Friday, March 28, 2014

A Letter To Myself As A Little Girl

Dear Little Michelle,
 
I honestly don't know what to say, or how to start, to express my heart.  There are so many thoughts, but after taking a journey through our shared history I think these things are what you most need to hear.
 
I would like you to know, deeply within yourself, that being a girly girl is a GOOD thing. It's not a bad thing. God made you to enjoy frills and twirling skirts and pink and sparkles and magical stories of adventure and beauty. That's part of the beauty in you that God placed there to be enjoyed. But not all. There is so much more beauty that you carry than is seen on the outside.
 
There are forces in the world, bad forces that will use all sorts of voices, to crush you and make you into someone cold and hard and dark. Those forces DO NOT WIN! Not in the end. Hold onto that. It will help you.
 
You were made to love and laugh and sparkle. You were made to passionately and deeply feel and to imagine -- bright castles, towering mountains, soaring hawks, white horses racing across windy fields, a good king and a kind prince who are strong and whose hearts you touch and move. You were made for love and delight. All of the voices that tell you differently are lying to you. Do not believe their lies.  Do not believe HER lies. Do not believe HIS lies.  I know that you have, but you don't have to any more. The good king and kind prince are real, and they say what is true. They say "Do not believe their lies. Believe in the beauty you were made to be, and believe the beauty you have to offer the world." Believe their voices. 
 
I know that nobody taught you these things. You weren't taught that beauty is good; that being sensitive and a person who feels many things deeply is good; that being delighted in is a good thing to desire. But beauty is good. Being sensitive and a person who feels many things deeply is good. It is good to desire to be delighted in. God delights in you and He made you to desire that from Him, and from those He will send whose hearts are good and open and can re-present Him to you. Just as you can re-present Him to them.
 
If I could step through a door in time and space, I would take you away from all of the dark and heavy and angry and mean and hateful things that came into your life and person when you were far, far too young to be able to cope with them. And even that...THAT thing...that awful thing that nobody is every able to handle, no matter how old or grown up they are, because it is just too evil. You survived them. They hurt you and left marks, but you are not destroyed by them.
 
If I could step through the door, I would take you away from all of the bad and we would PLAY!  We would go on adventures! We would run through the fields and pick flowers and wild berries! We would feed the horses and we would stalk the squirrels! We would skip and swing and twirl and laugh and dance!  Oh...how we would dance!!  We would create the good memories so that when dark seasons come - and dark seasons do come in this very broken world - you would have so much good on your insides to hold onto that the dark season doesn't seem as endless and hopeless. Because hope is remembering forward. And you were made for that, too. You were made for hope.
 
Faith, hope and love. These things remain.  You, little Miss Michelle, were created for all three of these.