new beginning

You don’t know until you’ve hit rock bottom and you’re broken, thirsty, hungry and desperate, how desperately in need of love you are. And the perfect kind of love. Not the one that still leaves you thirsty. You don’t know until you’ve lost everything, how you never really had anything to begin with. Everything I used to bring to the table really was just filthy rags and only now have I begun to see how silly I must have looked when I prided myself in them.

Watching the prayer room tonight I felt God’s presence so near. The realization that were it not for my own weakness I could still be there right now, that place could be home, those people my family, hurts. I blew it. I failed. I screwed up. It’s a struggle not to keep those thoughts running through my head on a consistent basis.

The thing I have to remember is that God’s mercies are new every morning. How wonderful is that. Those things that kept me from Him and His purpose for me are as far from His mind as the east is from the west, they’ve been washed away into a sea of forgetfulness. He forgot them. Now I have to also. The Lord must be a big fan of the morning. Because it comes around every day, and with it mercies that are new and a slate that’s clean. He moves on. And so do I.

The burning the bridges part is where I keep getting tripped up. The Lord wants to make all things new but if I won’t let go of all things old it doesn’t work. My hands are full if I’m still clinging to the past, if I’m afraid to let it go. It’s what I’ve been thinking about constantly these past few days and it’s what Anna sang about tonight in the prayer room. Saying goodbye. Burning the bridges. It’s scary to stand with your hands emptied, scary to let go, scary to say goodbye. But it’s the next step in moving on. Letting go.

There are promises and they’re all yes and amen in Jesus. There’s a future, full of hope and good things. There’s a calling and a destiny that remain unaffected by my mistakes, my stumbles, my failures, my rebellion. But it lies on the other side. I may limp into it broken because I tried wrestling with God and lost. But that limp can become a beautiful reminder of grace that’s made perfect in my need, strength made perfect in my weakness. I just have to keep walking. Count all things as lost for the sake of Jesus, the greatest prize.

And the hunger pains I feel as I let go, the emptiness, the loneliness, the disillusionment. It’s a gift- a blessing, not a curse. Because the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be filled. Period. That’s a promise.