What have I learned?

When attacked, the BEST thing you can do is SPEAK OUT LOUD the truth to yourself.  When your mind is going a bajillion miles and hour, and you feel like you’re going crazy…speak out loud the truth to silence those lies.  (some of you have not experienced this yet, and you think those of us who have are insane…don’t fret, it’ll happen one day…although I pray it doesn’t…smile…)

Proclaim the truth! Listen to truth! Don’t allow lies and despair to take over.  God has TRUTH and GOODNESS for you!!

I’m in a writing mood, but I don’t quite know what to write yet…but just wanted to give that small update…Speak. The. Truth.

-alison-

I still realize it’s up and down, fear or faith, a daily choice.  Even hourly thoughts creep up and I battle.

BUT.

Yesterday after work I head to the gym.  (Let me preface this story by saying I’ve lived in three different places since moving here, and for each place, my gym luckily has many different locations, so I have choices of most convenient.  This most convenient was not the one I’ve been going to since my third move, it’s the one I went to while living at my first house)  After the gym, I leave for home and I drive towards my old house knowing there’s multiple ways to get to the highway to go to my current place of residence from there.  As I pass over the intersection I was planning on taking to the highway, I realize I’ve missed my turn and think well, about three or four streets up there’s another entryway to the highway, by taking a left on Poplar Way and Larch.  So, I continue down the road and I get to 44th, which is a few streets BEFORE the Poplar/Larch intersection.  I think to my self  “Self, I could take a right on 44th and SURELY get home faster than going a few streets up to Poplar/Larch.”  So I do, I take a right on 44th, not knowing exactly where I’m going, but knowing I’ll get home.  I turn on my GPS and look to it for guidance.  Well, as most of us know, Seattle is NOT the most sunshiney, cloudless city in the world…so the clouds interfere and I can’t get a GPS signal (atleast that’s what I blame it on…darn clouds).  I make a few turns, mostly guesses based on my internal compass that God blessed me with……riiiiiight.   So at this point, the whole 20 minute ride so far, I’ve been praying and crying and seeking and anxiety ridden about life in general.  I’m praying to God for answers to many questions/anxieties I have.  After that 20 minutes though…I realize I’m lost…and I begin to simply pray for the Lord to get me home.  Forget the worries of life!  I’m just hungry,  lost, driving around on dark-twisty-middle of nowhere roads and I just wanna get home!  (alive preferably)  So, I forget about all my life strife for a moment and concentrate on finding out where in the world I am and how I get home.  I drive a few more minutes, and then begin talking to God as I go.  “Lord, THIS is how I feel in life!  I’m in a car alone, not knowing where I’m going or what I’m doing.  I have absolutely no direction and I feel as if I’m just in a life that’s dark, twisty, and in the middle of nowhere.  I miss my family, friends, boyfriend, and just having a purpose.  I’m full of anxiety over my life because I feel as if I have to work for you, when all you ask of me is to WORSHIP you.  But it’s hard to worship you when I’m muddled with all this anxiety.  THIS is how I feel, no direction, no purpose, no reason to wake up in the morning.  Lost on a road with seemingly no way out, and no direction or guidance to get me to where I don’t know I’m going in the first place.“  This prayer is basically me telling the Lord that I am in a season of my life that is the equivilant of a lost road trip.  As I crest over a hill I see what looks like a little bit of a more heavily populated area.  Praise the Lord!  CIVILIZATION!!!  Ahead I see an interesection that looks promising, I could taste the highway now, and considering I had been all over for about 30 minutes, I figured just get me to a highway, it doesn’t even have to be the one I’m looking for, I know the highways around here and can get to the one I need.  As I get closer and closer to the intersection, I read the street signs:

POPLAR WAY AND LARCH

Baha!  I take a moment, and begin to cry/laugh/cry/laugh.  I know EXACLTY where I am AND it’s where I would have been had I just gone the extra 3 or 4 streets up earlier in the trip home instead of trying to find my own way on silly 44th. 

I am baffled.  In this moment, God says, “Aleigh, Just. Wait.  I had you on a straight path to Poplar Way and Larch, but you chose 44th.  In your life I have you on a path to a certain point, but the past few months you’ve chose a different route, I will STILL get you to that certain point.  Just. Wait.  Stop choosing all the 44th’s in your life…let me take you STRAIGHT to the intersection.  Your 44th’s are simply you worrying and being anxious.  Not to mention, you waste time being anxious that I mean for you to just worship me, enjoy me, live for me.  Love, laugh, live.  Worry is not my plan for you.  I have a plan for you, hold fast to my hope, the hope of the cross and the empty tomb.  Stand firm in me.  TRUST me.  BELIEVE in me.  GIVE IT ALL TO ME.  

JUST. WAIT.

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! -Psalm 27:14

My F words right now are fear and faith.  If only it were natural for faith to be the state I lived in.

The truth of it is, the past few weeks have been a roller coaster for me.  Each day I wake up and am faced with choosing fear or faith.  It seems, even when I do choose faith, the fear that fear will overwhelm that faith comes anyway.  The creator of lies is laughing and ecstatic every time I give in to listening to his lies, which are wrapped around tiny morsels of truth.  He gets to me so easy that way, taking those little truths and hooking me on that and then I get sucked in to his lies.  The most discouraging part is that even afer all this time, in a moment of weakness it’s hard to discern God’s voice apart from all the others.  As a Christian, I am tired and weak.  I have been worn down by trying and trying so hard to figure everything out.  I want to fix this feeling in my soul of loneliness and dettachment.  And yet I can’t, God calls me to wait and be patient.  I am the WORST at being patient.  I want to be able to fix this whole situation in an instant.  I feel as if I can work my way out of this hole, I want to do the work God needs from me, I want to work for Him to fix this.  And yet, He still says, just WORSHIP me.  You CANNOT work your way out of this Alison!  Worship me! 

If only I could figure that out.  This season is one of patience and relearning the “structure” of my faith all over again.  Worship isn’t one hour on Sunday, it’s not my favorite worship song in the car, it’s not a great Bible study.  Worship is my purpose.  Every moment I give to worshipping my worries, duties, fears, life….is a moment I DON’T live worshipping God….which is my purpose in life.  And so the cycle continues…I realize I’m not worshipping God when I’m worshipping/focusing on my fears and so I spiral into an “I can fix it” attitude or an upset moment where I’ve failed God again. 

My works will never add up to what God deserves.  My worship will never add up to what God deserves.  I am only worthy because of His blood shed on the cross.  He picked up every cross I would come to bear and took care of them once and for all.  So each time I pick up a cross and try to carry it on my own, I’m crucifying Him again and again until I realize it’s not mine to control.  It’s not mine to control. 

So each day, in this season of God fine tuning me and preparing me, I pray first that faith would pour out and over any fear or temptation of fear/discouragement/depression/doubt/anxiety.  I pray faith from Christ would be my stance, that no weapon formed against me would win.  I pray the Lord would be my Rock, my everything.  I pray that as I’m waiting for whatever it is I’m waiting for, I would have joy and peace, patience and the desire to spread the Gospel.

I pray in this time that I just learn to worship, abandoning all I’ve held dear, and running to Him in trust that what He has for me is best, pure, and good.

Lunch time on the water's edge...

So it’s AUGUST already…not only is it August…it’s almost the END of August.  How did this happen?

Well, as the summer is coming to an end…(booooooo)…I’m prepping for the cool Fall weather.  By prepping I mean trying to soak in sun when I can.  Today for lunch I went and sat by the water on a bench.  The sun felt A.MAZ.ING.  Such a pretty view too…pictures can’t do it justice I don’t think.  None the less, I still tried to capture it on my bberry. (hence the pic above)

Life has had it’s challenges lately.  It seems I’m constantly searching for a present God.  There are plenty of different stages for Christians, the one I’m in isn’t fun.  It’s long, hard, and often repetitive.  (well, I think it’s repetitive, but God’s working on something that will be one of those grand “aha” moments at the end….if I could just get to the end….)

I remember in college thinking I would graduate and God would use me, He would just pluck me right out of my little world and send me off somewhere to be His hands and mouth.  I remember thinking His using me would be obvious and glorious….tough, but rewarding and worth it.  Kinda that movie screen, perfect Christian, sacrificial, humble life.  (ya’ll know what I’m talking about)

It seems instead I now find myself struggling with the selfishness of independence and trying to figure out just how it is that I can humbly try and bless others without getting that puffy “look what i can do”-ness.  To add to my disgruntled attitude, my service to God isn’t in the fashion of missions or sacrificial living in some foreign country without running water, it’s instead in the fashion of utilizing the Xerox machine, sending emails, mailing brochures, and taking conference registrations.  Not exactly the “humble servant” position I’ve had in mind my whole life.  God I know is trying to show me how no matter what I’m doing it’s for Him…one of those lessons I am most definitely taking a while to learn.

So there’s no way to hide it, this stage of my life isn’t the way I would have planned it, rather the way I did plan it. (insert God’s plan here) I didn’t think I would be 3,000 miles from my family and daily sorting through the muck that is my heart.  I didn’t think I would be sitting at a desk in a 9-5 type routine.  I didn’t think I would be wearing “business attire” (granted…that’s one I’m not too good at, my “business attire” is a far cry from what you’re probably thinking…one day I’ll grow up…not yet though).  I plain didn’t think I would be here.

And yet, I also didn’t think I’d be in Seattle.  I didn’t think I’d be learning something new and convicting about myself most every day.  I didn’t think I’d be madly in love with a man that takes me as I am, all junk and mucky hearted.  I didn’t think I’d be praising God for the painful option of being taught and grown instead of the uncomfortable comfort of sitting in my own stagnancy.  I didn’t think I’d be in a place in my life where everything about my humanness was yearning for the next step, when everything in my spirit was crying out to just sit still until I understood God’s purpose in being in that place.  Looking back, I may not 100% enjoy where I am in life now, BUT…I do know that God has intricately woven me into the place that I am, and it’s AMAZING to see and know that it’s all for something…it’s all for His glory and kingdom.  I can say I’m excited to continue in His plan and learn about Him and be in relationship with Him.  I am excited to grow in the body of Christ and find true community with those around me.  All this excitement for things to come….and a heavy, determined heart to have this excitement for the things that are.

All this to say, I don’t have it figured out yet.  Most blogs end with the happy “and then God spoke, I cried, and now I’m joyful” type thing.  Sorry, no such blessing here.

The blessing is more though possibly.

I’m still striving, still growing, still changing, still digging away bitterness.  Through it all, GOD LOVES ME.  His sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, is one that I cling to dearly.  Even in the midst of the unknown of this journey, this road that winds and turns, I know without doubt that God’s purpose will come through.  I know without doubt that it’s going to take complete abandon.  I know without doubt that every day, God is peeling away the layers of me to get to the core that is Jesus. 

I think I know most importantly that “the God of all grace, who called me to His eternal glory in Christ, after I have suffered a little while, will Himself restore me and make me strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)

And so, I guess, if you’ve even made it this far in this blog, the only thing to say is that the newness in Christ is something I hold on to.  And even in my most selfish, questioning, angry, bitter, and seemingly still times….that is what I am, new in Christ Jesus.  So my praises are always lifted up to Him, regardless of where I am in life.  The only advice I have for those going through this type of season is to hold on, and know you’re not the only one.  Always praise God, and know that He is moving…He is working…He is loving.

While following Christ is something we have to choose daily, in that relationship slowly grows the passion that makes it that much more vital to do so.  Picking up your cross and following Christ is always worth it.

He never quaranteed fun or safety or health or marriage or wealth…but He did give His Son…as a guarantee that if we accept Him as Saviour, at the end of the struggles, we could be with Him.

As the week is winding down and I’m getting close to a 4 day weekend for the 4th of July…I’m so excited to have a few extra days to rest and embark on new adventures.  My life right now seems so busy and yet I like the pace…always something to do.  I get to make my schedule though, so if I want to go to the grocery store, I go to the grocery store.  If I wanna try a new beach, or restaurant…it’s nice to just do that.  And yes, this may seem so trivial to some, but it’s one of those small things that I enjoy now that I’m an “adult” (like I’m really grown up suddenly or something).

I think most of my recent “joy” in being independent actually has nothing to to with being independent at all.  The past few weeks have been a time of adjustment for me…well the past few months I guess.  I moved here to Seattle in January from Georgia, away from my family I’m VERY close with.  That’s 3,000 miles away from everything I’ve ever known.  In the past few weeks, my boyfriend, who lives here in Seattle, began a very intense and time consuming part of his job…limiting our time together to Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sunday church.  (not necessarily all three either)  We don’t talk much during the week, if ever, MAYBE a few texts or an email. 

God has brought me to a place where, do doubt my family, friends, and sigother are there for me…but in my solitude, I’m brought to true dependence on Christ and Christ alone.

I enjoy doing my own thing mostly because God’s been faithful in bringing me to a place that EVERYTHING I DO…He is with me.  He may not necessarily agree with it…but He suffers through the bad, laughs in the joyful, and rests in the peaceful…with me. 

His presence is CONSTANT…I just needed to recognize His desire to be not only a part of my life, but to be my life.

As this crazy week of the Early Bird Deadline for the Aglow International Conference in Louisville, KY comes to a close…I’m excited to live Christ and come back refreshed, renewed, and ready to continue in my endeavors to gain support and attendees for the conference.  I’ve never been to an Aglow conference, but I’ve heard they’re completely different than anything I’ve experienced before. 

So here’s to conference and to Aglow…may our prayers uplift, may our convictions strengthen, and may our God be at the center of it all!

This morning for breakfast I ate a mini bagel and some tuna.

Not off to a good start on the worth reading scale…