Lessons (being) Learned

It's easy for me to get stuck where I am, to feel like it's the place I always have been and always will be. So I have to remind myself to look back and speak of God's faithfulness in my life. How He has proven again and again how strong He is, how much He loves me, and how much better His plans are than my own, and yet it is so easy for me to forget all those things. In the last few days I took some time to reflect on the past several months. (In our circle we call it "retro-introspection".) I set out this year with the goal of laying aside everything I thought I knew about myself. I wanted to try new things and make new discoveries. I wanted to know the unique place God had designed me to fill. I wanted to live up to God's creation and not people's expectations.

Plain and simple, this year has been hard, harder than I thought possible. I have never in my life felt more alone and lost and worthless than I have this year. I have discovered depths of my own humanity and depravity that I didn't know existed. I have hurt others. I have hurt myself. I have isolated myself and rejected those who tried to love me. I have spent months longing to remember what hope felt like. God has brought things to the surface that I had never allowed Him to deal with before, things I just kept burying deeper and deeper. The Bible says that whatever you obey becomes your master. I have learned the reality of this. My "little" sins and the insecurities that I try to hide have haunted me and taken me to places I didn't want to go, but I had become their slave.

But even in my refusal to learn, God still taught me, even when He had to do it the hard way. And for the first time I can say with complete honesty, that I'm thankful for this year. I'm thankful that God has not given up on me yet. He is still refining me and getting rid of the dross so that He, the Master Potter, can make something beautiful out of this worthless piece of clay.

God gave me a beautiful gift this past week. He gave me hope. And with hope came joy and peace and contentment - things I have not experienced in a long time and things I will never take for granted again. I don't know what the next year holds. It doesn't matter. Today is a new day, and today I'm learning to do the most simple tasks wholeheartedly as unto the Lord and I am loving every minute of it!!!