Just realized that it has been THREE YEARS since the last time I made any kind of entry on this blog. Well, here is a little something I wrote about two years ago (my how much has happened since then) and just realized never made it onto the blog. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this thing more regularly this year as I miss writing SO so much. CHEERS.
Life lately has been rough. Good, but rough. Maybe that is why I haven't been writing much. I feel like in the past few months or so I have come to realize how little I know about God, about people, about loving people, about myself and how I still have so much in me that needs to change. And maybe this has made me want to empty myself of everything I thought I knew and just start over. Obviously, all of us are int he same boat when it comes to imperfection, but lately I have become so much more (painfully) aware of it.
In the midst of that realization, I think I have been enrolled by God in the school of life. Sure, I am not taking any courses through a college or university. I am not in culinary school or liberal arts school or music school or Bible school. I am not working on my first record deal or writing my first book. I am not traveling the world. I am a nanny in Southlake and I live in Oak Cliff and that's just about it right now. But I feel like I'm learning how to love God, and how to love people, and how to love myself, and I'm really grateful for that.
This school of life involves working for a family with lovely, but high-maintenance children who test my patience daily... patience which lately feels like it has been worn down to a strand so thin its just disappeared. It involves my relationship with my parents who I love and am so grateful for, but they humble me more than almost anyone. It involves my relationship with Daniel who humbles me just as much, and teaches me more about myself than I ever wanted to know. It involves friendships, some that I've asked for and some that have just happened. It involves bills and tickets and rent and blown tires and being sick and broke and doing really, really well one second and falling flat on my face the next. And often I respond to it all horribly. Sometimes I act more like the fitful disgruntled 5 year old I nanny than the maturing adult I think I should be.
But let me tell you what else it involves. I have a job where I get to love on little humans who just want affection and attention most of the time. I get to answer their questions about God and life and everything else you could possibly imagine. I get to make them feel smart and special and beautiful. I have a family who is an hour away and I can love them and pour into them and they are there for me no matter what. And I am making memories with them... and some really great ones at that. I have a boyfriend who, in spite of the hard things we have walked through together, is one of the best men I've ever known. He fascinates me, makes me laugh, challenges me. He knows me and loves me for who I really am. He gets me.
I have fallen on my face more times than I can count. I have done the wrong thing more times than I can count. But I'm learning how to learn, how to say I'm sorry, how to forgive, how to change and adapt and be molded. And God is very faithfully and very gently teaching me. I know this is all preparation.
At the end of the day we are all growing up. Only God knows what lies ahead. Only God knows what we are capable of, and he believes in us and wipes the slate clean over and over again.
I was reading Isaiah today (Isaiah 7) and a verse jumped out at me that I had never really noticed before. Maybe I'm completely construing the meaning and I apologize if that is the case.. but it struck a chord and I felt like it was a little push from the Holy Spirit. It reads, "If you will not believe, surely you will not be established."
How can one be established if he or she does not believe that God can do it? God is the only one capable of taking a little disgruntled five year old with all her pride, selfishness, insecurity, trust issues, and fear of abandonment and rejection, and turning her into something beautiful. Maybe a woman who is wise, selfless, secure in the way God sees her and the love He has for her, who will trust the ones who deserve to be trusted and forgive the ones who didn't. I am that woman because God says I am and the work he has started, he is going to complete. It's His promise.
SO
If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see or you have one of those conversations where someone calls you out