Writing is the thing I love to do and yet one of the hardest to keep my attention on. I blame it on Satan trying to distract me from my task, but sometimes I’m pretty sure it’s God trying to remind me that there’s more to life than just writing about it. He hasn’t called me to be a hermit or a monk, but a mom. Life has duties, lots of them! But it also has things that just make you feel like singing… or that are singing in a different way most people don’t experience.
Sometimes the things that bring us joy have a tendency to slide themselves into becoming duties without us ever realizing that its happening. We go through all the right motions without any of the right emotions. Suddenly the thing that used to move us the most doesn’t move us at all, does that mean we should stop doing it?
For me, when it comes to writing, the answer is no. I can’t. Because every key I tap is another note in my eternal serenade to the Father. It’s my continual sacrifice of praise to my King of kings and Lord of lords. He knows my strengths and He knows my weaknesses and somehow He knows how to use them both for my benefit and the good of others too! How?
How can He know all that? How can He do all that? How can He be so good and awesome and wonderful all at the same time? How can He love me the way that He does? And why can’t I love myself like that?
No matter how hard I try I can’t even fill the second greatest commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, because I don’t know how to love myself. Sometimes I like me and some days I don’t. But I guess that’s where I’m the luckiest girl in the world, because I have a savior that came, not to abolish the law, but to FULFILL IT! Every area that I can’t fill up, He can, did and still does! Jesus why? Why did you come to give me new life? I don’t deserve it. I haven’t earned it, yet You did it anyway.
God, thank You for loving me more than I love myself. Please help me fully receive Your love for me so that I can better love others the way You love me. Help me to give Your love out to those around me. Help me to teach the world how to sing with You. The song of salvation. The song of our King.
Thank You Lord
I am in a constant battle with Satan over “me”. He really hates me and is constantly trying to get me to hate me too. But then there’s Jesus, who loves me and is constantly trying to get me to love me too. God sees me; His daughter who’s learning how to play the harp and sing in two part harmony with Him. That image is so sacred to me. Music is the language of the soul, and it takes on so many forms and fills my very being each and every day. We all have music inside us, but the way that it comes out of us is completely different. While I am a singer, I’ve been told that I’m a good one; I’m not limited to singing as my only way of praising Him. It’s with everything that is “me” that I use to make music all the day long. I use the slam of the dryer door as a drum, the hum of my computer as the background filler music and the ticking tapping of my computer keys as my melody. I have been known to play a mean vacuum drone from time to time; or the high piercing giggle of a tickle monster as well. It’s all music and it all makes Him smile with pleasure at the Beloved Daughter He named Tamar, daughter of a patriarch and king.
Tamar Knochel 