room to grow

hey guys!

I know it has been a while since I have posted. Just trying to keep up with life. To everyone who went to Guatemala, this past week, I want to see pictures and hear stories!!

So, as some of you my know, my boyfriend and I broke up recently. It sucks and I really don’t like it but it was a mutual thing and we are all good.

I think until this point, I have taken for granted how easy my journey with God has been. The things that I have learned and the way God revealed them to me have been difficult but never completely life altering. I have grown in small steps with the Lord and it has been incredible! BUT part of getting older is having to learn bigger lessons in bigger ways.

I promise all of this comes together.

Being “christ-like”. We have all been told that we need to “imitate the image of Christ”; try to live like Jesus did and follow his commands. Well that’s all fine and good if you are a robot or a clone. The truth is, nobody is perfect. I am not perfect. I am a messed up 18-year-old who is scared out of her mind to live on her own and who makes mistakes all the time and has an inability to clean her room. We all have crap and we will always have crap. None of us will ever really become “like Christ”. So, I don’t really think that is what Jesus was getting at when he said pick up your cross and follow me, be like me, learn my ways.

God created all of us as individuals. We all have different struggles and strengths and weaknesses and joys. God made us in his image but he made us in different parts of his image. Different parts of him are in us. So why would Jesus turn around and ask us to all become the same person?

I have been exploring the idea that maybe Jesus was just asking us to be..well..us! To take up OUR cross, not his, and follow him. To let him show us who HE made US to be and then changing our hearts in that way.

Wait, so if I am supposed to just be me and let God work through that….then that must mean that…

1. no more “Holy worry”. I am screwed up and that is that. No more pressure to be perfect. No more pressure to be someone I am not. No more stressing out over not being able be the “perfect Christian”.

2. I get to be me. I get to let God love me for me. I get to be even more intimate with God because it is the real me with the real Him.

3. I get to found out who I am and not who I think I should be.

4. I get to live my life abiding in love.

John 15:9 says “For the Father has loved me and so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” How beautiful is that?! How amazing does that sound?! Jesus just wants me to abide in my love. The rest of that chapter talks about about when we abide in Christ, we will bear fruit. When we abide in his love, we will bear fruit. And you know what his commandment is, the only one mentioned in that passage..? Love one another as I have loved you.

Sooooo….Jesus wants us to love other people and love in his love and be ourselves and let God loves us for just being us.

I don’t see room for “holy worry”, do you?

So back to the break-up. We had each decided that we needed time for us and God. And apparently God wanted the same thing because we both felt the exact same way about everything. But we just knew that we needed to spend time just abiding in God’s love and leaning on Him and only Him. It’s so easy to put your anchor in another person. It feels good. But God is our foundation. And I have always known that but I had never really seen how true it is. A break up is not the end of the world but we were going on 2 years in October so it is kind of a big deal. Of course I am disappointed but I am also joyful. I get to focus on God and God only. He will take me places I wouldn’t have let myself go if I was still attached to another person.

He makes all things work together for my good. And I am so blessed.