This Beautiful Life
Life—it can be so beautiful. Beautiful and changing and full and exciting. But it can also be filled with the unexpected, the loss of expectations, crippling grief, disappointment—we know these feelings well, I’m sure. Some hit closer to home than others.
For me, this past year has been a year of discovering—different than other years though. It’s been a year of uncovering, exposing, surrendering, renewing. A year of becoming in ways I never expected. All years hold their own weight, and there are a few main ones over these past 12 months that I don’t want to forget:
Grieving the loss of naïve expectations I’ve had for years about where I thought my life would be at age 26, and that picture I had in my mind is vastly different than the current reality. I’m watching other people live the life I thought I would be living. & it’s not that I don’t love my life right now, but it’s been an unraveling, an undoing, of everything I expected to just happen and fall into place. A lot of internal processing and dismantling of fears/lies from Satan and retraining my thoughts to hold to Truth and nothing else.
Taking a huge step back from the digital spaces we hold, realizing and embracing that not everything should be shared online, and that is a really good thing. Keeping parts of our stories a little more secret and untold from the world wide web has a brilliance and mystery and goodness to it that is hard to put into words.
Finallyyy feeling more comfortable in my own skin over these past few months, while also, simultaneously feeling the effects of a fallen world in a 20-something body that is dealing with chronic pain, injuries that I don’t know will ever heal in this lifetime. (And for someone who loves movement and exercise, it’s been a hard pill to swallow.)
&&& there’s so much more than I can write about, but I know at least writing something down is important because I need to remember. I need to remember these stories and memories and feelings because years from now, I’ll look back to see the faithfulness of God—the ways that He showed up when I least expected; the days when He held and comforted and sustained; the moments my Savior revealed His steadfast love through a million little things all around me.
So yes, even in the unexpected and heaviness and waiting and confusion, we cling to our God who is drawing near, who is steady and constant and able to hold us even (and especially) in the loneliness of places we find ourselves. & it’s actually in these moments that we may even discover how different we have become—a grit and strength and perspective to keep going. It’s what happened to me this year, and I can tell you that without the darkest days, I would never be able to experience the brightest joy the way I do now. This life, it is a process, and I’m most certainly still becoming, still learning, still _______. And yet, it’s been in the surrender of the things I want to cling to the most is where I’ve honestly experienced a joy and contentment in the Lord that I never have before. It’s the strangest thing. The best thing.
“You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”Psalm 16:11
Take the time to hold both—the hard and easy—and know the tension is good and needed and changes you in the best and most unique ways. This beautiful and changing and full and exciting life is worth it. Have the eyes to see it and the heart to behold it.
