When I Was a Little Girl—Psalm 139

When I was a little girl, there was a game that I would often play.  I would lock myself in my room, crawl into my closet and shut the closet doors.  Then I would pretend that when I stepped out of those doors, I would be someone else–everything wrong, everything I was afraid of, everything I didn’t like would disappear, and I would be someone completely different.  Princess Leia from Star Wars was a favorite!  But oftentimes, I would pretend like I was someone else in my school class–someone who seemed to have it all together.  Someone who seemed to have an easy life.  I would then step out of my closet and “be” that person, prancing around my room “acting” like I think they would act.

I wanted to be someone else.

It’s amazing how, to this day, I still play this game in a way.  Oh, sure, I don’t crawl into my closet to play this game anymore (although there are days….!).  And I no longer desire to be Princess Leia.  But I look at other’s lives and think “If only…..”.  I look at my life and instead of seeing the miraculous, I focus on the shatteredness.  Instead of seeing the beautiful, I focus on the missing.  Instead of seeing God’s hand, I focus on the valley’s.  And then I find myself wishing to be something else.  Wishing to be someone else.  Wishing to be different.

And in doing so, I negate God’s design for my life.

You see, in Psalm 139, the Psalmist writes:

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

And earlier in the chapter (you can read it in its entirety below) the Psalmist proclaims “O Lord, you have searched me and known me!”

You see, I forget this.  What I didn’t know as a child, I know now as an adult, and yet I forget it.  Or, worse, I choose to forget it.  I choose to say to God “You ordained my steps in this world God, you know me, you created me, you knew the path my life would take…but why?  Could not have my life gone like this person’s or that person’s?  Could not have my life looked so differently?”

Pride.  Arrogance.  Whining.

I am convicted of this today.  I am guilty of this today.  Of not acknowledging that God is the creator and shaper of my life.  Of not praising Him that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Of coveting other people’s lives–“If only I could have a good job, if only  I could have a beautiful marriage and a father for my children, if only I could get my self-confidence back, if only I could write, if only I could lose several pounds, if only I could be more organized, if only the things of the past were not truth in my life and my family’s life, if only, if only, if only.”

As the new school year approaches, one of my plans is to not continually crawl into my closet in hopes of transforming into someone I am not, but rather to daily acknowledge that God is sovereign.  That He has formed not only me, but my life.  And to strive to live life with the understanding that God is God, and to place my focus back on the miraculous, on the beautiful, and upon God’s hand in my life.

Psalm 139