"you are your best self right now, j." , my friend looked me in the eyes and told me these words.
I've been replaying them inside my head every day since.
Over the last year, God has really showed up in ways I once didn't believe He would.
But he did and he has.
Lately, I have been reminded of the miracles in the details. So often we are caught up in the big in the cloud miracles, we miss the small ones right infront of our faces.
This time last year I desperately prayed for healing, for eyes to see the beauty in the breaking and hope in the hopeless days.
so much of last year I spent at war with my body, fighting anxiousness for days on end wondering if one day God would grab my hand and show me the mountains he onced moved could still be moved now.
there were many days I was angry at God, but He still kept tugging at my heart showing me the beauty in pain.
But He showed up in the most bleak days of my life and at 29, I feel more alive that I have in all my twenties.
I truly feel when we finally say, "God show me," He will and in the way He does it, is beyond me, but those words travel to spaces you must be okay with when you pray big things like that.
I was driving home the other day from my friend's house and kept rethinking about all the ways God keeps His promises.
Lately, I've been facing some things that require so much patience from me. And if you know me at all, I am the most impatient person, mixed with wanting to control everything inside my orbit.
So needless to say, I've been on this edge trying to remind myself that trust and patience are intertwined at it's root.
and I can't sit here and proclaim that I can fully trust what God is doing without having patience to release it all from my hands and into His.
In the bible, the word, "be still" appears seven times.
BE STILL means to let go, become weak or release.
The number seven is also the number meaning perfection - or completeness, balance, wisdom.
"Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10
I keep going back to these two things and really trying to dig myself into it. I really want to be a woman who trusts God with not only the bigger things in life, but also the small things nobody can see but me.
One of my favorite scriptures happens after that part of Jeremiah. It says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart," (Jeremiah 29:13)
Sometimes, I feel people skip over that part because they look at that first part only. But if you continue, you see that yes, God wants to show you the most beautiful plans for your life, but you MUST be willing to lay down your desires to decode everything and seek His heart - it is then, slowly you will learn patience in the waiting as He makes melodies over you with His heart.
So I go back to the BE STILL part.
Because I am so small and as I look up at the sky I am reminded that my little restless heart cannot fathom the craft God is doing in my life and maybe if I practice patience enough, I will see how peaceful it really can be when I choose to be still and let God do miracles in my life.
At the beginning of this whole thing, I started with the words my friend told me, and I believe my friend when she said those to me, but as I look in the mirror replaying those words, it makes me want to become even better, even stronger, even wiser than what God has done in me the last year...
and it begins with learning how to be. just be.
So its Saturday, it's a new day, and as I preach these words to my own heart, I hope you preach them to yours, as well.
XO, J.
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