Autograph

There are different types of autographs. There are the autographs of countless friends in the backs of your high school year books. There is the book you have in storage of all the Disney characters autographs you got on your first trip to Disney World. Then there are those autographs that are special. The type where no one else is allowed to touch the item that is in a display case on your bookshelf let alone add their autograph to it!
I have a couple of these "extra special" autographs in my home. One of them is a football signed by Terry Bradshaw {:for you non-football fan's, he was Matthew McConaughey's dad in Failure to Launch:}. The other is a t-shirt signed by Jerry West {:He is the outline of the NBA symbol:} from when I played on his team at a charity basketball game.
Here at college, being away from home and the people I love is hard, but I believe it has opened me up to God in a bigger way. Not just through going to school, which I am blessed and thankful for, but through just having an unusual amount of time to just focus on Him and hearing Him.
Now that I am back in school and in a new season it is almost like trying to find another identity and find my place again. One day I was walking to class and having some quiet time and God just brought this revelation into my heart. I heard God say to me "Sweet girl, your heart is not a yearbook, like you have been treating it. It's a collectible, and I am the only one who gets to write their name on it."
Wow. I realized that all of my life I have allowed anyone and anything to write their names on my heart. They have autographed it with what they thought I was or should have been. I have let them autograph it with praise and disdain. I have even let past triumphs, failures, and mistakes write their names on my heart. I let others and situations sign my heart as though it is a yearbook, but God sees my heart as a collectible. My heart is meant to have the name of Jesus on it and no one else's. My heart is reserved and cherished for The ONE.
I have constantly been reminded of this in the past few days and I am on this journey of allowing God to erase the autographs of the past I have allowed to define me and tattooing His name on my heart. It is a bit uncomfortable, but how much better will it be, will I be, when the only name autographed on my heart is the name of the one who died to save it.
Maybe this post was just a venting session or an update of what is going on in my life, but I have a feeling {:and I am praying this is true:} that maybe God is asking you to stop allowing your heart to be a yearbook as well. And maybe He is asking you to allow him to take you on the journey of erasing the names and situations you have allowed to define you and tattooing on it the Name Above All Names.
"See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands." Isaiah 49:16
He has been "autographed" for you, will you allow Him to autograph your heart?