Today I lay myself bare.  I am a flawed human being.  We all are.  I hang onto things thinking that I have some kind of control over them but I don’t.  Circumstances are swirling around my life right now that are making that abundantly clear.  The details may seem important, but they are not.  What I am going through is hard.  The hardest thing I think I’ve ever known.  But there is a point to it all.  I know there is.  There is nothing that God will not do for just one soul.  He will allow everything to be stripped away and broken in order that His great love is known.  Every direction I turn, every path I take brings more stripping and pain.  In reading this, please do not feel sorry for me.  Do not be angry that the hard things are happening.  Instead take another look.  See that what God is doing is beautiful.  It is forcing me to make minute by minute choices to trust Him and not what I see all around me.  It is forcing me to be still where I have been chaotic. It is forcing me to be silent where I have been incessantly vocal.  It is forcing me to have hope where I have seen only the impossible.  I want circumstances to come into line with my plan, with my desire, with what I think is best for ME.  I am giving that up.  I am learning to put my full and complete hope in what God has planned, no matter what that looks like.

I am also coming to terms with the fact, that even in learning all of these things, pain still exists.  It does not just disappear because I am trusting or hoping or being still.  It is there.  It is raw.  I feel shredded.  I feel abandoned.  I feel forgotten.  But I choose not to BELIEVE that I am abandoned or forgotten.  For He sees me.  He knows my name.  He calls me His.  He cares about the things I care about.  He is near to the brokenhearted. He delights in me right where I am at.  His name is my strong tower and I run into that tower.  Nothing can get to me when I choose to stay IN His tower.  Think about that for a minute.  Picture that in your mind.  When I run to His tower I am fully protected. NOTHING can harm me.  NOTHING.  There is peace in His tower.  When I am in His tower I take my hands off of everything that I am trying to control.  I cannot control AND live in His tower at the same time.  Just as nothing can get to me, I cannot keep my hands on outside things. I cannot hold chains of control around those circumstances anymore.  I let go.  But don’t get me wrong, it is hard to stay in the tower. I am so human.  My “need” to have the magical words to change a situation is still there. So I step outside sometimes.  I try to take control again.  Then I have to choose again, to align my heart and spirit with the fact that God can take care of it better than I can.  And so I let go.  Over and over and over again.

I have walked the road of bitterness.  It left me with a stomach full of pills and a stay at the mental hospital.  I will not go back there.  God, in His kindness, chose to heal me and I treasure and protect that healing.  I will always choose forgiveness.  Of God, of others, of myself.  There are people who think I am crazy.  Who think that I have every right to be angry, to be spiteful.  And in the eyes of the world, maybe I do, but I choose differently.  God has forgiven me more than I could ever keep track of.  I will never turn my back on that.  I will forgive much.  Every. Single. Time.  No matter the offense.  I choose Jesus.  No matter what comes at me, I choose Jesus.  I CHOOSE JESUS!