I Imagined You

I understood that I was before the Throne of God, at the knee of my Heavenly Father. Just a couple of hours before (and a couple of years before this posting), I had been prayed over to receive the Holy Spirit by my parish youth minister, who assigned me as youth group intercessor, or as she called it, “prayer ninja.” Now I was at home, my kids and my husband asleep.

I was at home, but as I prayed, I had the distinct understanding that I was also in Heaven before the Lord. I don’t have many visions, so I can’t say what He or His throne or Heaven looked like in this experience. But I felt peaceful. I felt small, like a little child. I felt loved. And then I heard something in my heart. He introduced Himself.

“I imagined you.”

That was all He said. Three words. But it was so much to take in. “I imagined you.” Those three words brought up a vast number of thoughts.

The word “imagined” struck me in a deep way. I’m a writer by training and by trade. I have a degree in broadcast journalism. I have written for newspapers, radio stations, a TV station, a preschool, a retreat program and now a blog. Word choice really counts when you are a writer. He could have said, “made.” He could have said, “constructed.” But He said, “imagined.”

I considered how I am also imaginative. I am often deep in thought, considering ideas. I ponder them, I toy them over, I explore options. There are some ideas I scrap. There are other ideas I keep. And I delight in them. When I start to work on them, I am excited, energized.

I thought of my Heavenly Father getting an idea in His head. And liking it. And carrying it out. To my surprise, that idea was me.

I compared His delight to my experience of life. As a kid, I wanted my hair to be straight, not curly and frizzy. I didn’t like my freckles very much after someone told me it wasn’t nice for girls to have them. I was dismayed as a teen to find out my shape was like a pear, not a rectangle like the models in the magazines. I was an introvert when I was convinced the world favored extroverts. I thought of my smile, which people told me is too big. Several people in my life have said I “think too much.”

But Father said He imagined me. I thought of Him before a desk and drawing up plans: “I’m going to make this one with curly hair and freckles. She’s going to be a pear shape, not like a rectangle. She’s going to laugh without holding back and smile that way too. She’s going to be an introvert, a contemplative. She’ll be imaginative, like me. What a great idea!”

All this I thought after His three-word introduction. “So,” I said before His throne, “that means I’m good, then?”

“I imagined you.” He said that with authority. By what authority can someone say that I am not good? By what authority can I say I am not good? The One who thought of me and put me together has just said otherwise.

Before God’s throne, I thought of how I scrap the ideas I don’t like. I don’t carry them out. The Father thought of me and then He made me. He delighted in curly hair and freckles and introversion and contemplation. I was a good idea.

I thought of the Father’s joy in making me. I felt His delight, His purpose, His relishing in this good idea that He carried out.

Have you experienced this? What does it mean in light of this to look in the mirror? What does it mean when any of us hears someone tell us something they don’t like about us? What does it mean when we start to get frustrated that we am not like someone I else?

Because of His authority in judging the thing that He made, our job is to conform ourselves to His joy, to agree that each of us was a good idea.

Genesis 1:31 God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good.