Stepping in Sanboxes

Faith... It's like growing up.

We start out in the backyard with a fence. It’s safe to play in the fence. You can go allllll the way to the back of the yard, up the tree, and even bury your little sister in the sandbox without causing Mom to blink twice. You’re completely free to play – and to play with gusto – in a safe space.

Once you learn how to play well, how to give it all you got, you want more. More life. More playing. You want to taste more of the great outdoors… and preferably with the independence of no parental discretion.

So you gradate to the freedom of two wheels and handlebars to be let loose in the neighborhood… or the back roads of Alvin, Texas. (There was gum to be purchased and a slew of people in a 2 mile radius… scrunchi, don’t fail me now!)

But you can only get so street-smart on those two wheels. (The big ditch had been mastered and the cows didn’t try to mess with me anymore.) The next step was two more tires, a steering wheel, and a lot more freedom.

But this freedom came with responsibility. There was a gas tank to be filled and that little sister had somehow got traveling rights early. For that kind of freedom, though, working and chauffeuring was worth it.

Let's be honest. These children are MUCH less awkward illustrations of the actual Kacy Chaffin stages of development)

Next, the floodgates fly open further when the possibility of leaving Alvin, Texas comes onto the radar. The freedom to choose a course of study, a new city, how to live… And to be known how you want to be known by who you want to be known by. Now there are academic, financial, social, and a million other types of responsibilities. And HOW important is it to separate laundry by color, again?

All of the to-do’s, the scary’s, the unknowns… worth it. To be able to discover, explore and understand who you are more is always worth it. It’s the great human itch.

What does this have to do with faith? 

That pursuit of freedom.

That drive to go deeper into Truth and understanding… the explorer in all of us.

The very essence of what leaves us miserably discontented and mortified with being an adult playing in the well-monitored confinement of the backyard sandbox.

We’re a bunch of imperfect humans designed for unbroken intimacy with a Perfect God. We’re not there yet, and we won’t be on this earth… Thus explains the inescapable strife and striving for the next leap into what we may not really understand, but we know is worth it.

Deeper and deeper intimacy. Being known more and more. We’re exploring, leaping, running, trying to get there.

I want to know who God is and who He made me to be all the way.

I don’t want to hang out in the kiddie park of Heaven… the ball pit just before the pearly gates.

I want to jump with two feet into the freedom that has no white picket perimeter.

It’s a freedom that I can’t see. And a freedom where I have no choice but to trust that I am so deeply and so intimately known by my Creator, my Father, my Fortress. And, when I’m trusting in that freedom, I can run fast, far and with abandon. Probably screaming, squealing and cartwheeling along the way.

Maybe not always cartwheeling though.

Because here’s the thing…

When you’re not in the sandbox and Mom’s not calling you in for dinner, sometimes the darkness sneaks up on you. And it’s hard to find the Light from Home.

When you run hard and fast and with abandon, you sometimes trip and fall.

Or sometimes feel like you made a wrong turn.

Or wonder what you were thinking... should I have stayed for lasagna night at Mom’s house?

But once you’ve tasted that freedom, could you ever turn back?
Once you know, can you ever not know?

I can’t and I won’t.

And for some reason, it’s hitting me as a new revelation today that the more I know and the further I go, the more freedom and responsibility I face. We don’t stop running in faith until we get to heaven.

And I’m certainly not stopping at the ball pit. I’m going straight for the main attraction: My Perfectly and Intimately Loving God.

But here’s the kicker…

The freedom part has already been paid in full. We’ve already been given full rights, a full voice and the capacity for full and abundant love. Some of us just decide to camp out in the safety of the sandbox.

Forget Mom’s lasagna, people.

Taste and see that the Lord is good! (Psalm 34)

Freedom is the undeserved gift from Perfect Love.

Jesus came. Jesus died. And Jesus came back to set you free. To give you full rights to be known and to know God all the way. As deep as you want to belong, to be delighted in and to be known by Him… He wants to meet you there and go deeper.

I feel like I’m bracing myself for a jump out of the big tree that overlooks the unknown, unventured part of my faith and His plan for me. I’m ready to jump with both feet and have no idea how I’m going to land. Or what it’s going to look like in the next days, weeks, months or years.

I suppose I don’t need to know that part though.

I just need to worship and offer my feet and my faith, and run into that freedom like I never have before.

Please pray for me in the journey.

Ummm... and I can’t sign off without confessing, that if anyone every buried anyone in a sandbox, my little sister totally would have buried me! (Had to keep it real, sesi)