Straighten Your Crown

(first published on sarahlunsford.com)

Straighten your crown they said.

So, you push it back up on your head, metaphorically speaking, of course, and it slides sideways again, and again, and again while you’re always pushing it back. Until you get tired and take it off, looking at it for the very first time.

The problem with looking at the crown is you actually see it. You see that it may not reflect you at all. It reflects a version of you that others want you to be. Sparkly. Brilliant. Beautiful. Bright. All the things they value, but what if you don’t value those things at all? Or, you just value them in a different way? So, they look different from what everyone around you is trying to put on your head, instead of reflecting who you really are.

That’s the great rub in all of this, this trying to fit something on us that doesn’t fit after all, that will no doubt cause some sort of wounding inside of us. The difference between who we are and who others think we’re supposed to be.

What I’ve found is the closer we get to the God that sits with us in the shadows, the closer we learn who we are and we see how ill-fitting the crown is.

I prefer darker things. Not horrible, ugly dark things, but the things that move carefully in the shadows and see everything around them. The beauty that is locked in a struggle with itself because it isn’t socially acceptable. The fine line between darkness and light where most of us actually live.

The place where the thread of light runs through the smoky darkness of people’s souls.

The people who have crowns in that world don’t have crowns of gold and brilliant white diamonds, but of titanium and rubies, silver and sapphire’s, stainless steel and emeralds. Their crowns are hard won, woven and bent in heat and set in freezing temperatures.

Their crowns fit, no balancing or pushing back required. Just a determined stubbornness to not let anyone else define them, and, the perseverance to allow themselves to grow in the shadows in the presence of their God.

Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Isaiah 62:3

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Of Hellscapes and Fever Dreams

Photo by Kristal Tereziu on Pexels.com

So, it’s been quite awhile since I’ve added anything of substance, or anything at all, to this blog.

My story is the same, my focus is the same, if not a little hazy from the literal Hellscape I’ve been living in at work for the last almost two years (I walked out before it boiled me to death a few months ago, which has since become a literal faith walk), along with the fuzziness of life in general for many years before that. I mean really, aren’t there times when we look back and we wonder where all the time has gone? What we’ve been doing? Then realizing we’ve been doing more than humans really should be doing and are surprised when we’re totally burnt out.

I actually was running on totally burnout since 2017. What made it worse is that I decided to give up freelance writing in about 2019. Along with writing, I had added a full-time job, a part-time job and taking care of my elderly, disabled mother. Because writing was the easiest thing for me to do (I had been a freelance journalist for almost 20 years at that point and had many systems in place to produce what was needed of me quickly and efficiently), I assumed it was the least valuable of all the things I did. I was wrong. I didn’t realize at the time the thing that God gives us to do is not just meant as a gift to us, but a gift for us.

What do I actually mean by that? Well, from what I’ve seen in the Western World instead of pursuing those things that we are naturally good at, naturally gifted at, we tend to pursue those things that we have to work hard to conquer and make work. Many times, the things we pursue, even if we are Believers, are not the things that the Lord has gifted us with but the things that will give us a successful life.

But, I ask you, whose definition of success are we pursuing?

That’s not to say we don’t have to work to develop and hone our gifts, but, if we’re developing non-gifts for worldly success what actually is the cost to us? I mean really, Jesus himself said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” in Mark 8:36. It’s a whole thing with him, I suggest you go and read the chapter.

Like I would imagine many of you, for many years I was always pushing from one thing to the next, doing the best work I could, taking care of those around me, which I’ll get into in another blog post. At the end of the day what I realized was that pretty much a lot of what I was doing in my life was just a bad fit. I had no feeding and one of those reasons was because I wasn’t even using the only gift the Lord had given me. Why? Because I had little appreciation or regard for it, for the very reason that I adapted easily to it.

I’ve come to understand that by not actively pursuing the gift the Lord gave me, that I’ve been starving myself of a basic spiritual nutrient I needed to live. Now, all of us have different gifts and all of us develop those gifts differently, but please understand that just because something is a gift and it come easily to you, that doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable, and, dare I say, necessary for your very survival in the world. The gift is a part of the God that gave it, and, when we reject it for other things, we reject Him.

Think on that for a minute.

So, I’m back and lucky you, you get to hear about how faithful the Lord was as I walked through the Hellscape and Fever Dream of my life in the past long while.

Check back often. If it’s not fun, at least it will be interesting. I mean really, isn’t life with the Lord always that way anyway?

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