You have HIS hands...
“You are going to be different, are you okay with that?
My friend Ashkell asked me this question while I was in Bible college and my immediate reaction was “Yes! Of course!” I answered without fully understanding that I am different… and honestly I wasn’t okay with it. I’ve always liked to stay behind the scenes, do the hard work and watch others enjoy it. But I’m learning...
To catch you up... I’m from Nebraska, my parents separated shortly after I was born and my dad moved pretty far away so I didn’t see him very much from birth to about 10 years old.
During this time, my mom remarried a pastor and I learned how to be a pretty good PK (Preacher's Kid). I knew how to walk the walk and act how others expected me to act despite the abuse going on behind closed doors. After that marriage fell apart, I started on a downward spiral.
I realised there was a vacancy in me that I tried to fill with anything and everything.
I skipped class to hang out with friends, drank, popped pills, dropped out of high school, and eventually ran away to start a “new life”
My dad moved closer so I started seeing him more often. He and his wife made me feel so welcomed. I decided to live with him. The day I arrived at his front door, I was told he was not my biological father and that I had never physically met my biological father. This deepened the vacancy I already had.
I grew even colder to God and blamed Him for the consistent messy life and ran from Him.
I ended up meeting my biological father for the first time and moved to his house to start a new life - it ended badly.
I moved back to Nebraska to start a new life with friends
I fell back into the same hole of addiction- it ended badly.
One day, my friend basically tricked me into attending church again. This church was drastically different from the backwoods Baptist church I attended as a child. Something happened. I felt God near. He began to work in me like never before. I started attending church again and moved in with the associate pastor and his wife to start my new life. Things were starting to roll.
As I was preparing to leave for the training program, I felt a shift. I just didn’t know what it was yet. About a week into the institute, things fell out back home and I found myself with no money, no car, no place to stay, no family face to face with my past and future. I had to choose. Do I run again to “start another life”.
Or do I stay and trust God in the unknown. I got good at running and hiding.
I didn’t decide right away. I had 10 weeks left to decide, and I WRESTLED... let me tell you... WRESTLED with this decision.
At one point I was in a class lecture and couldn’t stop sobbing while rehearsing the options in my head. I looked down at my hands and started weeping out of anger thinking “why do I have to have my dad's hands?!” (The slightest things were sending me over the edge - clearly, lol)
But at that moment... I heard God respond to my seemingly over-dramatic complaint.
He said, “You have My hands.”
I felt the vacancy inside me fill up, to the brim and overflow with love.
The vacancy I had was an identity crisis. This world is plagued with it. People “identifying” as something they are not. People searching (like I was) for something or someone to give them an identity and a purpose and make them significant.
God wrote your story before He knit you together in your mother’s womb.
He knows you better thank you know yourself.
He did not and does not make mistakes.
You have His identity. You look like Him.
You are significant.
In knowing Him, you don’t need ANYTHING else.
Is it hard ? Yes. Sometimes.
To me it’s hard because I want to be “normal” and I’m not - neither are you. Do not shrink to fit into the world’s shallow standards.
When you’re you, God can be God in you.
When you’re you, you are His hands, His heart and you have His power to impact generations.
If you’re not being you, how can the people God has for you to impact, be impacted?
There is such power in your beautiful uniqueness.
Please be you! The real you! The one God created! The world needs you now more than ever.
Choose today. You have His hands.
-XOXO,
Paige Harp