It is what it is.

This is one of my favorite sayings. Mantras even. It is hard to formulate a denotative definition that other people can grasp other than just repeating the phrase over and over.

It is what it is.
Amy, what the hell does that mean?
I don't know. It just is what it is.

Things are what they are. It is my way of saying that there are things in this world that I cannot change and that I understand that they are still there and that they will be there when I wake up tomorrow whether I want them there or not. It is a mantra of acceptance. An attitude of surrender and complete non-resistance to the reality of my life. To the reality of the pain of relationships and heartbreak and disappointments and betrayals. The reality of sunsets and oceans and loved ones who love you even when you don't want them to because you don't think you're worth it. The reality that the rain falls on the good as well as the wicked and that vengeance is the Lord's. The reality that I am a prodigal daughter that has trouble seeing the mud and slop has all been washed off.

I have told myself it is what it is many many times over the past few months, the past year. Sometimes I think it is a throwback to my Buddhist days. One of the tenets of Buddhism is that all life is suffering, and that the sooner we accept this the sooner we can move on to enlightenment and advance toward nirvana. These ideologies gave me answers to why things were happening the way they were in my life. If all life was suffering and it was what it was then the universe was aligned and things were going as they should be, whether I liked what the cosmos was handing me or not. It was the order of the universe that my life was really really f-ed up. Question answered.

Even though I am no longer Buddhist I still think my idiom applies under my new life in Christ. Only this time I use it to refer to the sovereignty of God and the events that occur in my life. That God is ultimately in control and there's not a damn thing I can do about it but surrender. It is what it is. Things are nothing more or less than what they seem. It is almost like taking fact meaning out of the equation. It is what it is.

Anyway.

I just got finished reading this book called Traveling Light. It is a study of Psalm 23, all about releasing the burdens we were never intended to bear. Max Lucado opens the book with a picture painted with words about a man trudging down a long and lonely road with a trunk full of disappointment, suitcases overstuffed with regret. Briefcases of guilt and duffle bags of shame. Each step crippling his frame and hunching his back. He is stumbling along next to Jesus, tears streaking the Savior's face as he offers to carry the load that he died to carry. And still the man trudges along weighed down under his own Samsonite prison.

Throughout the whole book I prayed that God would take my baggage. Reminding God as I got to each chapter to not forget about me and my baggage and how I didn't want it anymore. I prayed that he would take it and shred it like they do at the airport if they see a suitcase sitting somewhere for too long, but he said not yet. I have asked him to be gentle with me and my healing and apparently shredding my duffle bags of shame and briefcases of guilt don't seem like a good idea to him. I will trust that. Maybe my hand is still tied to the duffle bag. So in the mean time he is just carrying them for me. One day at a time he carries my baggage. Sometimes I pick them back up but then he reminds me that he wants to carry them for me. He insists. And I reluctantly comply. Am I worthy to have someone else carry my bags ? I have trouble believing it but we are working on that too, among many other things. He told me last night I will be called "The Holy Daughter"and "The Amy Redeemed by the Lord."And I will be known as "The Desirable One"and "The woman No Longer Forsaken."
Isaiah 62:12

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