(I alluded to a lot of this in the one titled "... but I will praise You.)
I think I’m nearing the end of a season (I hope so), a season that has been intensely difficult. It has been made somewhat harder by the fact that I’ve been trying to hold off writing about it until it was over. I’ve started writing this more times than I can count. I think maybe though, just maybe… God wants me to write about it in the midst. I’m good at being open about most everything, but I think I am supposed to share something I have been keeping very private.
It was about 9 months ago, I think. I was sitting in my car waiting for the light to turn green and thinking about how much had changed. Countless events in my life had changed me from the maybe-too-soft-spoken and caring girl into a loud and sarcastic version of my former self. As I was making friends with more new people than old, the change went unnoticed and it didn’t seem problematic to anybody but me. But I knew that the changes were a mix of growing self confidence, and somehow a simultaneously hardening heart. “God, break me. Do whatever you have to do to make me who I am meant to be.” I prayed it, and I meant it.
Fast-forward a couple months to me lying in my bed. I was wrestling with God. My heart had been broken long ago in some very particular ways, and I was really trying to get over the fact that God had not brought into my life what I wanted. Particular people to replace the people that had walked away. Surrender had almost always come easy for me, but that night it took me a few long minutes to tell God I surrendered the situation. Even then, I only said it in faith. Unfortunately, my actions took me a different route and I started chasing not God, but my own desires.
I got my first prayer- one I had uttered with the idea of a couple hard weeks, followed by a revival in my own life. Ha. The past few months have been a few of the hardest in my life because of the choice I mentioned. I felt like I was doomed to never go any farther than anyone in my family, and I became bitter for the things I don’t have, the relationships I don’t have. I started to question who really loves me. I wondered if my life would ever change. To top it off, I got really sick and didn’t know what was going on. Doctors were putting me on pills that didn’t really do much and I was worried I was going to live the rest of my life on expensive prescriptions I couldn’t really afford.
Today, I felt a longing for God again. It’s been coming back slowly, and I’ve been seeing more and more as the days go on. I think that God had something else in mind when I asked Him to soften my heart, but I chose the hard way and I am willing to admit it. I also think that God works in mysterious ways and is has taught me so much in this season. And He has been answering that prayer. I have to stop chasing after my ideas of security, because those chases always yield nothing. I don’t have to do, I just have to be. And what I “be” is His daughter. Loved. Cared for. If I break, I can trust that He has me.
I’ve been so hesitant to share this because often times, it is hard to say these things in a Christian environment. I don’t know- it’s almost like I feel like I slip down the Christian leadership ladder when I go through the desert. I really don’t care about that anymore, though. I am caring less and less, and I love it. I refuse to continue chasing after people and things that don’t chase back.
I’m not back to where I was, and that’s ok. I will be and it isn’t a competition against my former self, or other Christians. It’s a journey that I now see clearer because this desert is almost behind me.
