I’m HOME.
This is not the first time that I have been home in the last few years, but it is the first time I have been home, having no plans to leave and go somewhere else any time soon.
I have been house searching, and job searching, and that is terrifying. The thought of being a nomad is so much easier to accept, then the thought of signing a year lease.
I feel like I am living the same exact life I was before.
Back to the same old church, same old house, working a familiar job, with a familiar schedule, even hanging out with the same people.
Everything is exactly as it was before I went on the Race.
Or is it?
At church this week I witnessed six people getting baptized.
Six people declaring publicly that their lives were going to be forever changed. They came before a group of family, friends, and strangers and declared that they are going to pursue, commune with, and forever walk with the Lord.
And in that moment, my cheeks streaked with tears, and my heart full of unbelievable joy, the Lord asked me to remember.
Remember the moment two years ago when I did the dame exact thing these amazing people were doing before me right now.
Remember the moment I got in front of my family and declared that I was forever changed. That I was no longer going to live a life as a Christian walking alongside God, but that I was going to live a life of Christ for Christ.
He asked me to remember that just because I am in the same place, doing the same things, does NOT mean that I am the same person.
You see, I don’t have to live the same life that I once did. In fact, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, because who I am now is so very different from who I once was.
I am no longer who I was.
When I was baptized two years ago I was dying to who I used to be. I was giving up all that I was, the life I had been living before, and joyfully taking on who he had transformed me to be.
It was a moment of no return. I was forever giving up my old life. It will forever be a moment seared in my memory as the moment I knew I could never go back.
I chose dependence, and sacrifice, and adventure. I chose submission, and humility and joy. I chose hardship, and joy and percussion. In that moment I looked up, and chose Christ with ever fiber of my being. Forever.
And so now, as I am home, the Lord is begging me to remember that the house and the church might be the same, I might be around the same people, and working the same job, but EVERYTHING is different.
Because I am different.
Because I chose Him over everything.
And because I WILL choose him over everyghing.
Every time.
Forever.
(Check out my baptism in the video below!)
