Looking Back
I'm still on the challenges kick and thinking about being and living different. So often I get frustrated with the present struggles and failures I have. I wish I could be perfect, but I realize I am not. I've given up trying to seem perfect and all together. What a freedom that comes with that! But there is still the frustration with why it seems like I still struggle with things I've wanted to change. However, as I begin to look back at where I was a month or year or five years ago, I realize I have changed! I am encouraged to look back and celebrate the progress and grace God has given. I can't just look at the now, but need to see how it compares with the past. If I'm moving forward that's a good thing and something to celebrate. If I'm not moving forward, then I need to reassess where I'm at and make changes. Life isn't always easy, but I'm learning to enjoy it more and face the challenges with a new mindset. Life would be boring if every thing were easy. I'm not a glutton for punishment, but I don't want to be an avoider of challenges and let life pass me by.

Embracing Life with its Challenges
Recently I've been struck by the challenges of life. In my life, my friends lives, lives of those around me and lives around the world. Sometimes all I can ask is "Why is it so difficult and messy and painful sometimes?" I think we feel like we deserve more and have somehow earned an exemption ticket from challenges, especially when we begin to follow Jesus. I fought the challenges and vented my frustrations about the challenges in my own life and those close to me. As I've thought about how "unfair" life can be for me, I began to look at others lives and realize how unfair it is that I have so much and others have so little, how I don't have to worry about dying constently while for others it's always a present possibility.

Fair, how do we measure fair? At the bottom of it, I've come to take comfort in the words God spoke to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (1Cor 12:9) Paul goes on to write "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (1Cor 12:10) Embracing the challenges and difficulties of life, not wasting all of my own strength trying to resist them, but taking the opportunity to cling to Jesus and say, "God, walk with me and help me do the right thing." I am finding his grace and his presence are sufficient for any and all circumstances.

So, it's been a while since I last posted, but it doesn't mean that I've been uninspired. It just means that like everyone else life busy.

One of the things about life I'm learning to embrace rather than resist is the process of growth. While physical growth as a child is so much easier in that it just happens and is relatively pain free, growth as a human and in your inner being often seems painful and excruciatingly slow. However, as I look at my life and see what happens when I've embraced that process, life is so much more enjoyable. Sometimes it is painful or even shameful when we deal with our stuff, but when I understand God is pointing these things out to heal me and help me serve him & others better it makes it worth it.

I was encouraged at a recent retreat for our students by the speaker Sy Rogers. He said many profound things, but a couple of them stick out to me today. First, I can't expect God to "cure" my humanity, but I can expect God to help me to manage it with self-control. God's grace is so incredible! Sy also said God would rather have messy children than no children at all. It's so freeing to be reminded of this infinite and UNCONDITIONAL love our Father has for each of us. He cares more about me being in relationship with him and in the transformational process than about a mistake in one event in my life. God's love & forgiveness are bigger than any mistake I can make. So often I can live out of fear of making a mistake and screwing it all up, but I find freedom in understanding I am in process.

I want to be different. To love God with all that I am and love others with all that God gives me. I'm not even sure what different fully looks like. But I know that today I want to be different than I was yesterday. It's what God created me for. I'm created in his image (Gen 1:27) to reflect his goodness & faithfulness.

"One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple."
~ Psalm 27:4