Where are you?

 There are a few defining moments in our Christian lives - moments of 'before that experience' and ' after that experience' - revelations or reckonings or happenings which forever transform us and our understanding of who we are and who God is.   Two of those moments in my life have happened whilst sitting in my car at traffic lights.

About 15 years ago I was driving home from work, stopped at a set of lights and without so much as a 'by your leave' God said ' Caz, where are you?'    It wasn't an audible voice but it was a thought which broke in with such utter clarity that it might as well have been.   Of course we know that with God all such questions are entirely rhetorical, but nonetheless I answered ( I cant remember if I actually spoke out loud )  'I'm right here Lord'  and as soon as I had said/thought that, an image came to mind of a huge pile of papers and I knew that somewhere the paper with my name on it was right at the bottom of the pile.   God said ' Where is the Caz that I created? Where is the creative Caz? The culture loving Caz? The sociable Caz?  Where has the funny, crazy, fiercely independent, capable Caz gone? '  And I instantly knew what He meant.  15 years ago that Caz had all but disappeared.   I had been buried under a pile of parenting, housekeeping, working, serving responsibilities........ and the thing is, I had assumed that all those things were God's design and plan for my life - even though they were making me miserable and exhausted.  Within the space of two minutes sitting at the traffic lights I understood a whole world of truth.  I had been trying to squeeze myself into a shape that God had never designed me to be.  I had mistakenly believed that putting everyone and everything before myself was what He required of me.   Because sacrifice is good right?  Looking after others is what we are called to do isnt it?  I was mother to three small boys and that was surely the thing I was called to do above all else.

But no.  Actually what I saw suddenly with a piercing clarity was that in order for me to do anything for God or for anyone else what I first needed to do was to fully be the person He had created.  I was, in fact, cheating God by not being fully myself.  He had made me to be strong and clever and caring and generous and encouraging and musical and creative and so many other things and I had let most of myself die under the weight of a false notion of roles and duties and responsibilities.  As a result, I was being a grudging wife and a barely adequate mother - I was in a spiritual drought and I was deeply unhappy.

God's question to me - 'where are you?'  changed everything.  Because it showed me what He already knew.  I was lost.

It is possible to be completely saved and still be lost.

Thankfully God is in the business of finding lost ones.  So that day He called me back to being the person He had created me to be.  That day I went home and changed things.  I stopped being a doormat for my family.  I started doing things I had long enjoyed and had set aside.  I gave myself permission to think about my own happiness - and shock horror, I even spent some money on myself for a change !  If I wanted to see a film that nobody else wanted to see I just bought myself a ticket and went to the cinema.  I stopped waiting for people to notice what I needed and started asking.  I started telling Keith and the boys about the small niggly things they did every day that drove me round the bend - and for the most part they understood and stopped. :)  Slowly but surely Caz re-emerged.  I wasnt the same Caz that I had been at 12 yrs old or 20 yrs old, but the essence of me was reborn,

I still battle with the idea that sometimes Im just being selfish.  I still occasionally listen to the voice that tells me that my duty and my job is to be a good wife and mother and employee and church member.  But these days Im more able to recognise that it's not by doing stuff that God is honoured.  Its by being fully Caz.   He has made us all in His image.  Fearfully and wonderfully.  To do the works He has appointed for us to do because only we can do them.   He came that we would be fully alive as He is fully alive.  Authentic, with no shadow of turning, no pretending, no 'going through the motions'.  At the end of the day we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn 3:2) And we shall be seen for who we are.  Who we truly are - the image of God.   Do you believe that you carry part of the image of God - you are like a jigsaw piece without which the full picture of the face of God can't be completed. When people meet you they are meeting Him - not just notionally, but actually.   I have non-christian friends who think I'm an amazing person - and I am amazing.  Because I'm made in His image and He is amazing.  I'm indwelt by His amazing Spirit.  I'm being transformed daily more and more into who He had in mind before the creation of the universe.  And this is you too.   So today I'm asking ( and maybe He is too ) Where are you??