when you're a condemned {wo}man, walking

I used to imagine every one saw me the way I saw me, condemned.

It wasn't a magical overnight sensation which finally took hold in me.


Somewhere in the years of reading His words,
planting their seeds to only replant again, until they began to slowly grow. Truth blooming into who I am, of who we are:


Betrothed to the Lamb (Lion of Judah), King of kings and we're a Bride to this...a most beloved inclusion into Heaven's royalty, like a fairy-tale-little-girl dream and our child-like faith enabling us to "see" the unseen promise.


My prodigal way was turned around by conviction when I collided with my life's rubble and a Redeemer of it all. A rescuer found in an unlikely ally of conviction.  And I've learned that conviction is the blessed upturning to Him; while condemnation devalues our worth and reminds us of failure.

And this is where we get stuck. Giving long and lingering looks to what's behind us as we eye our past sins. But we're like Lot's wife, looking at the pillar of on old life which only dissolves us like salt. Ruined by transfixing our eyes on rubble versus deliverance.

And condemnation loves to salt the wound.

There's only One cornerstone to build a sure foundation of worth. Some times I've had to have the veil ripped and torn away. Or allow holy cinders to scorch any false structures of who I thought I was. Even if it meant entirely changing believe systems. 

So it is, Truth's absolute sustenance may quake our world, sending ripples down artificial beams or toppling the studs on which we've plastered a facade of man-made how-to's. But His demolition is a safe place to be because He's sure to rebuild even better.


And somehow we get mired down between condemnation and conviction, thinking they are one and the same. It's that untangling of the two which requires throwing them in the wash. Agitated by the Word and cleansed pure by Holy Spirit's rinsing, laying down how we think this and that, coming as babes to cycle truth with Truth.

By focusing on His worth, we really see ours. Because we've ate the rotten fruit of trying to attain knowledge outside of God, from a false value system dating to the Garden. It's the new figs of Truth we must wear, clothing ourselves in Christ's honor, His righteousness covering our nakedness. No opinion of man can adequately clothes us.

Christ is our only suitable garment. Our eyes may become clouded by the filthy rags of all our mistakes and sins, so He must heal our vision by dropping the scales, made whole and wholly desperate by "I AM". And we see by the Light of our paths and breathe the very air of God to know how He lives and moves and has His being, in us and with us.

No matter how we arrive, it's this knowing the measure of worth's True source and then fully embracing the Truth of it. Christ alone, for He counts our worth above precious stones and became condemned, so we wouldn't have to be.

{edited from the archives}

"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh..." Romans 3:8

Shared this at Saturday Evening Post at E.E.'s place.

At Laura's place "The Wellspring" and...



At L.L. Barkat's chats around Mondays.

And here, at Emily's "Imperfect Prose".