I am a woman whose heart yearns for realness. Realness for myself, but also realness for women around me, for I know with realness comes freedom! I long for greater confidence in Christ and hope to inspire those I come into contact with to feel the same. This is a blog about my journey to transform into something more beautiful, something more real, like a butterfly. These are ponderings from a willing heart.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

The end of a really hard year

     Well, it certainly has been quite a while since I last wrote.  Not for lack of words, but possibly for too many.  This year has been wonderful, beautiful, horrible, exhausting, promising, and so many other descriptions that I could add just thinking back over the past 363 days.  Through it all, through the financial burdens, the health issues, the friendships fostered, the relationships lost, there has been one consistent theme through it all... God is still so good.  I must confess a lack of faith in that throughout the months, but God has shown up to renew my strength and remind me of all of His faithFULness!  In the past month or so I have begun praying in quite a different manner than I ever have before.  Let me start at the beginning of the most recent journey I am on with God....
      It all started about a week before Thanksgiving.  We were struggling through some pretty serious financial decisions and really weren't sure what the next step to take was going to look like.  I began having a whole host of doubt plague my heart, "where is God?" "does He really want to bless ME?" "why do I feel so full of fear, I have seen God provide before?" and so many more.  I opened my Bible and began reading in Hebrews 11... I read how Moses had the faith to lead the people through the wilderness, to cross the Red Sea, how Abraham had the faith that God would make him a great nation, how Sarah trusted that God would give her a child in her old age, and so on and so on.  As I was reading this passage I was thinking "Okay God I get it, they had faith. If I'm being honest here, I don't, now what?"  And then I sat there, feeling helpless, frustrated, and embarrassed that the truth was what it was.  I didn't have faith.  I didn't trust God.  I couldn't muster it up, pretend it was there, fake it till I could make it... it just wasn't.  So I cried, I confessed my lack of faith, I asked God to fill me up with it because frankly I wasn't sure where else it could come from at this point.
     Then I picked up my Bible and started reading again, Hebrews 12:1-2
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" at this point, the Bible student in me perked up, see I have been taught that it you see the word "therefore", you should ask yourself "what is it there for?".  So I looked back up at what I just read, all about the heroes of my faith, all about their trust in God and how God showed up for them.  They are the "great cloud of witness".  I could feel my heart beating a little faster now... so I continued. "let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race which is set before us."  Now the former athlete in me was getting stirred up.  Run with endurance, where do you get endurance? Through practice! Through trials and failed attempts and more practice! At this point I feverishly turned to James 1 and read "Count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness (endurance)"  I was feeling the "Hallelujah" rising up in my heart! So I kept reading... "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and it seated at the right hand of the throne of God."  I laid back on my bed, closed my eyes, and pictured this scene. It was as though I was watching a movie.  Walk through it with me...
      I can feel the pavement beneath my feet, my heart pounding, my breath beginning to shorten.  My legs feel heavy and tired, but I am running.  I am putting one foot in front of the other, I am not fast, but I am running.  Then I begin to feel the wind in my face, a breeze blowing through my hair and reminding me that I am still in the race.  Then I realize I am carrying a huge backpack on my back, it is heavy, full of memories, fears, failures, hopes, dreams, and a dozen pairs of shoes I'm sure ;) and I remember "lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely" and I take it off.  It wasn't difficult really, I just slipped the straps off my shoulders and let the pack fall to the ground, and I leave it there. Now running feels a bit easier.  I feel lighter, and my steps a bit faster.  Then I hear it, cheers to my left and my right, and there they were!  My heroes of the faith, they have finished their race, they ran with endurance and they are cheering me on!  Screaming like maniacs, encouraging me to keep running, to set my eyes on the race in front of me, not the heavy burden I left behind.  And now I can hear Him, Jesus, seated at the end of the race, on His throne, He is cheering louder than all of the others!  He is my biggest fan, my loudest voice, He finished His race "for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross". And now He is resting on His throne, encouraging me to keep running.  
     I opened my eyes with tears running down my face.  I am not alone, it is not based on my faith alone.  I can stand on the shoulders of my heroes, those men and women that have gone before.  Some of them in the Bible, some of them I had the privilege to stand shoulder to shoulder with in this life.  All of them cheering loudly saying "keep running, it's oh so worth it!"  And so I do, even through this hard year.  Some people have asked me how I do it?  How I keep going after this difficult season?  And this is the secret, I have a great cloud of witnesses and my Jesus cheering me on... My prayer for this next year is this verse, that I will run with endurance, run freely and unhindered, toward the things that God has set before me.  That I will hear those voices and know that I can trust the God that is the same today as He was in ages past when those great heroes ran their races.  I will press on, I will endure!