I want to know what it feels like to do things I’ve never done. I want to experience life.
I want to experience as much as I can, because life changes every day. I don’t know where I’m going to be in a year. I don’t know if I’ll still be in Memphis. I don’t know if I’ll be at Fellowship. Maybe I won’t be here at all. There is so much that is unknown.
With how lonely I've been, I’ve thought about the unknown. All I’ve yet to experience. All I want to experience. And how much I don’t want anything to hold me back from experiencing it.
A mere few months ago I wrote about having no hobbies, not knowing what I liked or what I enjoyed. And here God is giving me the strength to go out and experience life on my own. Here He is pushing me, and encouraging me to explore those things. And I’m complaining.
I’ve clung to boyfriends and to friendships, trying to heal the holes in my heart. Starting the OYC, God has helped me heart heal from one idol. And now here He is working on yet another.
He’s been showing me my past and how I’d skip a trip to because a friend wouldn’t go, or a concert, or a festival, or any opportunity, because I wouldn’t have someone to lean on.
God’s breaking me of much and giving me much.
Sometimes people’s turn-downs are His best for us. Now, yes, I’m frustrated, but from an eternal perspective I see why the last weeks have been spent alone. This cycle that has been perpetuated for years is being broken.
He’s making me look to myself; He’s making me look toward Him.
There are a lot of His ways that I struggle with understanding. There’s a lot of myself that I invest into other people, and day by day He’s turning my heart.
She’s too tired to hang out with me, I must not be important to her.
She’d rather hang out with them than me, I must not be important to her.
I didn’t get invited to that outing, they must not like me.
Me, me, me. It’s all about me. What I’m doing. But really it has nothing to do with me.
And my worth doesn’t rely on whether someone chooses to hang out with me or not.
Another thing I’ve wondered is, why, in the last five months have I not been pursued by any men? Nothing about me to the outside world has truly changed. I look the same, I dress the same, I act the same—essentially. So why the barren desert? Even if I’m in this OYC a guy can still look at me, right?
Today a really attractive, dark-haired, dark-eyed single surgeon walked by. He smiled. I smiled.
Now, what would I have done if he had asked me out? I would’ve said, “Ask me again in seven months,” and one of two things would’ve happened. Either he would’ve said, “Okay,” and I would’ve spent the next seven months pining after him, or, he would’ve said, “Forget it,” and I’d be crushed, wondering if I made the right choice. Either way, I’d be thinking more of him and less of God. And so, this drought has really been God’s ultimate blessing upon my life, because He knows how neurotic I can be.
God has completely taken every temptation, every stumbling block out of sight.
I can hear Him, Go! Run! I’ve given you all this free space to roam, to explore, why are you standing so still? Wander! Experience! Don’t worry about the wolves! Use this time to grow, to feast on the land. No flock? It’s okay. There are some things you need to learn before then.
So, I hear Him saying eventually…soon…all in due time I won’t feel so alone again.
On Sunday when Bryan was talking about Ben leaving, he said, “The transitioning point will be somewhere between the end of May and beginning of June.” And even though what he said was about Ben, I felt God making a promise to me in that moment. I heard Him saying, Hold on. Trust me now in the silence and wait for the fruit.
Sometimes God takes things away. He hedges up ways.
Not to hurt. But to heal. To grow.
Have no expectations except for that He will see you through till the end.
