I am she who is not

I had never read nor heard the following quote before, until one morning I came across it twice in two different publications.  Incredible, I thought and most worthy of contemplation.

The Lord made himself manifest to a woman in Mexico in the early 1900’s and asked, “Do you know, my daughter, who you are and who I am? If you have this two-fold knowledge you will be happy. You are she who is not. I am He who is. If  you keep this truth in your heart, never will the enemy be able to deceive you, you will escape all his snares...”

Every week this notion is in my heart.  I cannot do much of anything and especially write, on my own.  When my head becomes a block of wood and nothing but nothing comes on the page, I conscientiously say, “I  cannot do this, I don’t have anything to say. Please, help.” In short order, the help comes.

For me, this only happens when I exhibit my understanding that I am, indeed, she who is not and that He who is can do mighty works through me if He so chooses.

If I decide that I am competent enough to do a certain thing and move forward to do it, the thing usually doesn’t turn out very well.  But if I start out in the right frame of mind that allows God to be who is, the thing turns out better than I imagine. 

Many years ago I used to make large pictures out of fabric on my sewing machine.  One of my pictures was of me as an eight-year-old standing on the step in front of our old trailer house.  I depicted myself squinting in the bright sun and wearing a pretty dress. On the side of the trailer I added a stand up propane tank. The details of the picture were nothing out of the ordinary, but just how I remembered that old house and my childhood.

A week or so later, when I was near finished with the picture, my eyes beheld the overall composition and saw things done that I had not known I had done.  I was not conscious of certain design elements incorporated in the picture until then, but those things were what made the picture one of the best I had ever done. That is because I made a conscious effort to hear His direction while working on it. 

Every now and then, I made pictures that did not turn out and ended up in the trash fabric heap. Those were the ones I did attempting to convey a political philosophy or sometimes to be “artsy”. Doing it my way and being deceived by the deceiver into thinking what I wanted to do was more important than what God wanted me to do.