Happy New Year!!! Welcome to 2017 :)
This last year, 2016, was definitely a year where everything I thought was certain, stable and dependable was shaken. The end of 2015 began with me giving up a lot of things to follow after what I thought was God's leading in my life. It seemed very clear to me. And it lead to so much pain. So much loss. The beginning of 2016 began in a state of loss and continued to hold a lot of loss for me in it. Every year since high school has been hard, but I would say 2016 was one of the harder years for me.
2016 began with me in a state of uncertainty about myself. I had lost a semblance of who I was, where my identity lay, and what God really wanted me to do...and really I had lost a semblance of what my relationship with God was, which was ultimately at the core of myself. I was in an identity crisis at 24.
The crisis, at least from my perspective, was influenced by the major stressors in my life between work, school, relationship struggles, financial struggles, limited access to my well-being support system and living in survival mode for months on end. I thought if I could just get through these stressors, run away from them, change them then everything would go back to normal. What I didn't factor was the months of healing it would take. A tornado had swept through my life, leaving a huge path of destruction and I felt like I barely escaped with my life. It would take some time to put the pieces of my life back together again. My heart was numb, my body was locked up with all the stress. And it felt like core pieces of who I am had died, or at least I had to send them away for safe keeping just to deal with everything I was facing. And I couldn't hear God speak to me. I can't describe well enough what that was like to not be able to hear God speak, but to me it felt like the closest thing to hell I could have walked through.
But there was a small piece of my heart I could not ignore, and it said weakly but with certainty that above all else I had to get my relationship with God back in place. I would not be complete without that. For I am nothing without God. I really can't say when that was, but it had to have been around the time when I put my resignation in at Medica. Which led me into my three day prayer retreat. That was when I knew God had been hearing me the whole time. I knew that, but my desperation made holding to the faith difficult.
How many times have we caught ourselves holding to a deceptive lie when we knew the truth? When the lies speak louder than the truth.
It was at the prayer retreat that God revealed to me this simple truth: if there's something I'm believing that is causing me to doubt any piece of God's character, than it's a lie.
That became a stepping stone in my journey, put a skip in my step and gave me a bit more joy as the light of truth was able to break through the storm clouds. The quakes became less and slowly God started breathing life back into me. It was at this point I looked back and saw how I had grown through that experience and I saw hope that yes I'm getting back to where I want to be with my Savior.
There was more loss to come, there was more struggle that I had to walk through. The aftershocks and more storms came through and yet things had turned. I still dealt with an intense amount of anger and I struggled to connect with God but I kept praying and believing. It was with the last loss that I realized I had allowed good things that God had given me to help me along my survival journey to become hindrances to completing the journey of 2016. It wasn't until I released those things that my prayer life took off, my time with God deepened and my healing really took off.
I chose this particular song by Meredith Andrews because it really portrays the state I'm in as I head into 2017. "Everything I've lost I have found in you...You are worth it all."
As much as I still feel angry at God over some of the things that happened, some of the ways I was treated and how little vindication there was, how many times God asked me to surrender everything precious to me over to Him, I can honestly say He is worth it all. All of this brought me closer to God, and pushed me to become stronger. And not only did I find my relationship with God stronger, but I also found myself stepping into more of who I am meant to be.
Oh precious Jesus, thank you for your faithfulness and love throughout this last year. Thank you for protecting and guiding me and for all the blessings that were evident in both the good and the bad. I am not the same woman I was at the beginning of the year. That is purely by your grace, none of this was my doing. I could not have made it without you there, right beside me through it all. Carrying me and guarding me. Thank you for your gentleness with me in the midst of my complaints and whining, in the midst of my immaturity and unbelief. You truly are worth it all...I pray that my testimony doesn't just become nice words on a page but becomes a seed, an open door in the hearts of those who read this that leads them to deeper communion with you. Wherever they are at. Lord would you be glorified and magnified in 2017. You are worthy of glory and honor and praise! Amen.
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