The Pain of Change

I’m not sure if this happens in everyone’s life, but in recent times, I have consistently been realizing the magnitude of my fallibility. I remember at the very height of this semester when amazing things were happening for me, realizing each day “this means nothing”.

I can be Homecoming Queen, I can have my own business at the age 22, I can get accepted for fellowships and present at conferences, I can write a book, I can do amazing things, but if I am working apart from God, it means absolutely nothing.

I am at a place almost identical to where I was in November of 2014, and that is crazy to think about.

I am in a different year of college.

I am a different age.

I am at a different church.

I am surrounded by different people.

I am at a different job.

I see a different therapist.

I serve the same God, yet I am still struggling with the same things. What does this mean? To me it means that there is work to be done that I have actively chosen to ignore and work around.

I remember how I felt when my best friend told me “you’re not whole...you’re very broken”, and how my immediate response, before even considering that was “no i’m not”. I cannot count how many times since then others have acknowledged my brokenness or imperfection, and I didn’t want to admit it.

Admitting that we are broken, or weak, or fallible or imperfect is tough, and for me, it is probably the scariest thing I have ever had to do. If I want to be whole though, I have to do it. If I want to look more like Jesus, I have to acknowledge the ways that I do not currently look like Him.

The pride, lies, pain,  negative emotions, lust, perversion, shame, guilt, insecurity, confusion, manipulation and all of these things that I’d never admit on an average day, I have to allow these things to be in the open in my personal time with God. We all have dark spaces and corners in our lives, and sometimes we have to do the unthinkable and call them out before God.

Recently I was talking to my best friend about my where I am, and I started to call out the idols in my life, and I realized that one of them was me. That was a hard conversation, but it was one of probably 5 or 6 hard conversations that I have had in the past week (yes, I am talking specifically about you).

I didn’t reveal much of anything in this post, and that was not the point, because although change happens when we are honest with God, and it helps to feel supported when we are accountable to others, we cannot reveal anything to God or others if we don’t admit it in ourselves. For me, it has taken and continues to take people literally calling me out, putting my whole entire life on front street and coming for every fiber of my being to start working toward a place of honesty with myself and God. People repeatedly telling me things that I do or connections that are obvious that I am willing to deny, was necessary for me to even believe some of the things I mentioned above. Believing these things is the first step toward asking God for transformation.

The point of this is for me to say I hope it does not take that for you. Another one of my close friends told me last week, “I think it is going to take you hitting rock bottom, and I don’t mean to be mean, but the bottom is coming”. And she has never been more right than that.

The bottom came for me, and I’d love if you didn’t have to experience that. It really hurts, right now is the most painful place I’ve ever been in, but someone keeps telling me that it is beautiful. She says it’s beautiful because this type of uncomfortable honesty is what brings healing. I believe her, and I am still telling you how bad it hurts.

"Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." -Don't Know Who Said It

Peace,

Lorae