2012 was a year of restoration for me. Life had me crawling back into the arms of the Father when everything I had leaned on failed me. I had just graduated, was jobless, had no clue about what was to come next and even worse, I was not motivated. My life had become an empty shell as God had stripped me of every trophy I had. I couldn't write, I couldn't sing or record, and God told me to stop doing business (I was selling clothes) and just wait.
Wait? What for? Why? It was madness! Here I was having remembered and returned to the unfailing God I had walked away from years back, and instead of things picking up, my life seemed to be stalling. But I was looking through the glasses narrowly, and with time I realized that the wait was to afford me a time of anchoring in Christ and learn how to view life with heaven-sight.
All the same, at that point in my life, the hurt had caused me to retract and step out of it all for a moment. The holes in my so called "5 year plan" shone bright like stars in the night sky. My choices stood lame before me.
All that time I was rushing through life busying myself, where was I running to?
What was I running from all those years?
Who was chasing me?
What was I trying to prove and to whom?
The heaviness of these pertinent questions that were running through my mind choked me. So I complied with God's instruction to wait. I stopped running, traded my track suit for a pair of jeans and a fitting tee, and I sat for a while and took in the world.
When most of your life is spent on the go, stillness can be unbearable. For most of the year, my life felt like an endless blur of nothingness. The simplicity of it all astounded me. If anyone asked what I was up to, i'd tell them that i wake up, take a shower, have some breakfast, then go to my bench someplace and watch the world spin madly about me. Then bright lights for sore eyes will remind me to go back home. And yes, I will press repeat the following day. It was a sarcastic way to put it, of course, but I was hurting.
In all honesty, for some time I felt like I was one less significant warm body in the world. There, but never quite registering much. I was the set of footprints always washed away by the tide before sunrise. Almost, but never close enough. I was the girl in the corner with nothing to chase. And the madness of this false reality ate at the walls of my mind.
Things began to change this February when God told me that He was proud of me, words that I had longed to hear as I had been wondering about it. He said that He had seen my fight and my faith, and was very proud of me. He told me that I give Him great joy.
But my first response was, "What for?" Yes. I didn't understand how God would be proud of me when I had nothing "grand" to show for the past year. Even more, I confessed to Him saying, "Of course You're proud of me even when I've done nothing. You're God. You're supposed to love me anyway."
That must have wounded Him. When you feel like God isn't enough, it points to the holes in your identity and relationship with Him, and mine made a loud creaking noise. I had to get to the end of myself, and that proved harder than it sounded. But I eventually resigned myself to Him. Because when you find out who you are when everything is taken from you, you can no longer hide behind things and doings but God alone. And that's when anchoring and establishment in Christ and God's purpose for you truly begins.
As for how this story ends or when, i'm unsure. I'm still in that season of stillness and my incessant urge to run has quieted down and eased within me. I no longer crave for senseless locomotion (story continues here)
And though it's taken a while, i've began to realize that the blueprint of my life is taking shape. I'm no longer going to run into castles and dreams so far removed from me but into solid doors and walls that God built with His Hands and I helped paint.
This is my peace: That the aching that flamed the seasons of running in my life was so that I would never have to run again.
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