Light at the end of the tunnel....

At this very moment there are only 6 days...19 hours....and 12 minutes until I can regain some of my sanity and only 9 days...20 hours....and 11 minutes until my feet leave Italian soil on their way for home. I can do this. I can make it thru this.

The Lord has been so faithful in His care for me and my heart in the form of sending my family here to visit at exactly the right time...Scripture that's perfect for the moment...friends online to pray with me...and so much more.

Separation anxiety

Do you ever just ask the Lord why it is that you have to learn so many different lessons at one time? That you need a break? And His answer is: I will do what I need to do to form you more into who I've created you to be. I will not give you more than you can handle. Ouch. Right between the eyes.

I feel like I constantly live in a classroom and the Lord is my instructor. He is constantly editing my work and suggesting how I should rephrase, reframe how I see things, how I live, who I am. Ultimately, I know this is for my good and His glory, but more often than not this is a painful process...as I have said over and over again in this blog. Here we are again!

Once again, I find that I am struggling with where God has me, where He's called me because I feel like a constant failure at what I am doing. I feel like I am constantly treading water. And then He corrects me and reminds me that I am not working for man, for myself, but Him. And I cannot gauge how I am doing or how I am performing by their and my imperfect ruler. Rather, I am to look to my Heavenly Father for approval and for how I feel about how I am doing, who I am. I cannot expect the opinions of others about me to validate me as a person or to negate who I am. I cannot allow the changing opinions of people here to define and determine how I carry myself, how I see myself, how I love or hate myself, how I succeed or how I fail. The only opinion that matters, that will ever matter, is Jesus'. Period. End of story.

Easier said than done. And I struggle, as a people pleaser, to accept and live out this truth. I so desperately want to find approval in what others around me think of me or how I am performing at my job and that's killing me. I cannot and should not derive my worth from their fallible opinions. Just Jesus. He's the only benchmark.

I find myself beseeching the Lord for His guidance and asking Him to remove that part of me that seeks the approval of man. He is using whatever means necessary to root this out in me...and it hurts at times, but I find comfort in His word, in His people, and in His truth sung thru the lyrics in JJ Heller's new CD, Painted Red. Oh how He has ministered to my heart thru her music. Check it out if you haven't and remember...the opinion of man will always fail you...God never will.

Growing pains

When I left Arizona I left behind an incredible support system of friends and family. I left behind a group of people who love me and support me. A group of people who always offered me wisdom, advice, and listening ears. What I didn't realize, though, is that it's quite possible that I turned these people into idols in my life. They took God's place in my life as my all in all, my comfort, my joy, my peace, and my sounding board. Because of who He is, God will not allow anyone or anything to usurp His rightful place as Lord of our lives and often times will allow trials and tribulations to bring us back to Him...to loosen the grip of idolatry in our lives. Drastic as it may seem and as painful as it may be, He will allow what is necessary to draw us back to Him.

This is where I find myself. The last 6 weeks have been immensely hard and incredibly painful. They have been weeks that I can only describe as a barren wasteland. How can this be when I am living in Italy? Well, let me tell you how this can be...it can be this way when you are stripped of all that if familiar, comfortable. It can be this way when that support system is no longer right there or easily accessible. It can be this way when you're in a position that makes you feel like you're constantly treading water and unable to catch your breath. It can be this way when you walked away from a daily dependence on God only to find yourself utterly alone and not knowing where to turn or what to do. This is where I am.

I have cried out to the Lord, especially this week, and have sought His face. I still don't understand fully why I have had to go thru all that I have had to endure, but I do believe it is because I put Him 2nd...or further down...in my life. I made those around me my god. And our God is a jealous God. So now I find myself bearing the consequences of my sin. And that place is not pleasant. It has left me broken and bleeding. My heart feels as if it has been ripped apart and left trampled upon.

I know that I am where I am because of choices that I made and sin that I committed. Still, I see the Lord working in the midst of this as my heart begins to turn back towards Him. His loving hands are molding my heart into a heart solely after His. I know that this is just the beginning and it is conceivable that there will continue to be hard days and pain, but I also know that He is faithful and that He will never leave me nor forsake me.

So, if you find yourself in a place such as this I suggest that you fall before the Lord and ask Him for eyes to see where you have turned your heart from Him and let Him restore you. It won't be easy and it won't be pain-free, but it will be worth it. Also, check out JJ Heller's new album, Painted Red, because so much of what she sings about speaks to this place I am in and it has been such a blessing, especially the song Your Hands.

Conflicting information

Anyone who has known me for any period of time knows that for most of my life I was able to turn my emotions off almost completely. I hid behind my eating disorder and used food to cope with what was going on in my life. Rarely did I feel anything. I was numb for too many years.

Then, after I went thru treatment and learned that feelings weren't bad things I began to slowly feel again. I experienced things like sadness and hurt and found that I could live thru them. It's been a hard process and I'm not always able to express or feel things, but I'm a work in progress.

Moving across the world has brought with it a real emotional awakening. I have cried more since my arrival then I have in probably my entire life. Truly. I have shared this with people back home who know me and know what I've been thru and they have told me that they think this may be God's way of opening up my heart more...of allowing me to feel and express emotion more. And to a certain extent, I agree. I do think that this is something He is doing in my life.

And then I am told by someone today that I am too emotional. That I need to not be so transparent with my emotions. I am here, as he put it, for students to look up to and take cues from. Huh. I don't quite know what to do with that. On the one hand I'm told that it's ok for me to have emotions and to express them, but on the other I feel like I'm being punished for that. I don't know how to reconcile the two.

Am I supposed to act as if everything is right with the world when it may not be? Is that how I am supposed to be a professional?

I'm just at a loss as to what I'm supposed to do with this information...

3 years

It was three years ago that I entered treatment for my eating disorder. I just finished reading my post from last October about it being 2 years. Again, where did that year go? Where did those three years go??

It's been a great year and so much has happened. So much has happened that three years ago would have caused me to use my eating disorder to cope, but I haven't, I didn't. Instead, I've used the skills that I learned and I reached out to those in my life God has blessed me with...my family, friends, and amazing dietician.

I thought that moving to Italy, and all the stress that brings with it, would cause me to stumble, but instead it has helped me to see how far I've come and all that I have within me (gifts from God) to cope in a healthful way.

Thank you Jesus for these last three years! Looking forward to year 4!

Dreams and reality

It's funny what happens when your dreams come true. Suddenly the place you find yourself in isn't quite what you thought it would be and you find yourself asking the questions "what was I thinking?" or "I thought that this is where I was supposed to be and if so, why is it so hard?"

I had the dream of living in Italy stored up in my heart for 16 years and here I am asking myself these questions. I was so certain that this is where God called me and yet it's been by far the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life and there doesn't seem to be any reprieve. Everyday brings new and more difficult challenges that I just take a step back and handle only to have something else come over. How much can one person truly handle? What was God thinking when He gave me my hearts desire? What was He thinking that I am capable of? How come I don't trust that I can do this or have any confidence in the fact that I know I am supposed to be here? When will it start feeling normal and like a real job and my life instead of an uphill battle?

Even still, I have to remember that which I have been blessed with. This is what gets me through, remembering what God has given me and all that He provides. I am thankful for the Bible study that I am a part of on Mondays and for the women that God is brining into my life through it. I am thankful for Lynda's presence here. I am thankful for students and getting to do life with them. I am thankful for the Sisters who offer me encouragement and who pray for me. I am thankful for my family and friends at home who lift me up in prayer daily. I am thankful that my friends and family have the means to visit me. I am thankful that I have a job right now. I am thankful that I have a place to live, food to eat, and basic necessities. I am thankful that God's grace is sufficient for me and His power is perfected in my weakness. I am trusting in that big time right now...that His power is perfected in my weakness because I am so weak right now.

God's making diamonds

Diamonds. For the most part they are associated with engagements, weddings, anniversaries and pleads for forgiveness. Marilyn Monroe proclaimed that diamonds are a "girl's best friend" in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, De Beers claims that a "diamond is forever." Take your pick. The world has a lot to say about this precious gem, but do you know how these stones are formed? Do you know the process a diamond goes thru before it finds its way into a blue Tiffany box?

Diamonds are formed at high-pressure, high-temperature conditions within the Earth's mantle, about 100 miles below the Earth's surface. It is not known how long it takes a diamond to form exactly, but Cate Lineberry with the Smithsonian magazine writes that "diamonds may start to grow and then there may be an interruption for some reason – a change in conditions, temperature, pressure, source of carbon, whatever—and they could sit for millions, hundreds of million of years, and then start growing again." Interesting. So, what we see in the stores, on a finger may have gone through a harder process to make it to those places than merely being unearthed. They had to go through a process that continuously applied pressure, heat to them, and what results from this is often times a breathtaking gemstone...a precious commodity.

Isn't this how life, our growth in Christ often goes? It's through times of great pressure, heat and a period of constant change or interruption that we find we have been transformed the most? Don't we too continue to grow? Isn't it when we feel as though we are getting it from all angles, above, below, side-to-side, that we begin to see our bare minerals being transformed into a precious commodity? Notice, too, that Lineberry doesn't say that after all of this pressure, all of this heat that the diamond is now worthless, useless...rather, it becomes a beautiful, coveted, and sought after jewel.

I am in the process of being made into a diamond right now...or at least that's how it seems. Pressure and heat from all sides are crushing me...refining me....hopefully making me into a better version of the raw materials Jesus gave me and is now re-shaping. I know that this time of refinement is for my benefit and to God's glory, but that doesn't have to mean that I like it all of the time. It hurts. It's painful. It's lonely and causes me to weep. It has also caused me to cry out to Jesus in the midst of the incredible pressure. I know that our Lord is faithful, He is just, and He will never leave me nor forsake me. He is always with me and seeks to only give me what is good for me. So, I have to ultimately trust that He knows better than I. That He knows what I can and cannot bear. That He knows what is best for me. That He knows that at the end of this I, like a diamond, will refract light...but it will be the Light of life, the Light of man, the Light that casts out all darkness. And so I will go thru this. I will survive...because it will bring glory to His name.