.Skinny dipping epiphany.

I have the privilege of hanging out with high school girls and speaking into their lives.   This is amazing to me, I have so much to say... things I wish I would have heard from a loving place at their age.  On the flip side of that…watching what they are worried about, insecure about, scared of, and what they celebrate is such a window to a place I used to be.

As a child I often got the message that I needed to store up my dreams and aspirations.  Keep my wild ideas in my head.  Woah.  Don't let those fly around.  They are unpredictable, and unheard of.  They are scary for people who have lids on their boxes, and caps on their bottles.

Subduing the things that make you, you…makes for an odd person.  I think a few of us (wink)(me included)(wink again) live our lives out of so much fear that we put all kinds of caps and lids on our wonderful.

That's ok.  There's hope for us all.  I'm learning to be uncorked, undone, unraveled. 

I'd rather be an odd person completely on fire and passionate about my life, than an odd person because I am stifling myself. 

So last night we have a night set aside to do whatever we want as a group of girls.  We decide (as the rebel people that we are), we are going skinny dipping.  This is how you keep life exciting when you are prudes like us.  You get naked in the pitch black when no one will see you.  Extremely freeing to say the least.

We are driving in the car, a group of girls just looking for fun...and willing to do anything to find it, as long as we can bring Jesus with us. 

So the country music is blaring, the wind is swirling, our voices are rising…we are fun.  We want the wind.  We want the adventure.  We want the sappiest song, that makes our heart long for the fairytale.

But what I feel more than anything in this car… Is the desire to be loved.  To be cherished.  To be seen and heard.  To be uncorked.  To be discovered.  To be captured.  To be swept off of our feet.  This isn't just the high school girls.  This is girls.   This is us.  We want to be loved.  We want to be seen as the most precious.  The most beautiful.  We want to be pointed out of a crowd, chosen, set apart, and LOVED.  If you are a woman, and tell me you have never felt like this.  I will be so bold to say you are lying.  And if you have felt like this, but stifled it, and put it in someone else's box, and believed you aren't good enough to have everything you ever dreamed of.  I'm here to crush that lie.  Smash it, and stomp on it, and sing all over it with the truth.

I know Jesus.  Which means I know a love like no other.  I have been swept away, and had the author of romance knock on my door.  I have wind when I need it, and a song written for me in my ear.  I have love letters in sunsets dedicated to me.  I have shooting stars, and surprises, and whispers of love and affirmation.

So here's the epiphany of the night.  I want someone to drive to the lake with me at 1 in the morning.  I mean, someone that's a man…as much as I love the high school girls.  Not to go skinny dipping (well, not until we are married).  I want to get lost together and in each other, and hold hands.  I want long hysterical meaningful conversation that I never get sick of.  And I know that it's possible.  I've never said that out loud before.  It's possible.  Someone to woo me that I can woo back.  Someone to worship the same creator with.  Someone who wants to chase Jesus with me.

But here's the thing.  I don't want it more than I want my relationship with God.  Because he has my heart, all of it.  And if I'm meant to share it with someone else that would be great.  But I WILL NOT sacrifice him for it. 

So my prayer for these girls, and me, and us…is that we would learn to celebrate Him.  Learn to celebrate ourselves.  And when that relationship that's supposed to come, comes…It adds to us and does not take away.  There is no striving.  No questioning.  No pretending. 

And until then, I will let the LOVER OF MY SOUL do just that.

Amen.