Work.

I tend to be under-prepared for everything in my life. I had a math test a few weeks ago that I didn't even study for until 2 hours before it began. Not only that, but I hadn't been to a single class, nor did I even know what the material would be until the day of. I got an A. This isn't anything unusual. I know I am intelligent, and my natural ability to thrive under pressure coupled with my inner sloth has served me well in the past. I procrastinate and ignore everything until it's absolutely crucial that I get my act together and do what needs to be done. In 25 years, I have never felt guilt over this. I didn't take that math test and then thank God for bailing me out of my laziness when I managed to get a good grade. Instead, I imagine I probably said something along the lines of, "F*** yeah, I'm awesome." 

In fact, I have often been arrogant and proud of my "I don't have to work that hard to get what I want" attitude. I've barely lifted a finger unless it was for self-satisfaction. (I have always held jobs, but never anything substantially difficult. I worked hard in retail because I enjoyed it. Had it felt like work to me, I probably wouldn't have lasted 4 years in it. ) The last month has really done a number on me, and with all of the late-night crying sessions I have had alone in my room, I have come to one very sobering realization. I don't like myself. Now, let me clarify before anyone gets uppity over that sentence. I know that I am created by a loving and selfless God and that He made me in His image. I know that in His eyes, I am perfect. However, I have spent many years living my life as though that knowledge was my excuse for living an unhealthy lifestyle continuously. As long as I still showed up to church on Sunday and put on the Christian appearance on the outside, I could do no wrong. What I should have been doing instead, was using that knowledge of how God sees me to fuel my desire to actually be that person. It should have made me want to make Him proud.

I was under the impression that no one could tell where my heart was as long as I kept up appearances. But I was so very wrong. I've been called a hypocrite more times than I can count and when I was living in denial I would argue to the death that I was no such thing. But it's true. I was. And when God is trying so hard to save you and make you His, he makes the truth pretty visible to the people around you. He does that so they can help you, so they can hold you accountable, so they can be His instruments in your life. I've often heard the phrase, "Be the change you wish you see in the world." and it applies even more to this situation when I realize that I need to be the change I wish others to see in me. If I am not living my life the way I am saying/acting like I am, people will be able to see that, and they will call me out on it. And thank God for that. If no one ever called me out on my garbage I would still be so very lost.

While I am nowhere near as bad as I used to be, I am still struggling with letting go of that person. It is hard because sin feels good. It always has and it always will. The commitment required to avoid sin and truly change your life is so much more intense than anything I have ever done. I have never honestly worked for anything in my entire life and now here I am trying to commit to the hardest thing I have ever done. I thought that I had changed my life a few years ago when I took my internship, kicked my cocaine addiction, and became a youth leader. And in some ways, I had. I genuinely became a kinder person and I found the desire in my heart to seek the relationship with Jesus that I had been neglecting for years. But there was so much more to it than that. First of all, I did not understand that it would not be a finite process. There is no end of the road. I will never be exactly where I want to be or be done growing in this relationship. That is a hard pill to swallow, especially for someone with zero work ethic.

Grasping the reality over the last few weeks that the process I began with my internship isn't over and in fact will never end has been extremely challenging, but at the same time, enlightening. It helped me to discover that while I may have eliminated the major barriers to my personal salvation, I still have things about myself that I truly need to change. I need to spend more time investing in myself and in my faith. I have slipped up on drinking a few times over the last few months and I don't want to do that anymore. I absolutely need to stop swearing, I am awful about that. I want to become a person that focuses on the Word when I am tempted to do other things and works hard for everything she has. I want to forgive more than I do, because I know that I have needed forgiveness so many times and without it I would not be here. I need to do the same for others, especially the ones it is hardest for me to forgive. I need to find the courage to tell people how I really feel and ask for help when I need it. I need to be vulnerable, even though it has gotten me more hurt than anything, because the pain reminds me that I have made progress. That I have changed. I am no longer this cold, wasted person that can't let anyone in or feel any emotions. I am lost. I am warm. I am scared. I am hurting. But I am here, and I feel so much more than I ever have before.

Access.

In the days and weeks that pass between my blog posts, I like to think I grow extensively. That each post I write will have some new insight, some epic realization about the grand meaning of life or what I am going to do with myself next. What I have realized instead is that I become more broken with each passing minute. And while it is hard and scary, I have come to terms with it, recognizing that it was at my most broken time in life that I felt the closest to God and that in order to get back to that place I need to again be completely destroyed. I tend to hold onto every shred of my identity I possibly can, forgetting more often than not that I am not my own person, but instead a child of God and every feature is His and not mine. I wrote just 3 short weeks ago about letting go of myself and allowing God to work within me and yet here I am again, still unable to figure it out. The greatest trial in my life is figuring out exactly how to figure it out. Sounds like using the word you are trying to define in the definition, but it's honestly the truth. I just can't seem to get a grip on what I am supposed to be doing in order to lose myself in Him. I find that I am making dumb decisions at an increasingly rapid rate and instead of being still and letting Him stir my heart, I am constantly moving, attempting to get the water boiling myself. 

I fill my life with prayer. From start to finish of every day I find myself talking to God about everything from a lost shoe to swift healing from an illness. And people. My goodness do I pray for people. A few people in particular have been hard on my heart the last couple months and it is getting more difficult with each prayer to stay receptive to God's plan over my own. I often feel like I know what is best for everyone when in fact I can barely take care of myself. Although I was gifted with being able to preach and touch the hearts of others, it seems hypocritical at times because I am giving out advice like it's going out of style and heeding none of it myself. Luckily, in my prayers I have asked many questions about the people I care about and have been given answers that make my heart happy. I love knowing what God has in store for special people and waiting to see Him just rock their world when they least expect it. I need to start living like that. Without expectations. 

I spoke to my youth group a couple weeks ago and was definitely floored by the way God showed up and did some serious work in the room. I have terrible stage fright, so I spent the majority of the day trying to remain calm and go over my notes and pray over my message. The last two hours before I speak are always brutal. In this case, I paced the hallway outside the youth room, shaking like a leaf, and summoning every ounce of my strength to not run to the bathroom and puke. It's a total God thing that I can make it through a message without fainting. Somehow, that night, I found it in myself to encourage everyone else to begin living without expectations, but was unable to listen to myself. Have you ever had that feeling in church where you think you know the perfect person that needs to hear the sermon, but completely brushed it off as though the message wasn't for you? I do it all the time. I did it that night. I didn't realize that while God was speaking through me, He was speaking to me. 

I preached about not setting yourself up for failure by having your own idea of perfection. Not expecting a cookie cutter dream guy/girl or the perfect job or a giant house or everything always going the way you plan. I preached about finding the beauty in God's plan for your life and always leaving your heart completely open to receiving His gifts. A lesson I needed to learn very much apparently, because in the days since preaching this message, God has wrecked me with a million examples of how I need to stop having a 50/50 heart. When your heart is half open/half expecting there is no room for God to fulfill His desires for your life. He has half the space He needs to bless you and half the space He needs to move in you. 

I have found myself the last 3 weeks traveling as often as possible to take my mind away from home. To be anywhere but here. To feel anything but this. Visiting tons of old friends and trying to find again that girl I lost so long ago in the midst of trying to do what I thought was the best. And here I am. Realizing I had never gone anywhere was a tough thing. Because with that came realizing that I had simply allowed myself to be taken over by selfishness and disobedience. Even while living a Christian lifestyle, my heart was completely closed to anything but my own thoughts of what my life should be. So I find myself now a ghost of who I was before. Trying to reclaim my life for God. Trying to wake the dead in me. I am lonely, I am hurting, and I am wasted on fear and heartbreak. But it is in that pain that I allow my vulnerability to shine. I am no stranger to giving into temptation and self-serving desires, and it has come so close to ruining some of the best things to ever happen to me, even things that are God gifted, all because I insist on doing it my way instead of having the patience to do it His. But I have accepted my flaws and forgiven myself and am committed to going back to square one, to the root of the problem, which is not allowing God to have unlimited access to my heart. Every month, Netflix withdraws $8.99 from my bank account so that I can watch unlimited streaming movies. I would be pretty upset if I paid that money and only got access to half of what I paid for. Jesus died on the cross for me and my sin so that he could have unlimited access to me. To this heart. It's about time He gets what He paid for. 

Messy.

There's something so unsettling about starting over. Having spent my life in a constant state of renewal, I had become so accustomed to the feeling of "new" that I began to forget entirely how scary and debilitating change can be when it is sudden and drastic. I forgot what it feels like to have the weight of the world not only on your shoulders, but within your chest. When things are so heavy on you that your lungs feel compressed and the air you breathe is thick and suspended in moments. When you have to remind yourself to inhale, to exhale, to keep a rhythm going so you don't pass out. Living in a perpetual carnival where I felt untouchable had turned me into a skeptic of sorts. I felt like if I kept things in my life in a cycle of "new" at all times I would never have to feel what all those people feel when they have to get out of bed one day and begin again. It seems backwards in some ways, because by changing, moving, revamping myself continuously, I was starting over more often. But it was that rapid rate of change in my life that made it impossible for me to really feel the gravity of being at square one once again. I have found myself at this point only a handful of times in my life, and only now do I feel the sobering reality of how disturbing it really is to suddenly find your life in total upheaval.

It was made very clear to me in less than 24 hours how suddenly life can begin, change, and ultimately end. I spent last night visiting some good friends I have not seen in nearly 2 years. I cannot explain how wonderful it feels to be wrapped up into the arms of people who were a significant part of your life, and to be told how missed and loved you are. I found so much comfort last night in the feeling of manipulated time. The feeling that maybe things have never changed and none of us ever really have to grow up or move on. It was bittersweet, talking about how things used to be and how our days used to blur together in a painted swirl of mixed emotions. How we used to do life together and all that that encompassed. How we used to talk so often that no story needed to be prefaced with any background information and no explanation was necessary. How we used to be present always in each other's lives, celebrating successes, mourning losses, and enjoying one another for nothing more than the people we were on a daily basis. And as life progressed and we went our separate ways, we were left with nothing more than old pictures, good memories, and a few "thinking of you" texts or calls. We are no longer current, but it was evident last night that our relevancy never fades. To see those faces again and know that no time or distance has changed our feelings for one another is something that I cherish, now more than ever. Some friends, will just be friends for life. Period.

After saying some tearful goodbyes and making promises to visit soon (which I intend to keep) I began the long drive home at 3 am. Normally, I am a drive to live kind of person. I blast the music, I sing terribly at the top of my lungs, and I forget, for however long, that I am going through anything other than that exact moment. But last night, with my friend asleep in the passenger seat, I found myself doing none of those things as my drive began. Instead, I found myself surrounded by a metaphysical silence. The white noise from the heater was the only thing I could hear in the distance as I lost myself in prayer. I spend time in prayer everyday, and while I am good about avoiding routine prayer or "filler" prayer, I do tend to err on the side of attractive prayer. I don't like to get ugly when I pray. I don't like to get into the huge issues by myself because they are very real and very scary, and let's be honest here, no one enjoys owning up to their failures and weaknesses. But last night, I threw myself deep into the depths of the ugliest prayer I could find. I owned up to my faults as a daughter, a sister, a friend, a Christian, and most of all, a child. Because after all, a child is what I am. I can talk all I want for the next 50 years about how mature I am, how independent, how "grown up", but that will never change the fact that I am a child. And as a child, my biggest failure is that I stray so far into self-sufficiency I don't give Jesus the opportunity to step in and take my burdens upon himself. I boast in my ability to handle anything and everything and I fail to see the cold, hard truth- without God, I can do NOTHING. I've realized I need to take that literally and allow Him to have control over every aspect of my life, not just the parts where I THINK I need help. Truth be told, I have no way of knowing what I need help with and what I don't because I spend so much time assuring myself that I've got the situation under control. Aside from my shortcomings as a child of Christ, all the other titles I hold have been neglected recently as well. I focus on my pride of being a good friend, but am I actually being one? I focus on telling everyone I live like a Christian, but am I actually doing it? I have spent the last few months cleaning up the pieces of my life and figuring out exactly how to do all of these things myself, when what I should have been doing was drawing closer to the Lord and allowing Him to move me to the those places of humility where he cleans up my mess and dresses my wounds. Sure, I have taken steps over the last couple years to transition my life into one with less hypocricy- I try not to miss church, I got sober, I read my Bible everyday- but none of those things matter if my heart is still compounded by the weight of my own ideology of what exactly I share with the Lord and what I don't. It should never be a choice. I should be laying everything at His feet, not just the things I think I can't handle.

And with that, comes the realization that no one has been able to get close to me for months. Not family, not friends, not guys...no one. I have put up this wall that's impossible to break through and I am so on edge that my defenses are instantly activated at the first sign that someone can hurt me. So these people all end up getting pushed away and I end up getting hurt anyway, only now it's my own fault. I want so many times to just cry and say "I'm sorry, please don't give up on me" but instead I find myself holding back and letting people go without a fight. I find myself giving into my feelings of inadequacy and never giving anyone a chance to really know me and my heart. And when they leave, I am too scared and ashamed to ask them to come bak. And realistically, if I am not letting any of these people in, these people that I truly care about and honestly need in my life, am I really letting Jesus in?? Probably not. Because if I am not considering myself worthy of love or friendship from another person, how on earth can I consider myself worthy of Him?

So I spent the majority of my drive home consumed by this ugly prayer and when I had finally poured out the last of my thoughts I felt the most amazing sense of calm. I felt like I literally had a rock lifted off of me and I could take a breathe without laboring under this massive weight. And then I cried. Oh, did I cry! Relief is the best word to describe it. Relief and gratefulness for having a God so good that he will never give up on you, even when everyone else does. I know that He sees my heart and that He takes me as I am, even when I am doubting, self-critical, and borderline annoying. I have some of the greatest friends in the world, but I find my comfort in the best. In the heart of Jesus. And when everyone else is ignoring me, or sleeping, or simply caught up in their own important lives, He always has time for me.

Upon arriving home this morning around 4:30am, I was able to sleep for a couple hours before dragging myself out of bed for church. Even when my heart is on fire for God, it's still a struggle to make my tired body cooperate. Pastor Cory delivered an awesome message that got better at each service and I left feeling refreshed and consumed, still reveling in my God high from my late night drive. However, given that my body can only take so much, I basically entered a coma once I got home from church and laid down. I was woken from a dream by the sound of my cell phone blaring Go Radio right next to my head. And when I answered, I was told the news that completely shook me to my core. My friend of 14 years, Luke, was killed this morning in a skiing accident in Utah. He was 23. Luke was truly a blessing to everyone who knew him. He took me to my junior prom. We were roommates in Bozeman. We talked weekly. He was engaged to my cousin. I just saw him on Thursday and we caught up over cinnamon rolls and coffee. I am heartbroken. Not only for myself, but for Luke's family, for my cousin, for our family, for everyone he touched. I went to a small get together for the people closest to him tonight, and it was unbearable. The emotional turbulence I have been dealing with compounded with the loss of such a special person in my life has truly gotten the best of me. I am reminded again that this life is short and precious.

Coming home to my empty house, I feel again the sting of being alone and the mistakes I have made in pushing away the people I care about. A few people have checked on me, and for them I am so appreciative. But it doesn't heal the hurt I feel from the last few months, the last few weeks, the last few days even. I try to block it out but it creeps up ever so quietly when I am sitting alone in my house, listening to the clock tick and the dog whimper in her sleep. I miss the sounds of my old life. Even just the sound of my phone going off. I miss the company. I miss the conversation. I miss being relevant. I know my friends are all there for me, and always will be, and this isn't meant to offend anyone or make them think that I don't adore every single one of you. But, like everyone who drifts apart from people, I miss having that core group that I turned to about everything. Or even just having that one person to talk to who will never judge me, never think less of me, never leave. I miss people walking into my house without knocking. I miss getting a text just because I am on someone's mind. But I know that I am relevant to God and eventually, the right people will come into my life (or back into my life) and stay there and I will wonder where they have been this whole time. I am trying to just let things happen the way they are meant to, regardless of my own desires or fears. I am scared of everything right now, but I know in good time, a purpose will be revealed.

So I guess, what this was all meant to say is that I am a mess. Truly, in the purest form of the word, I am a chaotic, emotional, lost, confused, and totally ridiculous mess. And although I will always have those days where it's hard and I want to give up or crawl under a rock, I'm still going to be strong. Above everything else, I am completely wrecked for Jesus in a way that I haven't been in so long. I am looking at nothing without His eyes and I am doing nothing of my own accord because this is not my life to lead. I am terribly alone in person, but spiritually I am fulfilled. I am addicted to God and his presence in my daily life. I know that whatever is going on with me is huge and I am ready for what comes next, even though I may not feel prepared at all. I am a disaster and while I am letting Him work on fixing me, I am hoping that the people I care about will understand that we are all works in progress and we all need someone who will stay. Someone who won't run away just because they don't understand what you're going through. Someone who will put in the same effort when you are broken that they will when you are healed. Someone who will see you for who you are and look past your insecurities and faults. So no, being in my life right now may not be easy, in fact, much like me it will probably be pretty messy. But it will be so worth it. Because I am worth it. And given the chance I intend to prove it.