27 Feb The [Re]Creator by Emily Graff
I’ve always marveled at God’s ability to create. We can look at the trees, the animals, the people He’s placed around us, and see He’s an amazing Creator. He is the One that pours detail and purpose into everything and everyone He creates.
But lately, I’ve been equally if not more amazed at His ability to recreate what has been damaged. He has an amazing ability to take something that has been shattered, tarnished, or misused and to completely restore it. I’ve come to realize and love the fact that He’s not only a Creator; He’s a Re-creator. You can see it in the trees that dry up in winter, yet bloom again so beautifully in spring. You can see it in animals like starfish, that can lose a limb and only months later, grow a brand new one.
And most beautifully of all, you can see it in us- in me and you, people who are fearlessly made yet undoubtedly fractured. The truth is, I think we all go through things that change us. Sin, whether our own or that of another, interferes and leaves us different from how we originally were created…more skeptical, fearful, guarded, hidden. Just…different. I don’t think we always mean to change from our original design; sometimes we may not even know we’ve done it. But over time, the sin that surrounds us starts to taint us. It starts to affect who we are, who we were created to be.
Thankfully, our Creator knew the affect sin would have and that we would need to have seasons of being “recreated.”
For me, this past year has been one of those seasons. And to be honest, though the process of recreation may sound beautiful, it can also be painful.
Recreation requires us revisiting things we’d rather avoid. It requires allowing the Creator into the deepest parts of us–the fears, emotions, and wounds that we’ve felt but could not articulate nor completely understand-the parts that come simply from living in a fallen world, with fallen people who have, themselves, been wounded.
It is a process that has required me to be ok with being broken and ok with knowing I wouldn’t be fixed right way, recognizing that true healing, deep healing can’t be hurried. It takes time. It takes letting yourself feel the utter depth of the pain, so you can fall more in love with the undeniable healing of the Creator.
It requires having courage to not just sit in your pain but to stand in the new strength you gain-to not resort to the old habits and ways that were comfortable, yet not accurate to who you were created to be. Courage requires you to walk in your healing even when it’s in-process, even when you feel awkward because it’s been years since you have walked that way, talked that way, responded that way, or have felt the freedom to be you. It’s one that requires you to embrace the awkwardness as you transition from the old creation to the new.
As I’ve gone through this process, I’ve realized that recreation–even our own–is never just about us. It’s also about sharing with others. It’s about inviting them to go on the journey to rediscover who they truly are–their original design. It’s about passing along the freedom that the Creator first invited you into.