To 2014 and 25

Not sure if this is true of others experience, but turning 25 has felt like a severe replay of puberty. A looming state of heavy, heavy, heavy, confusion, a body that is adjusting to the training it takes to run 26 miles, hormones and emotions rampant and wild. Phases of freedom and security,  phases of volatile insecurity. Although this time in life is exciting and liberating to what life looked like in previous seasons, without question, the last several years have been the hardest and most miserable I've ever known.

Navigating the job world and the dating world and the self-discovery/self-esteem world was something I wasn't ever really prepared for. Mostly because it had always come easily and/or I had no idea how easy I really had it. But now, it's just been......well.....its certainly been something. Perhaps one day, when I'm on the other side of this season of life, I will have some wisdom and insight worth sharing.

As a woman who has tried and succeeded and failed and felt close and felt a million miles in her relationship with the Lord, many of those extremes experienced in the last couple weeks, I forced my self to get away, to take a timeout. Away from a job that seems hopeless, away from examining a future that feels hopeless, away from myself which lives out hopeless....just away and permission to not carry the weight so personally, so closely. So I tossed some clothes and a candle and half a bottle of my favorite sauvignon cabernet, and headed to the beach. A little b&b with my deck overlooking the ocean and a Jacuzzi tub - I was in great shape. I journaled, read, cried, journaled some more, watched a movie, napped, walked the beach to the point my face was wind burned, slept, and took 4 baths all within a 16 hour span. On a complete side note, bloated starfish totally freak me out. All that to say, it was the first time in a while that I had taken so much time to myself, and I discovered that the Lord had so much to say.

I'm relearning how to be alone. It doesn't come natural to me anymore. There is a deep fear within me who loudly suggests that to not be intentional about moving forward means that you are moving backwards, failing, and causing inevitable regrets down the road.  The fear is intrinsically attached to my identity - a product of the western culture I am submersed in. If I'm not part of something big or established - an important role at work, and key player at church, actively involved in leadership of some capacity - I am nobody. I question and struggle and wonder where and how to find the parity between God's grace and sovereign hand in guiding my life, and my own initiative and choice to explore and try new things and the ability to ask the right questions. That balance has, wrongly or rightly, kept me exhausted the last several years, much more so in the last months.

I find myself to be quite elusive these days. Floating in and out of different versions of myself, inconsistent at best, discovering who I am, and longing to stand on ground that feels so far away. There are days I'm proud of this journey - when I feel skinny and free and like a brand new purple purse just changed my world. And there are also days when the work outs take a turn for the worse, when I feel completely behind, and awkward with plenty of clumsy, and truly slow at life. The core of this is an inability to make peace with who I am in holistically, and a state of gracelessness to not having answers as to why I can't seem to work things out.

And so, on the eve of a milestone birthday, I am again tempted to wrestle with this. These ideas of not being enough, pretty enough, smart enough, interesting, or talented or inventive enough. I choose to cling to these words out of Ephesians today

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen

I long to experience these words. Rooted. Established. Strength flowing into my inner being. Christ dwelling richly. To be filled with the fullness of God. To know love that surpasses all understanding, all chaos. To grasp the truths that I so desperately want my heart to soak in.

These are beautiful words that evoke the pain out my heart today.

There is more happening within the undercurrents of my life than I am aware of.

This year, my 25th year of life, I want to be marked by learning to celebrate. To celebrate the small, the large, the areas of life I see moving and God guiding. To celebrate with good food, and good wine, and good friends. I want this year to be remembered as the year I learned to be - the discipline of ruthless, and sometimes violent, trust that the Father, who cares for me and sees me, actually takes notice of me and has a plan for my small life I can't see. Learning to let my soul be well with not figuring "it" out, whatever it may be. To learn to be alone and content within my own skin - to be comfortable within this mess and longing and groaning that marks everything I see. This I call to mind and therefore have hope: that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. The God of the universe has made no mistake.

Something deep in me, a truth that clings to every fiber of my being completely not of my own accord, keeps me at rest in the violent restlessness. And that is this; He has done all things well.

Here's to another year my friends. The goodness of God does indeed dwell here.