Elisabeth Elliot

I don't know if dear Elisabeth Elliot meant it to be funny or sarcastic or serious, maybe all three, but I feel deep in my soul what she felt, this passage concerning stripping of various traits that have "inhibited me."

"If, in that stripping process, she came across as a person in pain rather than a paragon of spiritual victory, that was alright with her. She wondered if she had been called by God, like the prophets, like her favorite writers, as a seer. Seers called spades spades and revealed situations as they were, not as viewers might wish them to be. Seers are rarely popular. Surely religious people in Old Testament times found Amos to be a prickly, odd fellow, and few would have invited weird, dusty-robed Jeremiah over for the evening. Ezekiel lay on his left side for more than a year; Elijah ate bird food. Poor Hosea named one of his kids "Unloved." All these brave men were following God's specific directions, but doing so did not endear them to their listeners. They were strange."

I've not laid on my left side for a year but maybe I wanted to! 

Calling a spade a spade hasn't always been popular, according to me. (I don't consider myself a seer or prophet by any stretch of the imagination.)

We are often considered strange by default, for believing. But when church folks start ostracizing that's a whole other strange. You're in good company. 

We know there are many more examples of imperfect beings used by God in mighty ways. 

Maybe we are being stripped of preconceived notions, of all the churchy things that may make God want to vomit. Many folks, including spiritual leaders of the time, didn't approve of her straightforward approach. One who did like her writing: Billy Graham, and to me, aside from God Himself, he's the only other one who mattered.

Anyway, if you struggle today, stay out of the bird food, don't name your kids Unloved, and get up and move. Don't lay on your side for a year. Just know you aren't struggling alone. That's a lie from hell to make us all feel alone and isolated. 

Rise up and fight. 

Encourage one another.