I miss him. I miss him so much it hurts. And part of me, the old part? the heart part?, wants to call him or text him or walk by his house to what he's up to. And not one part of me wants to turn to Jesus in this. Even though I know that's where I really need to find my comfort. I need to trust that this is what He wants, and that it will be used for His glory, and that I will be loved through it. How can I trust that? I have managed to screw everything up. Will he really bring someone into my life to love me the way I need and long to be loved?
This morning I decided to go to church. I was confronted with exactly what I needed: the gospel. The story of Jesus that is so perfect and complete that I feel confident I will get there. But the road looks so long and so painful, I'm scared to actually venture down it. I want to trust. I want to love. I want to heal. I want to be whole and filled with life and love.
But right now it just hurts.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please help me to trust in you through this period. Please help me to know that this IS for your glory, and that this pain I feel, this loneliness and confusion, will be fulfilled and erased in you, Lord. Please help me to know when you are near, and please help to rest in your Lord. Please hold me like a lover, hold me close and tight and don't let me go. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Amazingly Timely
Making the Most of the Meantime- Daniel Darling
But God doesn’t operate any faster in the 21st century than He did in the first. And so while we rush ourselves and everything else in our lives, we can’t rush God. In fact, much of life is spent waiting.
The Year I turned 27...
...and decided to get my life together.
As a child, I always figured I would be old an boring by the time I was 30. Though I did not often ponder the future and really had no clear vision of what this period of time in my life would look like, I imagined a life where I went to work in the mornings, came home to a house full of people, and retired in the evenings either a) happy and satisfied, or b) ready to take on whatever new challenge awaited me the next day (often these are one in the same for me.) Never did I imagine that I would be 27 and have none of these things. Instead, I live alone in a small western city, working in a job that I like ok but could be more passionate about, and often go to bed dreading waking the next day.
A recent relationship (which one you ask? I know, there have been SOOO many) very clearly presented me with the fact that I am NOT ready for a relationship that would lead me into that kind of life I used to imagine. So here's some back story:
I moved from my PNWBigCity to SmallerWesternCity after graduating from college. I was relieved to be free from the busy and hectic lifestyle the place I grew up in offered, but it was a hard adjustment to make. I wasn't used to looking people in the eye when I passed them on the sidewalk, I wasn't used to the soft and slow way people talked to each other which was completely opposite from my direct and straightforward communication style. I wasn't used to the lack of water. I wasn't...I wasn't...I wasn't. But I found an easy way to cope.
I had drank exactly 3 times in college, all except one only after I had turned 21. You see, I was a good girl. I followed the rules. And I broke them only with clear focus and forethought. So when I moved to S.W.C., I was finally free to explore some of that adventure I thought I had missed out on in college. And explore it I did. I went on a nearly 5 year binge of boys, booze and bad behavior. My experiences led me away from the new church family I had found, away from my own family, and in all reality, away from who I really was. These things were supposed to be freeing! I was finally an All American Girl, carefree and reckless! The thing was, that I was reckless, but I was far from carefree.
The relationships I developed took me further down a path I had barely just discovered, and I quickly began not to recognize the girl that stared back at me in the mirror, and eventually stopped looking for her. The girl I knew no longer existed. And this new person spent much of her time convincing the girl she stared at on the outside of the mirror that her choices were ok, that she needed to define her boundaries for herself, that she needed to experience this so that she could tell others whether it was good or bad. And I believed her.
And so came 5 years of misery. It wasn't until I met the man I thought I would marry, and for him to get to know me just enough to know that he could never marry me, before I realized I was not a person I even liked. How could I expect myself to happy? How could I expect someone else to be happy with me? How could I have convinced myself that this misery was happiness?
And so, on July 4th, he broke up with me. Believe me, the irony that this is Independence Day is not lost on me. And I heard a small whisper say, "This is for your good. This is good." And that small voice was Jesus. I knew it immediately, and I decided to listen to Him. Later, when hashing out some things with a good friend, I heard that still, small voice say, "Be single for one year. Do not drink." This might sound like nothing. Or, if you're inside my head, this could sound impossible. "I'm 27!" I said. "How will I ever get married, how will I ever have a relationship if I don't date for the next year?" That's when I realized I wasn't looking for the kind of love a relationship with a man could provide. I needed to be loved deeply, loved from the inside out. I needed to fall in love with God and to feel what His love feels like, SO THAT I can feel what love from others feels like.
And so this blog will be a record of this journey. It will not be pretty. It will probably be a fight daily. But it will be a journey to the inside of myself, to why I spent 5 years hating myself. And to discover what it is that Jesus loves so much and why.
As a child, I always figured I would be old an boring by the time I was 30. Though I did not often ponder the future and really had no clear vision of what this period of time in my life would look like, I imagined a life where I went to work in the mornings, came home to a house full of people, and retired in the evenings either a) happy and satisfied, or b) ready to take on whatever new challenge awaited me the next day (often these are one in the same for me.) Never did I imagine that I would be 27 and have none of these things. Instead, I live alone in a small western city, working in a job that I like ok but could be more passionate about, and often go to bed dreading waking the next day.
A recent relationship (which one you ask? I know, there have been SOOO many) very clearly presented me with the fact that I am NOT ready for a relationship that would lead me into that kind of life I used to imagine. So here's some back story:
I moved from my PNWBigCity to SmallerWesternCity after graduating from college. I was relieved to be free from the busy and hectic lifestyle the place I grew up in offered, but it was a hard adjustment to make. I wasn't used to looking people in the eye when I passed them on the sidewalk, I wasn't used to the soft and slow way people talked to each other which was completely opposite from my direct and straightforward communication style. I wasn't used to the lack of water. I wasn't...I wasn't...I wasn't. But I found an easy way to cope.
I had drank exactly 3 times in college, all except one only after I had turned 21. You see, I was a good girl. I followed the rules. And I broke them only with clear focus and forethought. So when I moved to S.W.C., I was finally free to explore some of that adventure I thought I had missed out on in college. And explore it I did. I went on a nearly 5 year binge of boys, booze and bad behavior. My experiences led me away from the new church family I had found, away from my own family, and in all reality, away from who I really was. These things were supposed to be freeing! I was finally an All American Girl, carefree and reckless! The thing was, that I was reckless, but I was far from carefree.
The relationships I developed took me further down a path I had barely just discovered, and I quickly began not to recognize the girl that stared back at me in the mirror, and eventually stopped looking for her. The girl I knew no longer existed. And this new person spent much of her time convincing the girl she stared at on the outside of the mirror that her choices were ok, that she needed to define her boundaries for herself, that she needed to experience this so that she could tell others whether it was good or bad. And I believed her.
And so came 5 years of misery. It wasn't until I met the man I thought I would marry, and for him to get to know me just enough to know that he could never marry me, before I realized I was not a person I even liked. How could I expect myself to happy? How could I expect someone else to be happy with me? How could I have convinced myself that this misery was happiness?
And so, on July 4th, he broke up with me. Believe me, the irony that this is Independence Day is not lost on me. And I heard a small whisper say, "This is for your good. This is good." And that small voice was Jesus. I knew it immediately, and I decided to listen to Him. Later, when hashing out some things with a good friend, I heard that still, small voice say, "Be single for one year. Do not drink." This might sound like nothing. Or, if you're inside my head, this could sound impossible. "I'm 27!" I said. "How will I ever get married, how will I ever have a relationship if I don't date for the next year?" That's when I realized I wasn't looking for the kind of love a relationship with a man could provide. I needed to be loved deeply, loved from the inside out. I needed to fall in love with God and to feel what His love feels like, SO THAT I can feel what love from others feels like.
And so this blog will be a record of this journey. It will not be pretty. It will probably be a fight daily. But it will be a journey to the inside of myself, to why I spent 5 years hating myself. And to discover what it is that Jesus loves so much and why.
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