Dangerous Women Pt. 1: Living Alive

“A dangerous woman is alive! She knows she is deeply loved by God and grounds herself daily in that love. She delves deeply into the truth about who she is and claims her unique temperament, gifts, passions and dreams. She refuses to let fear stop her as she responds to God’s calling on her life. And out of her fully alive heart, she radically engages with the needs of the world.”

I L.O.V.E. this quote by Lynne Hybels! I feel like it does a super job summing up what I want for my life and for the lives of the women that I encounter on a daily basis. I love it so much that I'm going to blog about it. Not once. Not twice. But as many times as it takes me to dissect this sucker 'til there's nothing left.

So for today, we're going to take a look at the very first line: A dangerous woman is alive!

What does this mean? What does it look like for us to "live alive?" This morning I read an article over on storyline that was all about living in the present, not going numb, and choosing to be invested in all the moments of our life- the seemingly boring, hard, or painful ones included. The author talks about her friend who has gone through more than most of us will ever have to and she writes:

"She wasn’t waiting for the good part. She knows that these are the good parts, even while they’re the bad parts. She wasn’t shut down, going through the motions. She wasn’t holding tight till this season passed. She was right there with me, right there with her kids, right in all the glory and pain and mess and beauty of a spring night in between everything.That’s how I want to be. That’s who I want to be: deeply present in the present, in the mess, in the waiting, in the entirely imperfect right now."

I think that this is part of living alive. Being fully present in the mess, fully present in the boring. Not allowing our circumstances dictate whether or not we're engaged in life. Choosing to invest and feel and continue on even through the times that seem too painful to even look at.

This is what it looks like to live alive: to be so secure and safe within our Savior's arms that we can be fully present and engaged in whatever circumstances we face, whether our flesh would deem them worthy of our investment or not, safe for us to be present in or not, and exciting enough for us to be engaged or not.

I want to be a dangerous woman. I want the enemy to shudder when I wake up and the Kingdom of God to be advanced through my day. I want my life to showcase Jesus- the only one worthy of shining a spotlight on.

But for this to happen, I have to live fully alive. I can't keep choosing which moments I want to be present for and which I will just allow my brain to check out of. I can't keep going numb when hard things happen, shutting down my emotions so I don't have to feel all the things that God has put inside of me. I can't keep waiting for the next big thing to happen, just ignoring all the wonderful beautiful little things God is doing around me everyday. I have to live alive.

Check out Part 2: Grounded in Love here.