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Transitonary, in-between phases of life are hard, because they are uncertain. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. We don’t know where we are going, so all security and stability is thrown out the window.

In this season of my life, where I don’t know what lies ahead of me (as many other people in this season of graduation), I actually don’t feel afraid for once. I have finally learned to put my trust in my Maker and not in my own plans, because I’ve learned from disappointment after disappointment that my own plans are not good enough- that they will always let me down when I idolize them as the thing that will save me. I’ve finally learned to loosen my grip and trust that God knows the desires of my heart, because He put them there, and plans to fulfill them in His way, in His time.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still hard for me. I am waiting to hear back about an internship that seems like the perfect fit, an opportunity I jumped on thinking “This must be God’s plan!” Why else would He dangle it in front of me like a carrot on a stick? Surely He would not withhold a good thing from me. But in this (short) season of waiting, I am being reminded that I cannot control the outcome, and whether or not I get this internship, He will still be the leader and Lord of my life. He has not abandoned me if I don’t get it, and He has not abandoned me if I do.

We keep looking for things other than Jesus to be our saving grace, to be the thing that will make us. We idolize our futures as though when we finally get married, get that perfect job, have perfect kids, or make enough money to have the things we want and live a comfortable life, we will be happy. But what if you got that thing you wanted so desperately, and it didn’t fulfill you in the way you expected it to? What if I get this internship, and it turns out not to be not what I had hoped it would?

Last year, I applied to work at a summer camp and quickly accepted the job offer, thinking it would be the most amazing and growing experience of my life- that the experience would change me and I would finally find the happiness I had been seeking. It did those things, to be sure, but not in the way I planned or expected. God has to break our expectations to help us see that His are so much better.

We will reach our destination, but not on our own terms. The sooner we learn that the better.

“A man’s heart plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.” ~Proverbs 16:9

One of the most beautiful things about walking with Christ is the surrendering of all of our earning, striving, and proving selves. Of course this is also one of the hardest things, because it is all we know how to do. We know how to earn; we don’t know how to receive. We know how to perform; we don’t know how to just be. We know how to do; we don’t know how to rest.

To rest in His presence and know that in Him we are enough. No more proving ourselves- we have been proven by Him alone. In Him we find our lives and we can put down all pretenses and futile attempts at being someone we’re not.

In Him we find who we are.

And once we know who we are, who we truly are and where our true identity lies, we are free. This is what my soul craves, the absolute freedom of being completely known and completely loved anyway. Free to allow myself to be seen with all my quirks and flaws and know that it is actually those quirks and flaws that enable me to be loved and to love others well. Perfect people are unrelatable; by seeing our cracks other people can begin to acknowledge theirs and know that they are not alone. When I know that I am complete and whole in Him, no matter what threat to my identity may arise, I have the power of Christ to tear it down and not be shaken.

When we start from a place of being loved, the world is wide open. Nothing can stop us or get in the way of Christ’s love for us, because nothing in the world has more power over us than He does.

Nothing makes me happier than knowing that I can just be my plain old self and no matter how far I fall, He will be there to catch me and He will never turn His face away. In our deepest shame, He comes close and whispers that all is not lost, that we can never slip out of His grace. The power!

With Jesus, I have nothing to prove. I have no more need to make myself appear important or better than I am, and no need to feel less than. This is the fundamental beginning of our relationship- no relationship can survive without honesty and vulnerability. None. It is the same with our Father- unless we cut the crap and come to Him in complete humility, He will not be able to transform us and our relationship with Him cannot thrive.

Our default is proving or hiding, performing or running away, but there is another way: truth. Owning the truth about ourselves and knowing that we are met by love, right where we are at. Everything else flows from that.

The insidious nature of lies is that they can so slowly and subtly creep into our mind that we don’t even recognize they are there until we are left confounded and utterly condemned- a prisoner to our own minds. Over and over again I find myself in this position, lost and confused with a distorted perception of who I am and what my purpose is. It’s not until I examine my emotions that I can recognize the thoughts that they came from.

I feel worthless–>thought: “You don’t belong here.”

I feel abandoned–>thought: “They hang out without you because you aren’t good enough for them.”

I feel ashamed–>thought: “Your past mistakes define you and you’ll never be able to outrun them.”

Of course I feel miserable, empty, and afraid. Of course those thoughts will never bring me the life I crave. And somehow, in some twisted up way, they are a protective mechanism. They protect me from truly living into who I was made to be, from the risk and failure and adventure involved with all that I am and all that He is. They keep me hidden and safe in a shell of despair.

But they are not from God, not ever.

He will never tell me I’m stupid. He will never tell me I’m hopeless. He will never tell me I’m forgotten.

Because He is love. He is perfect love and perfect love casts out fear–casts out all the lies, the condemnation I choose to live under for supposed safety. In Him there is no condemnation, but only compassion. And it is up to me whether I am willing to receive that or not, to let Him root out all the lies and replace them with truth. To live into that truth, into who I really am. Into freedom.

Condemnation keeps us low, but with God we rise high. He takes us to heights we could never imagine, places we never thought we could go. He turns us into someone we never thought we could be- because we can’t without Him. But it starts with declaring truth over yourself. It starts with you believing that in Him you are enough- you are good enough, strong enough, talented enough, brave enough for whatever He has for you.

The lies have no power over us and God gives us the authority to cast them out.

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.'” ~Matthew 28:18

The fact that this theme is so prevalent in my life tells me that it’s important: it’s important to know who we are in Christ and live into that, into our identity, and not into what the enemy wants us to believe about ourselves. It is the foundation from which we can go out into the world in confidence and assurance that we are loved, known, and chosen, and no one can ever take that away from us.

I praise God for once again reminding me who I am and what He has called me, specifically and uniquely, to do to advance His kingdom. Listen for His voice, that still, small, quiet voice of love that’s always there.

Tune in.

“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” ~Romans 8:38-39

The message that plays over and over in my head every single day boils down to this: “You are unworthy and unqualified. You will never amount to anything, so there is no point in trying.”

That sounds really cynical, because it is. But this is a truth that I live by so often.

The hard thing about being a Christian is realizing your own brokenness, and just how very broken you are. It becomes blazingly clear the more you turn your heart to Him. And this can be blazingly discouraging.

How can God use someone as useless as me in His big, glorious, perfect plan? I am far from perfect, and far from the person I want to be. I’m hopeless right?

But somehow, in His infinite glory, He really can use me. He can use me with all of my scars, bumps and bruises. With all of my shame and fear. He doesn’t see me the way I see myself. He knows that where I see emptiness and chaos and pointlessness, there is more to the story. And I need to trust that- I must.

God uses broken people. He uses the unlikely, the outcasts, the marginalized, and He uses the wealthy, the successful, the “perfect” people. Because guess what? We are all broken. Literally all of us. There is not one person who has not been tainted by sin and fear and hurt and loneliness and longing and emptiness. Not one.

We all have stories. And God uses each story to his glory. Whatever your deepest fear, deepest shame, deepest secret- He goes deeper. He turns all our messy and broken and crazy lives into something beautiful; a miracle from a mess. Only He does that. Not you.

Bring it all before Him: everything you’ve been hiding. He can handle it. He really can. He’ll take the broken you and make you new. But it’s a process, and it’s not easy. It requires faith and courage and trust and hope. It requires all of us, our whole selves before Him. We must step into the light and be seen for who we really are, even if we don’t like it.

It is the only way to transformation. To healing, strength, and joy.

I know I want that, I want Him, more than anything in this world, and I will be the first to admit that I am broken. We don’t need a world full of “perfect” people- we need a world full of whole people: people who are whole in Christ and know who they are and what they are called to do- work that always results in beauty and recognition of our Maker.

Let down your walls and be seen, be known, be loved.

We love them. We hate them. We need them.

So desperately.

We cannot do faith alone, because God is love, and therefore to truly experience Him in all His fullness we have to experience love. And you can only experience love from other people. And it is broken, and messy, and altogether disappointing much of the time. So much so we start to wonder- does perfect love really exist?

Am I truly, wholly, perfectly, unconditionally loved? Because I have never experienced that kind of love here on earth, the kind of love that will die for you even when you are at your worst.

So what’s the point then? If every relationship we have is broken and human and will never be perfect, what’s the point of being in relationship at all? If people will always disappoint, hurt, and abandon me, and I will always disappoint, hurt, and abandon others, wouldn’t it just be better if we all stayed away from each other and just experienced the intimate love of our Father in isolation? Sometimes that sounds so much more tempting to me than to say, try. Try to love better, be a better sister, be a better roommate, be a better friend. Try to have more patience and more kindness and be more like Jesus in every situation I find myself in. Not trying is way easier. And it’s just about the best way to turn your heart into a cold, dark stone.

Our hearts become hardened and bitter when we turn away from relationships, when we aren’t receiving or giving love.

It starts with receiving. Until we truly receive the (yes!) unconditional love of the Father and allow His Holy Spirit to move in us, we will not be able to love and experience love the way He always intended for us to. Because guess what? We can’t do it on our own. No matter how hard we try, we simply will not be able to muster up the love for other people (or for ourselves) that we want to have. I know this is true in my life as the root of bitterness grows because I refuse to accept Christ’s love for me. And it’s hindering my relationships- it’s hurting those I love and it’s hurting me.

After receiving comes repentance. Once I have received the love of Christ and truly allowed it to define me, to allow my identity to be solidly grounded in Him, I can face myself. I can face my flaws and my failures, the ways I am hurting others and myself. And I will be empowered to turn away from those ways, not out of condemnation or shame but out of conviction- the conviction that I don’t want that brokenness in my life anymore and I choose a new way to live, a new way to relate to others.

I run away from relationships. I really do. I’m so scared of the intimacy, vulnerability, and joy that a fulfilling relationship can hold, because it seems too good to be true, and it seems out of control. But I also know that that is the thing my heart so desperately craves the most- that is the thing we were made for- true, deep, intimate relationship with Christ. Honestly, when you look inside your heart, what do you long for? It all boils down to being known, and being loved.

And we are. More than we can ever understand.

So don’t turn away from relationships in your life when things get hard. We need people as much as we need to breathe- to lift us up and support us and encourage us to continue running the race to the finish. Yes, they are human and flawed, but so are we, and we are kidding ourselves if we think we don’t need each other. Nothing will kill us faster or cause more suffering than a lack of love…and nothing but love will bring us more life.

“God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.” ~1 Thessalonians 5 The Message

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” ~John 14:1

Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled. Fear is the greatest enemy of faith, the complete antithesis to the hope and assurance we can hold onto as precious children of a loving God. Yet fear always seems to have such a firm grip on my heart.

I let it. I let fear slowly and subtly sneak in when I’m not looking- into the places where I am not actively pursuing Christ, the places I have hidden from Him and the places where I have insisted on being the master of my own fate.

“and do not give the devil a foothold.” ~Ephesians 4:27

When we give the devil an inch, he’ll take a mile. He loves to consume and devour and destroy: our hope, our security, our identity. He wants to confuse us, to deceive us, and to tempt us into a life we were never meant to live. And when we allow worry to fester- allow our hearts to be troubled- we are giving him prime real estate in our hearts.

But the devil has no place in us, and God already has the victory over darkness. The devil’s foolish schemes will never amount to anything, if we don’t let them.

I experienced some serious spiritual warfare this weekend, but through a strong and beautiful friend and prayer intervention, I was able to experience a taste of the victorious life, of an empowered and faithful life- a life devoid of fear.

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” ~James 4:7

What are we so afraid of, anyway?

“Do not be afraid” is written in some variation in the Bible 365 times, a reminder for each day of the year, and a testament to the utter importance of this command from our Father. Fear holds us back from all that we are made to be, from allowing all that He is to consume our lives and bring us home into His loving arms. The devil wants us lost, but in Him we are found. All we have to do is believe that His promises are true, that His heart for us is compassionate and loving. If we can truly embrace these truths and receive His goodness, we will not be afraid or troubled. Then, no matter what happens, we will know that it will all be okay.

It is well with my soul.

He is risen indeed. And with His resurrection, we too shall rise. That’s what He did for us:  He died so we could die– to ourselves. To all of our dysfunctional, dark emptiness. To all of the pain and anguish and hurt we carry around. He came to free us from the chains that bond us, the chains of broken relationships and broken homes and broken hearts.

We are free. We are truly and completely free. A new beginning. A fresh start. A shedding of the old ways, and a taking up of the cross. He bears all of our burdens, all of our fear. And His burden is no burden at all- His yoke is easy.

Beautiful, wonderful Savior, Friend, and Mighty Counselor. Thank you for what You have done for us.

I am new.

Inner peace is one of those things that has been completely elusive to me for much of my life and it seems like I am constantly striving for it but looking in all the wrong places.

I try so hard to find something that simply wants to find me, if I’ll let it. The inner peace of the Holy Spirit in me. It comes by trust, not effort.

As I am learning to let go and be broken in the places that I am without trying to cover up and pretend like I have it all together, the resistance is fierce. The Devil wants me stuck and worried, but the Lord wants me peaceful and free. You know you are making progress when the fear comes on strong. It is by facing that fear that you can truly let go and allow it to shape you into who you are meant to be.

You’ve heard it before: trust the process. The outcome is out of our control, so what’s the use in worrying about it? I want to live each day in the comfort of knowing that my life is not in my own hands, but that there is a Maker and perfect Planner in control. I am empowered to choose my path, knowing He will open doors and opportunities as I go. That’s how I can have peace. That’s how I can finally trust.

There are so many different suggestions for how to achieve inner peace: meditation, yoga, prayer…etc. and these are all good things, but what it ultimately comes down to is the emptying of our hands and our hearts, so that we can be refilled in joy, hope, and purpose. There is always a breaking down before a building up.

In the middle of my journey I am frightened, confused, angry, and sad at times, but I know it is not the end. God has the victory and peace prevails.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. ~Collossians 3:15

God is the opposite of hurry and worry. He wants us to bear fruit, and if we are constantly hustling and rushing around trying to get everything done, nothing of worth will be produced because there has been no time and care put into our activities. They are fruitless. I feel like God is always telling us to slow down.

Be still and know that I am God. ~Psalm 46:10

There is a hustling in my mind that is out of sync with my heart, with God’s spirit in me. There is something that tells me I must do everything and experience everything and I must do it right now or it will be too late. Seize the day!

Yet as I am thinking about what I should be doing, I am not enjoying what I am doing right now. My mind is always five steps ahead of me while my heart remains behind. I can never catch up, and I’m tired. My soul is tired. I need rest. I need to stop trying to figure it all out. There is a plan.

The mind of the man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. ~Proverbs 16:9

While I am so busy trying to figure out my next steps, my life is happening. The world keeps going and I’m missing out because I’m not present. I let my mind run away and take me with it, and everyone is worse for it.

I am needed here, now. All we have is the present, and we get to choose how we use it- are we going to be engaged with the world around us in a meaningful and connected way, or continue to detach and numb ourselves with the drugs of hurry and worry?

I choose to be here and now, no matter how imperfect and unfinished and messy it is. God meets us where we are and carries us forward- it is not in our own strength and will.

Let go of your to-do list, just for a moment, and trust that the Lord of the universe loves you infinitely and will take care of your every need.