Today is the day to shed the lies we’ve believed about who we are.

Why do we hang on to what hurts us?

Maybe it’s because no one has told us it’s okay to let it go.

Maybe it’s because we are so familiar with the way it feels inside our hands.

We want to to be seen and to be known.  We want to be loved, we want to feel as though we belong.  We want to be connected, we want to fit in.  And somewhere along the way, we’ve picked up the notion that we are only seen for what tarnishes us.  The lies are the only thing we know and we assume they’re the only things others know about us, too.

But today is the day to let the light in.

Consider this your permission.

Your permission to let that hurt go.

To release it, let it hit the floor.  I know the feeling of emptiness inside your hands.  I feel it myself.  Who am I apart from the past running up to meet me?

Who am I?

It’s the most fundamental question we ask.

Are we liked?  Are we cared for?  Do we fit in?  Do we work well with others?  Are we part of the team?

Oh my friend, let that sweet girl go.

Stop holding her to impossible standards of perfection.  Stop demanding her to shape up and be more lovely.  Stop telling her the only thing worth knowing about her is all the things that keep her up at night.

Because she is so much more than the lies she’s been told.

She is so much more than the lies she’s been told.

She is so much more than the lies she’s been told.

Today is the day to let the light shine through the cracks of who we are.  Yes, that ancient and holy light.  Today is the day to let it pour out and shine through because

we are not who we think we are. 

When we decide we are inadequate, we live as less than who we are — living as only a shade of who God has made us to be.  When this happens, the suffering of the one hiding is nothing compared to the suffering of the world that needs to see her light.

Let’s start swimming in truth instead of drowning ourselves in who we think we should be.

Because what this world needs is who God has made us to be, not the perfect versions of who we think we should be or the ugly and useless versions of who we think we are.

We are not defined by the hurt but we are unique vessels crafted out of healing. 

And I want to walk out nothing else than the incredible story of the way he’s healed me.  I want to walk out nothing else than the intrinsic design he’s given me.

I refuse those lies as identity.  Do I not know the identity he has given me is so much better? So much lovelier.

Today I walk not as someone useless and abandoned, but as a daughter of God who’s seen the healing and will continue to see the healing because my God does not forsake.

I am his.  I am his.

Who am I other than one deeply loved by God?

I am his.

I am free, I am free, I am free

Freedom, my anthem cry

Freedom, my lifeblood beat

Like clouds casting shadows over rolling hills — freedom sky meeting freedom earth — I run

Breathless and wild

I roam

No more limits, no more insecurity

Get off me, you lying and shifting ideas of who I am and what I am worth

You attempt to keep me barred and broken

But what you don’t understand is this:

It is for freedom that Christ has set me free

And hallelujah

He will see it through