Sweet Redemption

I really wish that I was inspired to blog on more occasions than just every couple months, but I suppose these little life updates every now and then will just have to do!

So today is November 22, two days post-21st birthday! It seems so surreal to me that I am 21 years old. It feels like I just graduated high school for goodness sakes. The passage of time never ceases to amaze me. What amazes me the most, perhaps, is the vast amount of change that I see in my life as I look back across the past five years, even. I am so thankful for lessons learned, happiness stumbled upon, and even for those bumps in the road along the way. At this time five years ago, I was most likely either locked in my room crying over some high school boy, obsessing over drama, or sneaking out of my window in the middle of the night to do something stupid. Yep, sounds about right. My, how things have changed. Praise God for growth, maturity, and seeing things completely differently. Ha.

Like I said in a previous post, I feel as though there is a different overlying theme of things that God is teaching me every semester. As this semester is drawing to an end all too quickly, I am beginning to see what He has been teaching me through the course of the past three months, and even now. As much as I would like to give the generic, "Oh, I'm being taught all about patience", or something like I would usually say when I don't feel like elaborating or being real, I have to be honest and say that the Lord is showing me a lot about the areas of my life that do not reflect that of a follower of Christ. I mean, I know that to an extent, He is always showing us things like that, but in my life especially lately, He has really revealed a lot of things about my motives, my heart, and general outlook that just aren't what they should be. And it sucks. I'd much rather be going through a season of learning easy things and looking at areas of my life that are exactly what they are supposed to be instead of learning that I really suck at being nice to people, that I blatantly disobey God's instructions for my life at times, or that I struggle every single day with fear, jealousy, and bitterness.
It has been so emotional for me to let the Lord start to dig out all the crap in my heart that I have refused to acknowledge for the past couple of years. I like to tell myself that I don't have daily struggles, and that the sinful things that pop up in my life are just slip ups and don't need to be dealt with. However, through the course of this whole semester, God has really begun to tear down those walls that I have built. I have been made to face my struggles right in the eye pretty much weekly for the past three months. While it has been really tough, it has also been so freeing. I think for so long, I have just been trying to either cover up my shortcomings with excuses, or fix the struggles by myself. And that's almost the whole of the problem. On my own, I can fix nothing. Without relying on my loving Father every single day to make me the daughter that He envisioned me to be when He created me, I will always wallow away in sin. Because, let's face it. He is so much bigger than any struggle that is drawing me away from Him. I find that for every piece of crap that God chisels away from my heart, He replaces it with an aspect of His own character. As He chisels away fear, He replaces it with unwavering faith that He is enough. As He chisels away the hurt and bitterness of my past, He replaces it with love and healing that only He can provide. And as He destroys my walls of jealousy, He replaces them with complete contentment in Him. How thankful I am for a loving God who cares enough to chisel away pieces of my heart that are hurting and patch them up with His hands of love.

"Therefore, let us strip away everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us. Let us run with perseverance the race set before us." -Hebrews 12:2