Dear God,
I’m not really sure, but it’s okay. You know enough for the both of us to keep going. I wish I was a lot of things. A lot further. A lot more obedient. A lot more forgiving. A lot more rich. Funny. Successful. Help me to see that I have a lot already. A lot of forgiveness from the cross. A lot of love. A lot of mercy. A lot of grace. God, help me keep going. Remind me that there is a lot of hope at the end of the tunnel.
Love, Grace
I haven’t been consistently blogging. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to say but having the strength to make it into something coherent isn’t always easy. I feel like I have so much to do, and it’s never enough. I just finished one final, and I’m heading home to study for another. Even if I finish the semester, I have another one in the Spring. When that one ends, another year.
I feel frustrated and overwhelmed, and I’m looking for peace.
Isaiah 9:6 says “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Another week passes, and now we find ourselves at the end of 2022. I remember how I started this year, I was struggling with a lot. I hadn’t been to church in a few weeks. I didn’t know what would happen. I wasn’t stuck between difficult situations. I was in the middle of the unknown. Where would God lead me? Would I be okay? Would any of this make sense later?
So many answers since then but none seem to satisfy me. This year, I’ve learned so much about surrender. Surrender is painful. It’s heartbreaking. It tears into the fabric of your being. Who you think you are. What you think you should be doing. The people that were supposed to be there. How they should be there.
There’s this beloved song, “O Come to the Altar” and it goes, “Have you come to the end of yourself? Do you thirst for a drink from the well? Jesus is calling.”
It’s not that I didn’t have a relationship with God, but it was different than anything I had experienced. I was somewhere I had no familiarity with, and that changed my dynamic with God. I guess part of me has always had a hand on the wheel. Jesus drives but I lead the steer. More left. Slow down there. Turn right now.
I have a confession. I don’t think things will go well if I trust God. I have a deep fear and need to take care of myself. I want to be safe and happy. I don’t think that matches up with God’s will for my life, and I’m right. Exactly as I feared, God has more for me than a comfortable, pain-free life.
The illusion is that if I make a comfortable, pain-free life my goal, then it’ll happen. But I’ll just have to struggle on my own. With no purpose in mind. No hope ahead. No future to glory in. No redemption arc. But with God, we suffer knowing heaven is ahead. Knowing that our hand is held. Knowing every tear is wiped away.
The person I’ve become is so different from the person I would’ve planned to be. But I like who I am a lot. I like the person God used everything that happened to make me to be. God does daily miracles, but the big one I’ve seen in my life is taking all the terrible, disastrous parts of my life and making them a masterpiece.
There’s a deepening your heart goes through in fire. You’re more sensitive to God, and you are ravenous for any glimpse of His presence in your life. You don’t just want Him to care. You need Him too. None of this is worth it if He doesn’t care. None of this is possible if Jesus isn’t present with me.
I don’t wish things were different. I used to. I used to think about how much better my life would be if things had gone by way. But God has slowly and mercifully helped me realize that I don’t know what’s best. It doesn’t mean I’m free of disappointment, but it does mean that I can just accept the glory in what is happening now instead of hyper fixating on “what could’ve been”.
God has always known the plans He had for my life. It’s scary, awe-inspiring, and peace-giving to think about that. God knew what choices I would make (read: a lot of bad ones), and He wasn’t going to leave me there stuck. I am never stuck. I am never out of God’s presence. I can always be assured that God can and will redirect me if I want Him to.
I can ignore God. I have done that. And we just get back to square one with a lot more problems that I should’ve had. You’ll always have problems, but the question is did these problems belong to you or did you acquire them through your own decisions?
I’ve been thinking about what it means to wait on God. And we can try to force things. I have tried to manipulate situations into my favor. But it never fits right. It’s always never worth the trouble it comes with. And I miss out on what God wanted for me originally.
It’s been a long journey from the start. I’m so much further than I thought I would get, but I’m also so behind in a lot of ways too. My weekends are spent studying, my income is negative, and I wonder if there actually is an end in sight. I feel so close, but at the same time, the thought of graduation and getting my doctorate feels far away.
Today, in my personal devotional time with God, I read in Luke 18 the parable of the persistent widow. The parable, or analogous story, Jesus tells his disciples is given for a purpose. So that they would always pray and not lose heart. Before I read my devo, I had felt this desire for God to respond to me about the listlessness of my heart, and I feel like I have been given that. A reminder to keep going. To keep asking. To keep seeking. To never stop knocking. Even when I feel like there’s no more hope. God keeps me going just enough to ask for more again.
I’m not sure where 2023 will take me. 2022 has been crazy, wonderful, unexpected, and overall a surprise from God. I have changed, grown, and developed myself in ways unimaginable. I have grieved losses, come out of battles scarred, and fallen apart. God has been with me every step of the way. He comes in the midst of the worst, and He gives me a big hug. A cosmic size cuddle. And He reminds me that I’m still someone to Him.
Sometimes, that’s all you need to go forward. I take it one step at a time. That’s honestly all I have in me these days. But I’m glad to be here. I keep pushing forward, and I hope to see the fruit of all the persistence God is teaching me one day.
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