a year

Think about where you were a year ago. 

I turned 22 yesterday, I was surrounded by my best friends and family. It was a beautiful day. As everyone was talking and carrying on, I looked around the room and remembered where I was a year ago. 

A year ago, I had just gotten home from Rwanda, I remember this day last year, I was laying on my couch having a panic attack while staring at a painted picture of Africa. I figured He was calling me to live there and I was content in sitting on my 'comfort couch' so I would literally panic, I would call people just to justify myself and my thoughts. I said things like 

"I think I'm done going overseas"

"Africa isn't really for me"

I was so insecure in my calling. I was so confused. I had pushed people away thinking that it would gain me something else. I wrote things in my journals that I didn't mean at all, I just wrote them to fill the blank pages. I said words that I didn't mean, I didn't guard the calling Jesus placed on me, I tried to compare myself to everyone. I never wanted to be alone; simply because my thoughs would completely take over.

All of this happened because I was trying to control my life. I was trying to do everything. I was trying to hold onto things that needed to be let go of. I was being disobedient in every sense. I was around people every second of the day, but I was lonely. 

Today, as I sit on my floor next to my cat with my bible open and the rain outside, I think about where I am now. I think about how much I have changed. How much I have grown. I think about how much I have allowed Jesus to change me, to push me, to mold me. 

In the past year I have held things tightly. I have released things, not just saying I'm releasing them but I literally let them go. Friendships I thought would never be mended are better than they have ever been. I wake up some morning and long to talk to Jesus. I quit comparing myself to everyone else when I realized that Jesus created me to be me, he didn't create me to copy someone else. He wants me. I want to know Him more. I use to long to be in a relationship, but now I long for a relationship with my creator. A relationship with the One who placed me on this earth. I use to say things just to hear myself say them, I use to call people the second something 'bad' happened. I worried about what everyone else was doing. I didn't want to be alone because I didn't want to hear what He was telling me because what He was telling me didn't line up with what I wanted.

I'm writing this blog to encourage you all. Whoever reads these. So much can change in a year. Don't be afraid of change, I use to be and it was miserable. As I sat on my couch last night talking to a good friend, I explained where I was in life-- I explained that I could easily go to school this semester or pack it up and move it over to Uganda. I explained that whichever I choose to do, my life would be different in each scenario. Kind of like a book, if I choose Uganda the chapters would be different than the chapters where I stayed and finshed school, but the first chapter and the last chapter are the same in each book. I was created in the beginning and in the ending I will finally get to meet my creator face to face. I get to dance with him. 

So no matter what my life may look like in this moment and no matter how much it's changed the past year and how much it is going to change within the next year-- as long as I'm passionately pursuing my Jesus then everything else will come in when it's supposed to. 

I don't miss how I was last year. I don't miss who I was around last year because they are all still in my life they have just grown too, in such beautiful ways. I think growing up is a little better when change doesn't freak you out as much.