2023 has been a tough year for me. It isn’t until I sit in stillness, TV off, radio mute, not flowing with music, phone down that I feel every ache and breath in my body.
This whole year felt like I was waiting for something. I’d run through the checklist of my life, good job, make good money, be kind to people, eat a healthy meal, go out and have friends, be social, pray everyday, read my Bible, and still something felt missing.
I asked God to show me a blueprint. “God, I am blessed, and I thank You for it, but if You want me to go somewhere else, tell me where to go.” I know God heard me. I cried in my bed, on my couch. I had glimpses that felt like breakthroughs, I felt genuinely good, and yet when my head hit the pillow each night, I told myself, “Life is meant to be lived. Humans are meant to be loved.”
I’m 1000 miles away from the person I thought I’d be and also so much closer to who God has made me. I’m frustrated and going in cycles with the same mental struggles, and simultaneously, I’ve never felt more sure of myself.
Do you know the surety of feeling who you are so deep in your bones, and yet the life around you is failing to reflect it? I do. That’s the best way to describe 2023.
So I told myself, 2024, we’re going to live. Those trips I planned, being more open to relationships, being the vibrant version of myself I know I can be. Having something to look forward to is the only way to have hope. It’s the same thing I told myself in 2023. I did almost everything I said I would, and I’d still lay in bed, staring out my window with the same thoughts, questioning when I would start living.
There was a point in my life that I needed freedom, I needed less structure to heal, but since there was no structure, eventually I adapted bad habits with no accountability. I learned to honor myself as a way of being 100% of the time. I became a slave of my emotions and desires.
I keep thinking of myself as someone who just needs to live and be free, but freedom can be found in discipline. I know because I find the most peace in certainty. My best days are my most productive days. Sometimes, I forget what makes me feel clear and whole.
This whole year, I was emotionally uncontrolled, doing what I wanted at every whim. I underslept, overshopped, spent money like water, kept my house messy, overworked, and struggled to say no. I justified my behavior and regretted it later. Sure, I did what I wanted to do, and I still woke up every morning waiting until work was over to catch a break. I was not eating food until 4 p.m. and binge eating because I had been starving by that point. I had been hanging out with friends and ignoring the fact that I hadn’t spent a weekend at home when I just moved, just to feel like I had some sort of life. I crashed every night and was tight and frustrated all day. I placed fillers in my life that didn’t take away the screaming thoughts when I’d strip down and try to sleep. No wonder I only got 3.5 hours of sleep at night.
I called an undisciplined life freedom so I’d feel better about the fact that there was a deep part of me unfulfilled. Not a week went by that I didn’t ruminate the fact that my life looked dramatically different than I thought it would. I worked so hard to heal and be better, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw my scars. They were healing but still there. I desperately just wanted to move past it all and be who God wanted me to be.
So every week, I asked God to show me how to honor Him with my life. I’ve been looking out the window, expecting some dramatic change where I’d leave all that weight behind so I can live the life He set for me. I designed a person in my mind, desperately waiting to become her if I just kept manipulating enough parts of my life and creating enough moments where I felt like “her.” I created an escape from my unfulfilling life and what at times feels like my unfulfilled mind. I haven’t been asking Him how I can honor Him with what I have now. I couldn’t, because I’ve been running away from myself.
I’ll never feel fulfilled until I practice contentment. I’m chasing the next thing to look forward to, thinking it’s outside of what I have, not within what has been given to me already. I’ve elevated myself, my wants, my desires, my emotions, my feelings above God, so much so that even when I’ve received almost everything I’ve asked for, I’m trying to find ways to get the next things and then I complain that they mean nothing when I’ve given all of my energy to get it.
I have a tendency to look high for God and not on the ground. God is right where I am and if my temple, my home, my mind, my daily life doesn’t reflect that, I don’t need to run away to find hope, I need to get my house in order so I can feel that God dwells here.
I need to give myself a fighting chance, and that starts with feeling my feet on the ground, not daydreaming out the window for God to create a new life. God knows I wouldn’t find what I’m looking for there anyway.
This Girl's Worth 