I Don't Have Time to Maintain These Regrets...

I've had a crazy past few weeks. God has been preparing my heart. For what? I’m not exactly sure. But He keeps pulling me forward, whispering “almost there, love…we’re almost there.”
He has truly been teaching me that I cannot make my decisions based on my feelings. Relationships, with Him and with others through Him, need to be about His will, His plan, His leading, and not about my own preference, fears, or insecurities. He knows what is going to ultimately bring me closer to Him, and that is all that has begun to matter to me as well. I went through a season where I just felt dry. I had not felt His presence, and yet, I have worshiped and loved Him more purely than ever before. He has helped me to change a lot of things for the better, and yet, there are still so many things I need His help in.
I have been realizing how often we put God in a box. We say “this is God, that is not. I will do this and stay away from that”, but that is not how it works, especially when staying away from “that” is a decision that we have made out of fear, or because we don’t want to face something inside of us. God already knows all of our junk. Hiding it from ourselves and others isn’t going to change anything, it’s just going to lengthen the process. Yes, my wounds may be ugly, but the scar tissue is a masterpiece done by an artist who knows my skin better than I know it myself. I have to face the hurt, the bitterness, the pride, the shame, the loss, the fear, in order to get past it. When I just keep it locked away because I “shouldn’t feel that way”, I use it to build up walls between myself and God. God wants us broken. Seeing our faults is what creates humility, is what shows us that we need Him. And when I see my own faults, when I accept them, give them to God, and move forward, I am more able to accept them in others and help them move forward, out of that place of darkness and pain. The truth is that we are loved, that everything around is is a symbol of that love. But if we are lost in our wounds, we will never be able to see that beauty.
All I see around me now is beauty. In people, in nature, in writing and pictures and film. All there is is beauty. There is an Andy Hull lyric that says “After all, it’s just You, my pride, and me.” We need to let go, to stop right where we are and realize that God isn’t mad at us, all of His justifiable wrath was poured out on Jesus; He doesn’t want to punish us, Jesus took the punishment for all of our sin; He just wants to love us, to tell us that we are beautiful. We need to let go of that thing we did last year, that person who hurt us a while back, that sin we committed this morning. We need to understand that the forgiveness we did not earn is full and lacking in nothing, that God’s grace is sufficient for us.
Even in my darkest times i knew that God was taking care of me, I knew it, and yet, I wouldn’t let Him. I just kept saying “nothing can stop this”, and I spoke that lie into my life, all the while, I imagine Jesus was standing over me weeping because I would not let His blood cover me. Last night, after a long talk about love and God and people and life with Corinne, I fell asleep talking with Jesus in a new way. And when I awoke this morning, He was there. I felt Him, just resting on me. We can be a “Christian” for so long and never know that God loves us. If you are broken, and we all are broken, let Him in. Let Him move in you and transform you with His love. We were not meant to be bruised, frightened, lied to, manipulated, scared, alone, or beaten down. We have left all that behind us, and we are moving forward into a great light. We just have to open our eyes.