blow up the idea to a bigger scale. Over 150 people rushed to join the community and more were joining every day. Twitter blew up with people linking their “one word” posts and retweeting fellow OneWordians.
My issue seemed to be that I was feeling left behind. Left out. The kid who stopped being into a certain band just before the “cool kids” started listening to them. The kid who wasn’t invited to the cool kid’s party across the street and having to sit in his room and watch the joyful celebrations.
If I had just picked one word and chased it, I could fit in. If I hadn’t done this Mustard Seed thing I felt God telling me to do then I’d have all kinds of people supporting and cheering me on. I wouldn’t feel like an outcast.
Then early this morning, as I stood in the shower thinking about all of it and trying to let the warm water wash the blues away, I realized that I was having the same feelings as my teen years. The same hurts. The same wounds. I realized what God was allowing to feel these things as a way to bring them to the surface and recognize why I reacted in the manner I did when I saw everything flowing for One Word. It was a foundation that needed to be torn down like He had done with so many things last year when He stretched my faith to the limit.
The moment I realized that, God whispered to me.
“You’re not that kid in high school ignored by the popular kids anymore,” He said. ”You’re not being left out because you refuse to compromise what you felt me telling you. You’re a man obeying what I said to do even if it means doing something no one else seems to be doing. This is the path for you. This is what it means when it’s just you and me.”
Yeah…that’s a powerful word from Dad. But He wasn’t done. The kicker brought me to tears.
“And you’re ready for this.”
