“All this pain, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way. I wonder if my life could really change at all.” ~Gungor Beautiful Things
My life, my world, has been building and progressing in so many ways. Many of you, my readers, have had a front row seat to how my life has been being transformed in the past four years. From the challenges of transitioning into cross-cultural living, to recreating community post-college, to grief and loss, my life has been an incredibly crafted whirlwind. It blows my mind that somehow, God wove this incredible tapestry together to create the very small piece of my life I have lived so far. I never could have imagined that all the pain in my life would create where I am right now. I also cannot imagine what my life will look like in another five years with all of my current pain, grief, loss, trauma, and failures.
“Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Had as much of you as I can take. I’m so done, so over being afraid.” ~ Francesca Battistelli The Break Up Song
I’ve heard it said, and have experienced so blatantly in my own life, that we as humans do not change until it is more uncomfortable to stay the same than it is to change. God and I have gone back and forth on why some of these things couldn’t have been brought up in the states. Why processing some of my trauma couldn’t have happened without the added layer of relearning life on the other side of the world. This is what I keep coming back to. There were a million ways for me to be comfortably complacent back in the world I knew, inside and out, with friends and family who had been around for so much of my life. Its not as easy to be as comfortably complacent here. Not that it is not possible, because I have spent many a “blissful” month just as comfortably complacent in the beautiful Chiang Mai as I ever was in Kansas City or Springfield.
However, never before have I been brought so clearly to the absolute end of me in every single aspect of my life. Never before have I faced a giant built like this. The smallest things threatened to end my world. I had a building pile, and it was ripe for a devastating avalanche. I was set up to fail on a scale unlike any other. And I did.
As I’ve worked through many of the things that were consequences, causes, effects, etc. of my spectacular failure, God was building up something else inside of me. A dam holding back the waters slowly but steadily weakening as the waters stirred. It was filled to the brim, primed and ready to burst. Quietly, gently, the lynch pin to my dam was plucked. All at once, in an absolute roar, and yet also so gently, the dam burst. I cannot, WILL not, pick up the pieces. God has broken through to a new level of my heart, and from this point on, there is no turning back.
“Burn the ships, cut the ties. Send a flare into the night. Say a prayer, turn the tide. Dry your tears and wave goodbye.” ~For King and Country Burn the Ships
Ships are burning on the seas of my heart. Ties are being cut. Old habits, fail safes, coping mechanisms, are being laid to rest. A change has happened, is still happening, and will continue to happen. I will not be the same. I will fail. I will own my failure. I will live more wholeheartedly. I will pursue. I will be pursued. I will move forward. I will fall back. I will be imperfect. I will learn how to continually hold grace for myself. Ships of the past will burn. Ties to things that no longer serve me will be severed. More habits will be laid to rest. Healthy boundaries will continue to be built.
Cause my God is doing a work in me. And I refuse, in this moment, to stand in His way.
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