as it goes....

This morning I feel different, I feel good, I feel new. I know I can not base everything on my feelings and they do come and go, but I am thankful for it in this moment.
I am going to try to attempt to get out all that has been going on, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

My mom has been fasting for me for the past 2 weeks so far and it has felt intense, both good and bad. I am more aware of the spiritual, both God and also the constant barrage of thoughts that are trying to lie there way into my head. Rather, the lies I have been listening to and also believing without question for some time now. I feel that perhaps they are less now because I am aware of them or I try to bring truth to my thoughts or just say Jesus, to take the torment away in the moment. I am trying to listen to any teaching I can get my hands on and keeping worship on.

My greatest prayer is that I will love Jesus with all my heart and have an unquenchable thirst for His word. Being in a place of trying to receive from Him and to stop trying to earn some sort of conditional love is a strange and hard place to be in some ways, but in other ways it makes me love Him and feel so incredibly grateful to Him for being for me and giving to me what I can not give myself. Being the one with the broken heart, captive and sitting in darkness, my need for that Savior has never been so great because I know I want to be saved so desperately. I know He wants to, I know He will, I know He is. I am also asking Him to increase my faith and help my unbelief. Of course he wants all these things for me, what does Beth Moore say "stop whining and wishing and start believing and receiving".  To actually believe that I am more than a conqueror and not to be anxious about anything, but in everything ask Him what I need, and to know that the His peace which actually passes all understanding will guard both my heart and my mind. This is the truth and this is the freedom.

All of this makes me love Him and need Him and see Him again in such an intimate way. This Sunday is Holy Week and I know the timing is not accidental. I appreciate and love Him and His sacrifice has always been meaningful, of course, but this year, in this time, it feels so much more personal. To feel my love for Him and not just know it intellectually.

My journey with Him is now brining me back into this trust with Him. Not that He has ever become utrustworthy, but I have just stopped trusting Him. I find myself in a similar position as I was in back in October when I felt like my depression reared its ugly head in a large way. My husband has a new job and its great, but they want us to move, like in April which is just a little over a month away. There is a plus side to this as I hoped for a three bedroom before the new baby, but this place they want us to move is 2 hours away. This takes away all my friends, my family, and puts me in nearly the same place I was three years ago when I moved to Colorado. No church, no car, and now a newborn and a toddler in a place I don't know. The whole idea of it makes me want to drown in anxiety. So, how do I marry all that I am learning, believing and growing in the Lord with something I am facing that is so hard?

I have met a couple times with a lady who just encourages me and helps me see what God is doing in my life and it has been really helpful in this journey. She encouraged me to take to the Lord my needs, tell him what I think I need. She asked me if I did that. I told her I didn't because I feel like He already knows. Yet as I write this and think about it I am afraid to ask Him for the fear of Him saying no, and feeling rejected. I think this is one of my deepest fears, rejection. And how I feel in the past few years I have asked for things and the answers has been...no. Ouch. But then I reflect on how He is saving me, how He is good, all that He is doing, how can I not trust Him, even in staring in the face of what might be considered my greatest current fear...the isolation that triggers my depression.

So this is where I am right now, both good steps forward along with questions and concerns and I suppose the opportunity to enter into a deeper place of trust with the Lord by asking Him for what I think I need or what I think I want or telling Him my fears. So, I will try....