What's up my friends and family!
Thought: You never truly know how the pins will fall after you make a big decision. Here I stand at the end of February...I'm finally feeling the impacts of the the decisions I made towards the end of 2011. If you remember, going into 2012 I made a decision to start a new job, leave my current church, AND move to a completely different city. Not only that, but I was dealing with the pains of no longer being engaged. In hindsight, I realized that I had experienced a MAJOR upheaval at the root of my foundation; so much so, that today I stand in...well...instability. Everything I've worked for in the past 5 years...almost everything I've known and loved just seemed to be restarted...with mostly new characters and new faces. My relationships with many of the old characters in my life were drastically altered as well.
Now I can't say that this is the first time this has happened in my life. I've experienced this two times before. Once when I graduated high school and moved to Indiana to attend Notre Dame. The other time was when I graduated from Notre Dame and moved to New Jersey to work. But what makes this time different is there was a seemingly forced closure period that led me to make the change. In both high school and college, there was a sense of a permanent and physical end to that stage in my life...and the requirement to move forward with my next journey. This time, it was my Spirit that led me to change. That said, I'm really not that familiar with the territory that I'm in.
I find it funny, too. It's in these times when we're in our season of change (or how we as Christians usually say it...our Wilderness) that the enemy brings on the all out assault. I see him bringing up past demons in my life. That particular past demon for me is weight gain. At the end of 2006, I made a commitment to gain control of my weight. By the end of 2007, I had lost 70lbs! And I successfully kept it off until 2011...when my world began to shift. With weight gain comes emotional and physical aches and pains that I thought I had moved past. It's just a mess.
I also see the enemy hitting me in another weak spot of mine: my desire to be supported and to support others. Because there is so much change in my life, I feel like I have a completely new set of hands are hitting me with the "I need" line. Anybody who knows me, knows that I am wired to give. So its hard for me to accept that my answer is mostly "NO" these days. It also doesn't help that I'm experiencing constant (and sometimes illogical) rifts with my current support system. But I've always believed that when there are issues in your relationships, it's always spiritual (Eph 6:12). I just know that God placed family and other loved ones in your life to be the one example of His undying love for us...and when that is attacked, its the enemy ripping at our core.
But God spoke to me this morning in His sweet, still voice. He gave me one scripture: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all of its righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you" ~ Matthew 6:33. He reminded me to stop stressing over my stresses. He reminded me that while the world that I THOUGHT I had collapses around me, to just stay focused on Him. He'll provide my stability...He'll provide my peace...He'll provide anything that I need at the time I need them.
So today, I'm striving to stop trying to FIX my problems, and pushing to FIX my eyes on Him.
Thanks for reading...
MD
