After All Of This

I think that after all of this, the way that life should be lived is so very simple.
But I deeply fear that after all of this, I'm right back where I started.
It was probably my junior year of high school that I started learning "big life things." That's when my faith started to become mine, and I started to see things for the way they really are.
But I fear that I've come all of this way, and ended up much where I started; desperately needy for simplicity.

That phrase "desperately needy for simplicity" is huge for me.
I'm a person that likes to make things more difficult than they need to be. I like to learn as much about a situation as I can before I attack it. By nature I am calm, slow, calculated, and logical. It's who I am, and it's who God has made me. But sometimes, those traits really get in my way.
It's those traits that "prevent" me from leaving America for the rest of my life and living in Africa.
It's those traits that make it really hard for me to simply live in the here and now.

And after all of this, more than anything I need to again be left in awe of the Cross...to simply be left at the feet of Jesus and live there.
To lose myself in the wonder of the cross like it was the first time that I could clearly see Him.
To die to myself and live for Jesus.
Cause after all, if everything is His, then nothing in this life was ever mine to hold.
Who am I to seek my own dreams?
Simply put, I need to start letting go of my dreams and fully embrace His.

And I can't get this thought out of my head:

“… for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

Christ beautifully expresses Himself through people. The music that He plays for the Father is expressed through the features of my face! Through my heart!
And how much more beautiful would that song be if I finally got out of the way?