#31Days: Will the Real Ashley Beam Please Show Up?

It is the first day of October 2013.
October used to be one of those months I really didn't like.
I hate cold, and October is usually when cold is greeted.
I also didn't like the "oct" sound, but now I have a son with the "-ohn" sound.
Very similar.

Here's the deal. Just like I became a mama of a J-ohn (a name I didn't choose) and grew to like it, I am growing to like October.
The crispness. The colors. Some of the smells.
The feel of it. It reminds me of when Josh, John and I first moved to Michigan and all of our first trips to everywhere (especially of our first trip to the outlet mall, that blessed, gigantic place).

The point? I am growing.
I am changing.
I am becoming who God would have me to be.

Just like my distaste for October was not set in stone, neither is my disorganization, my messiness, my anxiety, etc. God is changing me.

{HUGE aside: Some of my favorite people are born in October. I want to say an extra special happy birth-month to Jonah David, Manbeard & my favorite mother-in-love. My life is so much richer because of you!}

I am writing these 31 Days about my identity in Christ. Though I am changing, my identity is set. The way God sees me is not dependent on my rate of becoming who He's made me to be.

In order to help you understand this journey that God has me on to finding my true identity in Jesus, I must give you a little bit of background (and apologize ahead of time that this post is intensely personal and all about my very own Jesus walk, but I think you'll be able to glean some goodness from it).

I recently began a practice of listening to God. (I will likely talk a lot around this practice. Listening has been life-changing and life-giving.) This sounds creepy but it's not. God is truly powerful and can speak any way He pleases. For me, listening to His voice is a spiritual discipline just like reading His voice (and the two often sound very similar + one lends itself to another), offering my voice in prayer, memorizing His voice, etc.

So, one day I was listening to God. I ask Him questions like ...
What are you thinking about me today?
What do you want to say to me about our relationship?

I close my eyes, and I listen in a (semi-) quiet place {this day it was Starbucks}.
Also, on this particular day, I asked God this question:
Who do you say I am?
If you could name me, what would my name be?

There was a two-part answer (part two tomorrow); turns out I have a long name.
I clearly heard God say, "Psalm 18." (Told you the written & still-small voice overlap.)

I turned to Psalm 18, and I read and cried and wrote.

For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? - the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me, and your gentleness made me great. You gave a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip. I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed. I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet. For you equipped me with strength for the battle; you made those who rise against me sink under me.  (Psalm 18: 31-39)

I could write all day, y'all. I love this chapter. It means so much to me.
For that day, Father God called me (tiny little Ashley Beam)
Victorious King
I'm not joking. That's what He said. When he sees me, he sees a king.
And not only that, He sees a king who is winning battles.
Here's what he DID NOT SAY: I see a housewife who is drowning in laundry. I see a wife who rarely cooks supper for her husband. I see a mama who loses her temper with her son daily."
No, He clearly said, "I see victorious king. That's what I call you."

I weep even writing about this. Right now, my life does not look super victorious, y'all. Here I sit at a booth in Starbucks with a half asleep baby on the ninny typing halfway to encourage you and halfway out of desperation that maybe if I put this thing in black and white, I'll believe it myself.

I think the first rule of being a victorious king is that you have to show up for battle. Y'all, I wasn't even showing up for my own life. There were days last winter when I'd sit in my van for 5 hours at a time. I'd nap John in there and then just let him watch a movie because when I got out I'd have to deal with my real life. I'd feel the sting of the cold. I'd feel the loss of my friendships. I'd feel the alienation of being a Georgian in the Mitten. And I just couldn't deal. The battle was too hard for me. I'd forgotten that the battle wasn't mine to begin with.

I am described pretty perfectly by these four letters: ENFP. These letters stand for a lot of things, but mostly, they stand for an inability to live life in the real world. They stand for tardiness for battle. Maybe for forgetting the battle altogether. Maybe for getting distracted by a pretty red flower on the battlefield. Maybe for trying to fight all the other battles, except my own.

You get the picture. Victorious king is pretty far from who I am.

The name God called me not in any way corresponding with who I actually am reminds me a lot of a story I read once, a story of a man named Gideon; you can read along in Judges 6.
Basically Gideon was a wuss. In fact, when God called him, he was (along with the people of Israel) in a position of cowering because of the oppression of a people group called the Midianites.

And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor." (Judges 6:12)

God gave Gideon a name, an identity that could only be accomplished in His strength. The very next move Gideon made (in obedience to God's command) was made in the most wussy way possible.

So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the LORD had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night. (Judges 6:27)

God asked Gideon to tear down idols, and Gideon was too scared to live up to his name (mighty warrior) by day in the eyesight of his people, so he hid. I find comfort and challenge in this passage because, y'all, I hide. Like Gideon (Judges 6:36-40), I am unsure. I suffer from not believing that God could form in me a victorious king who slays his enemies. Most days I don't even believe that this girl king will show up.

That's the beauty.
God does it in me.
This blog series is the king showing up. The king trusting. The king tasting victory.

And isn't it funny that God would take mine and Gideon's weaknesses and turn them on their head for His own glory? That's who God is! Ashley, the non-life-shower-upper to be victorious king. Gideon, the wuss to be mighty man of valor to defeat (only only with God's help) Midian (see Judges 7).

So, what I've learned is true of me -Ashley Beam, victorious king - is found in this truth.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it {my personality} should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:8-10) {emphatic addition mine}

Here is who I am in Christ.
I am victorious king. (I say it aloud to experience the full weight of His words.)

But I fight battles from a place of weakness.
From a place of trust.
From a place of contentment - with dirty laundry, tardiness, no meal planning skills.
Because the truth is that the fight is His.
All I do is show up.