an invitation to expand

Since my roommate moved out 8 months ago to get married and start a new life elsewhere, I had left the door to her old room closed. Sure, I took advantage of her walk-in closet for some overflow storage boxes and stashed an empty file cabinet on the wall where her desk used to be. Other than that, though, the room remained empty and silent at the end of the hallway, not really a part of my home at all.

Once school ended for the summer and I turned in my year-end checklist, all that started to change. I felt the Lord’s nudging to step out in faith with a project I’d always wanted to try, but never quite worked up the courage to begin. I dragged the desk out of my bedroom that I’d been using as a catch-all and positioned it under the window in that once-empty room. Some castoff plastic shelving and an old metal folding chair from my parents’ basement came next. Gradually, a craft room of sorts emerged in the neglected space. As I sat down at the desk to shuffle through materials and teach myself some new skills, I sensed God’s blessing settle like a whisper-light cloak on my shoulders …

Expand.

It wasn’t just the physical space I was moving into. With this step, I had made a choice to open places in my heart that had been closed off, as well. You know the ones; you very likely have some of your own in similar condition. They are the places long-unanswered prayers collect, along with hopes deferred. They cluster in neglected corners, along with unrealized dreams, remnants of relationships that have drifted away, and unmet goals that grew too big to manage. You haven’t exactly gotten rid of them — they’re still lingering inside you somewhere. But they required too much energy to deal with daily; you shut them away. “Out of sight, out of mind,” right? 

Except they aren’t out of mind; not quite. Unseen or not, the reality of their presence has been something of an unhealed wound. It drains energy from you much the way a hairline fracture in the plumbing leaks life-giving water. 

Perhaps you thought it would be easier, safer, to forget them. But God hasn’t forgotten. He knows very well the hurts you’ve hidden away from His touch. He understands how the seeming delays and denials feel to you a bit like betrayal, and how you’ve chosen to bury them rather than accuse. Or admit how deeply they still ache.

And now He’s beckoning you forward with an invitation …

Expand. Stretch. Reach beyond where you thought you could go. These dreams you feared had expired? Lean into them. These promises you tried folding away and forgetting? Shake out the folds and clothe yourself in them again. Trust Me to lead you into pleasant places. Trust that the wild and free expanses of My heart hold both mystery and goodness, breathless anticipation and simple delight.

The courage you require is not the lack of fear, but the decision to step forward in spite of its presence. Your enemy hisses at you to shrink, to hide, to become less than all I have called you to be. Let him howl; you are ready because I have made you ready. I am waiting to meet you here, in the place you have long desired to go. Step forward into My arms, and discard your fears in the dust at your feet.

Expand. Step out, and your spirit will grow to meet the challenges ahead, to fill the new space I have carved out for you. 

Where is it the Lord has been urging you to move forward? What disorganized closets in your heart could use an airing? You are less of yourself as long as there are parts hidden away, forgotten. Your Lover is calling you to be all of who you are, all He has made you to be. 

Respond to His invitation; take a step towards fullness today!