Somewhere between my heart and my hands
Somewhere between my faith and my plans
Somewhere between the safety of the boat and the crashing waves
Somewhere in the middle, you’ll find me…
The first time I heard this song (Somewhere In The Middle by Casting Crowns), I cried. It was (and still is) for me a very close expression of my inner struggles and daily cry. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who struggles with my ordinariness and how I’m not ok with it.
Born into a Christian home, I had always known that there is a God and that we pray to Him but that was all. I grew up talking to that God in my own childish way, until I came home after Junior WAEC exams and my dad made me take baptism classes at 13. On the day I got baptized, right before I got dipped, I asked Jesus to come into my life. That day, I changed. I didn’t know or understand what had happened but I knew a new sense of calm and a very noticeable maturity came over me (most noticeable was the fact that I had lost all my desire to fight my elder brother). When I resumed back to school, everyone noticed the change though all just assumed it came with crossing into senior secondary school.
For a while, it was ok to simply be aware that I’m a changed person and to flow with the calm in my inner man, until God began making demands of me…
“You mustn’t do that”
“You can’t have that”
“You shouldn’t speak in that manner”
“You shouldn’t be found in that place”
“You have to apologize”
And I grew like that, learning to do and not to do. Even that started out easy, but you know how it goes as you grow in God.
The thing about growing up though, is that it happens both physically, spiritually and mentally simultaneously. But at some point, the physical begins to war against what’s happening on the inside and before long, it doesn’t feel like the same person anymore. I grew up largely independent so I tend to have a need to constantly have a grip on my life and keep it together by my own capacity. In my bid to do it all right, I often end up messing up the very thing I desire to hold together. This is the situation for many people. Even Apostle Paul experienced the same and put it thus;
For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice…. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind…. (Romans 7: 19-23)
The struggle to be who God has called us to be as opposed to who we perceive ourselves to be is real for every one on a walk with God. Even more real is the struggle between waiting on God and ‘taking charge’ of our own lives while expecting God to catch up with us or to show up when we get stuck in a rut.
But where exactly is the place or time when God shows up? I have learnt it is the place of full surrender. That place where we let go of all and yield our will to Him; where we give up on our own human capacity and look completely to Him to do what He will. This is God’s show up time. Unfortunately, the trend is that we surrender only after we are tired and beaten down, but ideally, surrender is the Christian’s lifestyle. A permanent way of existing. A lifestyle of perpetual trust and abandon to the will of the father.
This is the meeting point, where we are at all times hidden in him and He at all times carries us with His strength.