Growing pains

It's days like today that I really wish I was done growing up. Realistically, that's hard to say because we're never can fully say we've finished growing. Intellectually, physically and even spiritually we should always be searching for something bigger and better. To move up, to move on, or to simply move. Heaven knows I don't want to settle or become to comfortable in life so that I can't see the next step...but sometimes it's just so damn hard.

I'm really feeling that these days. I'm in the middle of a super intense spiritual and faithful journey. One that involves me searching deep within myself to find God in all the cracks, scars and deep set wounds of my heart. This journey started over a year ago when God told me He was gonna move in my life. I remember that day so clearly. I was walking down the street from then Rachel's house (now my house) and I was thinking - about a book I'd read, about God and about life. I was thinking how great it would be to commit my life fully into the path of Jesus, and what that would mean. And suddenly I could feel God saying - "Yes, do it! I am with you and I will change your life. Just commit to me and I will change so much." And I said "ok!"

That was the first time I didn't feel scared of the final product. That product being a Godly woman. The woman I am in Christ. I am nothing if I am not that. And I was not born to be nothing.

Now I sit a year into this journey, and more and more I feel like my insides are being ripped apart. I've been through so many ups and downs. I've had laughter, I've had pain, and God's made me come out alright. He healed some surface wounds. Now He is saying that is delving deeper. Into the dark, hardened elements of my heart. The very core of my being that is scared and walled in. And He is asking me to let in the Light. And I'm scared.

Not because I don't want to be healed, but because it hurts like hell and I don't know how to show my weakness. If I do, I just won't be able to stand up. I'm afraid that God won't love me, that my friends won't love me...that I won't love me. Or simply that I will fail to change. And that's a tough challenge to face. Especially when it means doing things you don't necessarily want to do. That's the "fun" part - realizing that growing up involves the violence of choice - as in choosing something because you have to obey, because God is asking you too.

And I'm really struggling right now. I know I have to focus myself on the cross. I have to sit and beg for the right to be there, but at the same time I have to let the Light come in. I have to let God work. I have to let Him make me move. I have to lay down by still waters so He can restore my soul. And it's about discipline. And babysteps. And taking the sweet with the sour.

I just pray that I can remember that. Mostly because I just feel like screaming "Stop this pain, you bastard!" Why make me feel if you're just going to hurt me. But it's true, growing up has it pains. And His rod and staff with comfort me. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen to that.