2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back

Every once in a while, I reach a point where I feel that I am really starting to make progress in a particular area of my life. I feel confident (perhaps even prideful) that I have moved passed this area of difficulty in my life. It is often when I reach this point that something happens to pull me back a little. Last December, I wrote a blog post about insecurity admitting that it was something with which I struggle. In the months that followed, I made great strides in that area. I began to live with the knowledge that “I need to stop finding joy in what others think of me and start finding joy in Him.” Reading the Psalms really helped with that. While the psalmist often struggled with feeling as though God had forsaken him, he also wrote many psalms that are completely and utterly joyful and worship full. (Side note: Let me just say, that it is pretty amazing to have a boyfriend that replies to your text about how crummy your day has been with a text saying something like, “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day. I wish I were there to make it better. Have you read your Bible today? Try the book of Psalms.” Yes, he’s that cool.)

I was just thinking the other day how truly freeing it is to live a life with very little insecurity. And then I had a dream. It was one of those dreams where you can’t remember exactly what happened, but you know how it made you feel. I woke up feeling completely worthless and unloved. And while I know that’s not true, the feeling was overwhelming. I pulled the covers over my head and curled into a ball trying to shake it off. The feeling was fading (perhaps if I had been awake enough to consider praying, it would have faded faster) when my mom called that the coffee was ready. Coffee!! I got up, pushing the feeling to the back of my mind. It stayed there till I got in the shower (come on, I know I’m not the only one who does some of their most intense thinking in the shower!). I realized why, on this particular day, I found these feelings so crippling. It was because I thought I was past this. I thought I had moved on to other struggles. Wrong. But how do you combat thoughts that assail you in your sleep? I have no idea. But I am confident in this very thing: His grace is sufficient for me, for His strength is made perfect in weakness. “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” For “the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love; He will exult over you with loud singing.

Keep on singing,