Flash by Rachel Anne Ridge Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t see it anymore. My to-do list overwhelmed me. Everything clamored for attention: The laundry needed sorting; Grayson needed help with a science project; our new client waited on a sketch; weeds overtook the flower beds; we were out of milk; the Explorer’s engine made knocking sounds; hockey practice started in an hour. . . . I imploded. I’d begin one task, only to be pulled by another, then another, and at the end of the day have nothing done.
    There were some mornings when I couldn’t even get out of bed, let alone wage war over my donkey’s name.
    Just then I heard Bridgette’s cheery greeting to Flash ring out yet again. I sighed. And as I peered through the curtain to see him eagerly trotting to the fence with his ears wobbling from side to side, something strange happened. I felt a whisper. Okay, maybe not even a whisper, but something . A nudge, a thought.
    A tickle on my skin.
    Snippets from a verse dropped into my head:
    I have called you by name; you are mine.
    The words caught me off guard. Where had I heard them before? I know I’ve read them somewhere. I reached for my Bible and flipped pages, finally finding them in Isaiah 43:1:
    But now, O Jacob, listen to the L ORD who created you.
    O Israel, the one who formed you says,
    â€œDo not be afraid, for I have ransomed you.
    I have called you by name; you are mine.”
    The letters leaped off the page.
    â€œYou are mine.”
    Deep breath. Oh. I had not expected this. As much as I believed in a God who cared about me and could certainly speak to anyone, at any time, I wondered if this might be that “still small voice” that people talked about. Consumed by my little vortex of failure, I’d been doing more blaming than connecting with Him. I just kept muddling, struggling, failing, and repeating.
    But somehow, He was using a donkey to lead me to a simple truth.
    How apropos.
    Because I felt pretty much like a donkey’s hind end. I was no different from Flash. I had an identity crisis of my own going on. Somehow, in the busyness of the kids’ activities, work, cooking, paying the bills, and trying to juggle it all, I’d stopped paying attention to my spiritual life. Prayer had become little more than accusations and pleas for help, addressed to a God somewhere up there. Time spent listening for Him, or reading His Word, was nonexistent. Why bother? Focusing on myself, my problems, and my solutions, I had let the connection with my Maker go cold.
    I saw myself as the center of my own universe, utterly inadequate in everything. Dropping all the balls. A failure in my artistic venture. A terrible businesswoman. A mom who forgot to pick up her kid at school. Alone, even in the middle of a beautiful family. Lost, in the midst of a new country life. Always behind, forever floundering. Afraid of being discovered as a fraud. Who am I kidding? I’m nobody. I listened to the whispers that called into question my value   —value that was based on my performance instead of the magnificent grace poured out on me from the heart of a loving heavenly Father.
    The One whose I am. The One who named me.
    I’d forgotten just who I belonged to, and that my Father had given me a name   —in fact, many names   —that expressed His love for me. In that moment, God reminded me that my value comes from my relationship with Him, and not my “success” as a mom, or as a wife, or as a friend, or as a businessperson.
    I grabbed a small spiral notebook and wrote,
    Remember your name.
    Below it I put these words:
    Know who you belong to.
    Then I realized that, like a good Texan with poor grammar, something about that sentence wasn’t right. We’d say it, “Know who ya belong ta.” So I scribbled it out and carefully printed,
    Know whose you are.
    Know whose you are. I paused and looked out the window. My identity really starts and ends with the One who created me. There is