This has not been an easy month for me. It has been great to do paintings — therapeutic, even — but I have been dealing with life in the meantime.
After Colombia, I didn’t think I could get homesick. But this month, it has been a struggle. I haven’t stayed as present and in the moment as I’ve meant to. Part of it might be that it’s so cold here. It was in the 90s last month. This month it’s a good day if it gets in the mid 70s.
And maybe it’s because the enemy has been trying to tell me that no one cares about me, that I’m alone in the cold. I prefer to be alone, painting the classroom walls. But now, I’m done with them. What do I do now? I can’t sleep, I can’t paint, I feel a bit lost. Now that I’ve found out that I don’t have to win God’s approval or anyone else’s, I’m not quite sure what to do with my life.
So maybe now that I’m free of being a “good girl” and doing what I’m supposed to do all the time, because heaven help if I make a slight mistake, where does my drive come from?
I’ve decided it comes from deciding that I really do love Him, apart from needing to feel good about myself. I really do love Him and I really do want Him even if I don’t get what people call the “prosperity gospel” as a reward. I’ve lived some of that life. It’s better when you know you don’t have enough, when you know that you are in the midst of the impossible, and He comes in and saves you. And makes you fall more in love with Him in the process.
So I will follow Him still. He wants who I am, not who I think I’m supposed to be. But He cares enough not to leave me that way. He has been bring up my junk to the surface and healing it. I can stay present even when it hurts, or I can check out and not let Him heal.
Sigh. I can’t have my cake and eat it too. So I’m going to crawl through the hurt. And I’m going to open up even when I feel like it won’t work.
More about my “good girl” story later . . .
