one year.

So i go through these phases in life where I wanna become the type of person that wakes up every morning and journals. Ill be good about it for a month, and then stop for about seven. To re inspire myself, i tend to buy new journals, thinking a fresh start will be what I need to get me on track. The last time I bought a new journal was a year ago yesterday. I promised myself that no matter how often I wrote I would keep this one until I got through every page.

I re read that first entry this morning, and my words were full of pain and brokenness. And as I continued to flip through the pages from that season of life, I felt like I was reading the words of a stranger. I didn't know who I was, or what I wanted, Id lost the excitement and the spark that makes someone beautiful and replaced it with anger and disconnected broken pieces.

One year later, I am living on my own, I know who I am and what I want. I am so busy that I rarely have time for much else other than school and work, and although I am exhausted and often miss seeing my friends, I am filled with a strong determination to accomplish the goals I have set for myself. I know I am still learning and healing, but I don't feel broken anymore, I don't feel lost, If anything I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that God can do when you have no other choice but to surrender. I want to keep living in this type of surrender, the kind where everyday I wake up and am at peace because I know that no matter how many painful seasons of life I go in and out of, God will always turn it into a beautiful lesson that needed to be learned in preparation for what was next.

At work today, I found myself in a conversation with an elderly man about not allowing yourself to be lukewarm when it comes to God. I think for most of my faith, I have been lukewarm, just right there in the middle where you aren't fully in it but you're not out of it. This time last year, when I started my journal, I couldn't be lukewarm with God. If I had stayed in the area of lukewarm, I don't know where I'd be but I'm glad that I'm here. I'm glad that I've learned how to be more than that when it comes to faith.

The conversation with this man stemmed from his shock that I made it away from APU without a husband, and although I was flattered, it made me laugh as he went on to encourage me that I will find one and "God has somebody lined up for me". The context of his warning to not be lukewarm was to keep me from being single, but I think that his words were intended to remind me of living my faith out everyday with a passion that allows room for God to change me in the way that I have been changed and transformed in the last year.