Somehow I'd forgotten how therapeutic music can be. Maybe because after a pretty dark period early last year, my life went through a "summer" season for most of last year. I still had ups and downs, but I spent most of it feeling the happiest I'd felt in...well, a long time.
A couple songs have been rather bittersweet for me lately but helped remind me that there is always hope with God.
Tenth Avenue North's "Worn"
Thousand Foot Krutch's "Breathe You In"
Last year I often prayed for "more of God, less of me." To surrender myself to Him and His will. I wanted that. I trusted God and trusted He had something good for me. I felt I had little to lose. Then it seemed as He worked on growing me, He began opening new blessings and dreams up to me and I continued to pray, to try to seek His will. I began to heal from old hurts and see God work and learn more about Him in ways I'd never had before. Then, when suddenly it seemed like I had everything to lose, He began to take away again. In some ways, in all of the hurt, I am afraid to trust God again. Why give to just tear away?
Some thoughts occurred to me, especially as I listened to TFK's chorus and prayed.
When I am afraid of surrender, I need to focus not on what I have lost or what more I could lose, but on what I most certainly will gain. If I want to live for You, I have to die to myself. Death is hard. It is a terrifying, lonely, painful struggle--a tug of war between despair and hope--a last gasp in the dark as you wait for a distant morning. It requires wrestling with all of our doubts with God, all of our questions, all of our deepest fears. But life in You is worth it. Without that, there is nothing left to hold on to, there is no reason to keep fighting. It is hard in the night to remember what the sun looks like; it is hard with teary eyes to see the hope ahead; it is hard when you are weak to take steps forward in the blackness. But I don't know of any growth, any renewal, any miracle, or any transformation to life and beauty that does not require some amount of pain and loss before glory.
I have to believe He has not abandoned me.
