His Presence is the Only Safe Place for Me
From a young age, I have learned that to be successful I must be perfect. To be heard, I must be loud. To be received, I must conform. In all of these things, I have understood that perfection will always conform to the values of the place. Growing up in a physically and emotionally abusive home, I learned that conformity to what my father required was absolutely necessary if I wanted to be safe. Safety was only possible when I met the rules, met the standard. Without my performance, my safety, comfort, and security would be compromised. I rarely felt safe at home. Even when I was alone, I carried this looming fear that someone was coming, someone is looking, there are cameras somewhere— paranoia.
Paranoia would be the best way to describe those hours of loneliness alone. I seldom felt the space or permission to rest. I didn’t know what rest looked like. I’m talking true internal emotional rest. I rarely felt that.
In Jesus, I have found true rest. He tells me the Truth about who He is, about who I am, and it has produced so much peace.
Growing up in church is a privilege in that you get to know of the One True and Living God, but there is nothing like being in relationship with thee True and Living God. He knows exactly how to talk to me, how to love me, how to make me feel seen in little and big ways throughout the day. It’s beautiful— to be in intimate relationship with your Creator.
I feel an invitation from the Lord to be content with loneliness— or perhaps more accurately articulated as being alone. As an extrovert, I love knowing people, I love talking to people, it brings me so much pleasure and enjoyment. However, the solitude that the prophetic requires is one that naturally means that less people have access to me. I spend more time with God and so there is less time to be with others. I find I am grieving this. I am grieving the loss of a relationship with the world. I know I have it in me to lead and to be seen and to be a significant figure and yet I feel the call of God to obscurity.
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Mark 8:36 NIV
God is calling me to a contemplative, inward life. This does not mean that I don’t engage with the world but my engagement with the world has become much more narrow, as my relationship to God widens, and deepens. My spiritual mentor and my mother often tell me, “You are blessed to have 1 or 2 close friends in your life…” I have been fighting this, but I believe I am beginning to make my peace with this.
“Nicole stop fantasizing about who you would have been in the world. Rejoice in who you are in Christ!” I hear the Lord say.
I am not important in Christ… and I find that’s the whole point. He is the only one worthy of glory. I feel small, insignificant when I stand next to Him. He is the life of the party; all eyes are on Him. Then—
He turns just to me, calls me out by name, dances with me in front of everyone. This is what it’s like to come into intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.
What does it matter that I’m not the life of the party if He is the center of my world? He is the only one I am looking at anyway; it is His opinion alone that matters.
Perhaps that is what God is after in my life right now: the weight of opinions. He wants to be the only weighted voice in my life. Every other voice must be checked by His. If it doesn’t align with what He’s saying then it is to be thrown out and discarded.
How does all of this relate to my upbringing and constant paranoia? The more I look at Him, the less afraid I become. There is no truly “safe” place in the world we can unconditionally be ourselves, flaws and all. It doesn’t exist. The only safe place is the presence of God.
When I am tempted to listen to the voices of my past which try to tell me how to live in my present in order to be “safe,” I must remember what God has spoken. I may have been conditioned via my childhood to protect myself by my performance, but in Christ I am unconditionally seen, safe, and loved. I do not have it within me to be free from society’s pressure and the lies running rampant in my own mind; He alone is my safe place.
I am safe in His arms.
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?Psalm 27:1
God is dealing with the unbelief in my heart. Either I believe this to be true or I don’t. If I am honest, I still feel fear. I feel a deep fear of not being seen, of not belonging, of not being important, of not “mattering…”
I must remember that He is the only one that matters. Truly, if the world denies me but Christ accepts me, I have gained everything.
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
