I noticed it in the shower the other day when I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair and letting the hot water run the suds out, I felt my hair had hit a new length down my back. I remember cutting it was only a few days after I got back from India. I had grown my hair for a really long time, like over a year, to be the length that it was, refusing to even trim the dead, fried, ends that were what was left of my bleach blonde hair I had done a few years earlier. I was really hesitant to cut it, and sort of on a whim my mom and I had gone into a salon that 'owed her a favor', as seedy as that sounds and he cut it, a lot shorter than I had hoped, but I ended up really liking it.
Not to get super corny or anything, but I think looking back my hair had represented that past year. That past year was full of hardships, and disappointments, and sin, and temptation, and just a lot of ugly things-the things that are the dead, fried, split ends of our life. Those dead ends are also the ones we hold on to, just as I had refused to cut them, believing that they were helping me or that they looked better, they were actually making my hair look worse and preventing it from being totally healthy. Without even knowing it, I think that cutting my hair was representative of leaving the old things in the past and God giving me a new life, a new spirit, a new hair-do.
I guess when I was in the shower, it caught me off guard to the length in which my hair had grown because it seemed like just yesterday I was in that salon. It kind of baffled me as to how time fast time flies, and how much things can change, literally from day to day.
In my own life, God has physically been taking me through a season of new-ness, if you will.
It seems like every aspect of my life has become changed.
I live in a new place, and am experiencing a whole different lifestyle not only one that's different from El Paso, but one that is wholly independent. I'm paying bills (that are addressed in my name), making dinner, cleaning the house, and I even make my bed every morning. I'm entering into this fresh experience of the REALITIES of adulthood that I'd never fully felt the extent of before.
There's also this new change God's doing in my heart. I have found, that sometimes, the things we say or the preconceived ideas we have about our life are not always true. I guess mostly what I'm specifically referring to is our plans for our life. I had been making the mistake of dreaming up my life and asking God to put his stamp of approval on it, rather than asking God initially what his plan was for my life. (Seems simple enough right?) But for some reason, we just can't do it, we go and go and go sometimes for years without inputting God into any of our decisions and then we hit a wall, fail miserably and ask God where he was and he still, picks us up, dusts us off and tells us that he's been there the whole time. God is SO good to us. He's been so good to me, and so patient to me in this season of my life. He's been gently correcting me on the things that I had so obstinately labeled about who I was and what my life was going to be. He's sort of taking me through a season of rebuilding. My world that I had built up for what my life was going to be was wrecked, and the Lord has sort of said to me, "Let ME tell you who you are. Let ME tell you how I see you." And you know what? It's been refreshing. To have the only confidence and security you have come from the Lord.
I was reading this morning in the November 1st devotional for My Utmost for his Highest, (Oswald Chambers is the bombdotcom y'all) and a part of what he said really spoke to me:
The first thing God does is get us grounded on strong reality and truth. He does this until our cares for ourselves individually have been brought into submission to His way for the purpose of His redemption. Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son.
Man, God knew what he was doing when he sent Jesus. He knew we would fail as humans, and he even knew that we would question the Gospel, and in this context he knew life would get hard for us stubborn little urchins. And what my man Oswald is saying here is that our heartbreak, our hurts, are what brings us closer to God. THIS is why the Good Book says to rejoice in your hardships, because hardships bring us to the point that we have no choice but to sit down at God's door like limp rags and say, "I can't do this on my own anymore. Life is just too hard." And THEN you know what God does at that point in our lives, he takes us and gives us the truth and strength of the Gospel and the truth about ourselves.
My world was getting hard this past year, and I was broken and broken and broken again. My preconceived pillars about my life and what my life would be, the things that I was putting between me and God were shattered and I became a limp rag, and I came to God's door and he picked me up like a little lamb that got left out of the barn in the rain, and he took me and he's kept me close to him. Because of my hardships, God is near to me now, and he's given me a new spirit. He's rebuilding me to be something that was totally different than what I had ever imagined for my life, but I love it. I love it because it's pure and right and from the Lord.
My new spirit is popping up like little flowers all over my life. I'm learning to listen to people more and enjoy being an observer rather than the talker. I'm learning to be sensitive to what other people want and sometimes doing what they want without even letting them know that's not what I 'wanted' to do. I'm learning to see people in a new light, strangers on the street and bus, I'm learning to see them how God sees them without making harsh judgements in my head. Another new blessing of change that may seem silly but I believe was a prompting from the Lord is my newfound love of black coffee. I used to be scared of it, but now I wouldn't have it any other way, and it has truly gotten me through some hard times, and lifted my spirits this semester.
Chuckie Finster has some good insight below:
You know, life IS hard. It's inevitable. It's full of disappointments, and tragedy, and stresses, and pain but God is near through it all. He's sovereign. And he wants use to use those hardships to be in closer fellowship with the Son.
Lately I've learned to just have to take a big breath and say "Lord, won't you come and just be with me today?" and that has made all the difference.
So I guess, what I'm trying to say is invite the Lord into your daily life. He just wants to be close to you. He wants to be a part of our decisions. A part of our conversations. A part of our lives.
It will make all the difference.
Love, Your so fresh and so clean clean (spirit)/Oswald Chambers fan, Shelby
