So this is strange. Something in me, as I'm sitting at my computer on this Tuesday has caused me to want to write down my thoughts. I used to love writing and I think it could be a really healthy way to process. Who knows if I will ever let anyone see this. I mean, there's definitely a part of me that hates the current craze. Everyone has a blog with something to say. I feel constantly surrounded by so many words, or maybe they're just opinions, that I am flat our overwhelmed. Instagram captions that are paragraphs long. Blog posts that make me feel inferior.
Anyway, it's just me here, so why do I feel the need to justify myself?
A-ha, we seem to have landed on something rather foundational here. A constant need to justify myself, prove myself, define myself. Who, me? I am sitting here, writing something for me and I feel like I on a stage, trying to create a platform. Lord, please help me to actually just be me here, whoever that is.
I used to love writing. As a kid, I got labeled as a "good writer" and evidently I carried that label with me through high school. I want to use it as a way to process. I would describe the last 5-6 years of my life as a time with very little room to process. Go, go, go! Serve! Evangelize! Those have been my badge of honor. That is, until they weren't.
The past 22 months of my life have been... I really can't even think of the right word. Bittersweet. I got to marry my best friend and that has certainly been such a gift. I feel like the Lord has protected us and carried us and really united us more than I could have dreamed. I have experienced a level of freedom with him that I didn't really know existed. Through that I get a glimpse, a small glimpse, into God's view of me. He know everything and actually not only loves me, but he likes me. I'm not sure this will ever get old to me, and I am so thankful for the picture marriage gives.
I have experienced great intimacy with God. Needed him more than ever. I have also experienced depression, anxiety, despair-- all new emotions to me. I felt stripped of everything I cling to that is not Jesus. I think I am still being stripped. I am not giving up easily either. This process of pruning has been really tough for me. I have more baggage and insecurity and performance than I realized. In a lot of ways, the last few months have been cyclic between despair and just flat-out numbness. I have put up walls that keep me back from feeling and expressing because I simply don't want to be sad any more.
I have lost pieces of myself, and I might not ever get them back. Maybe that's a good thing.
I have found parts of myself that I wouldn't have even thought about at the break-neck pace I was living at.
The words trust and faith are no longer just nice ideas- they are my only lifeline and hope for survival.
I hope that the next few years will be characterized by processing. I want to dig deeper than I knew. Get to new places in myself, and more so the heart of God. I want to discover more of him that I might more fully know myself.
