Thank you Gary Black! These are words that I have heard all throughout the race so far, and I’m sure I’ll continue to hear them for the rest of my life! So…how far do you press in?!
It is definitely a struggle to really press in daily! To really give 110% towards everything that I do, and everyone I interact with! Sometimes I feel so exhausted wondering if my “pressing in” has met everyone’s expectations of what pressing in is! It’s so draining and hard! And as much as I hate to admit this…it is still hard to get away from that “comparison thing”! I still compare myself to others…seeing how much they’ve grown and wondering if anyone has noticed a growth in me. Or seeing how much they’ve grown and wondering why I’m not where they are! Or wondering if everyone thinks that I’ve just stayed the same! I hate that part about me! I hate the comparison…the wondering what people think!
I’m such a people-pleaser! That last statement probably doesn’t seem like it belongs in this blog that I’m writing so far…but trust me…it does! Me being a people pleaser effects a lot…a lot of how I act! I want everyone to be happy with my progress…sometimes more than I am for myself! I don’t want to let my team down, I don’t want to let the people I interact with down, and I don’t want to let God down! So, how far do you press in…and is that enough?!
These past few months out on the race has been such a discovery of myself. I seriously believed that I would come out here and change the lives of the people I interacted with through whatever type of ministries that God used me in! Well…He is definitely using me…but what I didn’t really expect or was thinking that would happen to me…is that he would begin to strip the layers of my life back to reveal things in me that I still hold on to…that I haven’t forgotten! That He would have to do this in order to use me in the way that He wanted to…and for me to look more like Him! I have a lot of healing in myself left to do…He is revealing that to me!
I asked for so much of Him…I asked to look like Him….to be used by Him! And He is doing that! I just didn’t know that it would hurt so much at times! Even though it’s painful to have to change parts of me that are comfortable (like bottling things up and not confronting people), I would go through it again in a heartbeat because it would hurt even more not to be where I am with the Lord now…and not to know what I know about myself now!
He is taking things from my past….like my family life…and bringing those issues to my attention…and we are handling it…we are working through the pain, and the hurt, and the anger that they have caused. I am realizing that there is a lot of my family life that I haven’t forgiven…that there is a lot of damage that those issues have caused that are effecting the way that I do things now! Why am I the type that bottles things up…why don’t I know how to confront people in a loving manner and get things worked out? Why am I so scared to go past the surface level of myself with others? Why is it so hard to trust people? Why am I so scared of family? But there is hope for me yet! I have come so far in these areas…I am starting to really understand the importance of tackling these areas in order to grow….and I have grown.
Lord knows I still have a lot more growing left in me…in fact, I hope I continue to grow and change until the day I die! But I know that is a hard prayer…a dangerous prayer that I’ve already prayed…because things will hurt! I wanted Gold…I asked for Gold…so, that’s what He is going to give me…and that means more of what I think is myself will be stripped away to become the me that He intends for me to look like! I will become more vulnerable, more transparent, and more like Him!
He will be working hard on me for the next 7 1/2 months of this race…and even after. And there will be times that I will be begging Him to stop….telling Him that I can’t do anymore…that it just hurts too much…but I’ve also already asked Him to ignore those requests…for Him to just continue the work He has done in me!
So…when I hear someone tell me that it doesn’t look like I’m really pressing in….it definitely hurts…because I feel I am pressing in as much as I can…I feel like they sometimes don’t see the change that has happened in me…that sometimes I feel the pressure of doing more than what is coming naturally from the Lord! I hope that makes sense! I want this process to feel natural…I want to feel like the Lord is leading me in this….I don’t want to be forced! I think sometimes, we all think that we are supposed to look about the same in this “pressing in” process…but the thing is is that we all are at completely different levels…a lot of it being because of things in our past that God needs to work with us on before we can get to the next level. So…my pressing in will definitely look different than others….and there shouldn’t be any comparison between each other!
