alter

Everyday I must surgically extract parts of my inner, delicate self - parts that seem to my mind and the world to be perfectly justified and far from wrong - and then I must lay them on an alter and brutally murder them.

You'll scoff and say that was a needlessly violent and overly dramatic way of expressing the process of surrender. But today I was profoundly challenged to sacrifice the one thing that I have held tightly to, loved, protected and raised for five whole years. Today I was Abraham, preparing to kill my Issac.

Today God pulled from my heart my love and gift of acting. He placed it before in a memorial of all my past performances. He replayed for me the tape-recording of my thoughts. He reread my 2007 revelation. He pressed and prodded the quivering thing that had become like my only son. He asked me, "do you love me enough to sacrifice even this?" And I spoke louder than Him and rolled off excuses and ranted and raved. I refused to answer and I huffed and whined. (As I often do).

But I know that following God means loving Him more than all that He can give me. Choosing Jesus means forsaking all others. Being used by the Father means letting Him choose how. And dying to myself, my flesh, means sacrificing the very thing that seems to make me who I am.

Even as I write this, I am grieving. My heart is aching like a childless mother.

I know that God may choose to give this gift back to me. He may call me back to the stage to serve and glorify Him. He may indeed stop me the moment before I plunge that knife into this beloved creature. And though that it is my hope, I and mine must make the trek to the top of the mountain, simply and completely for love.