REdefined

As I lie awake in the hours where tomorrow fades to today, I wrestle with such indignant discontent.  My heart yearns to be back in Northern Ireland and, more often than I’m used to, have found myself in tears.  Whether a talk with a friend, leader, or one of the young people from the Emerald Isle, I am filled with mixed emotions of both defeat from not being back there right alongside the desire to trudge forward with determination in anticipation of a return to the place I have come to redefine as home and the people who have been redefined as family.

"Live for a purpose, not a paycheck."  While I must admit I heard this simple, yet profound sentence in an advert on TV, it has redefined my outlook on my life and even what I’m doing here to prepare for my return to Northern Ireland and its beautiful people.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach gymnastics yet again, which includes a paycheck.  What no one really knew was that I had been praying since my return state-side for opportunities to work and earn an income to put towards the financial side of the mission.  As I put on my STAFF shirt, walk through the doors of Top Flight Gymnastics, coach alongside teammates, and instruct young people in the art of gymnastics, it is not for the paycheck...that paycheck has been redefined as a purpose and a means to getting me back to where I left my heart months ago.

The engagement, wedding, baby, and puppy blues.  Anyone who knows me knows that my life since being home has been filled with announcements of engagements, weddings, babies, and puppies.  That is because I’m in the stage of life where everyone is redefining themselves and the aforementioned are encompassed in that redefinition.  The only problem is that although those are future desires of mine, right now they do NOT define me at all, but I have been battling the feeling and pressure of society that I should be there...but I’m not even headed in that direction.

I want to do so much more with my life than I am even doing now; not be defined by the status quo; I want to go beyond the world’s expectations; leave a legacy.  But where none of that points to me, but rather to the One for whom I live on purpose.  “I love You, Lord, but I want to love You more.  I need You, God, but I want to need You more . . . I’m desperate for a desperate heart.  I’m reaching out, I’m reaching.  All that I am is dry bones without You, Lord, a desert soul.  I am broken, but running towards you, God.  You make me whole.”  These lyrics are a cry for God’s redefinition, reconstruction back into our original purpose.

My cry is for God to redefine me, independent of how the world tries to define me.  C.S. Lewis once said, “I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."  I pray I let THAT world REdefine me.