For the heartbroken, the lonely, lost, and confused...

Recently, my heart was broken and I was left confused.  I was left asking God why. Why did he do this?  Why did He take away something that I've always wanted?

Now, I must admit that I feel like a lot of us need to be honest with ourselves and honest with our God about how we really feel.  We want to pick ourselves up and pull ourselves together before we feel worthy to present ourselves to God.  Yet, God knows how we feel, we might as well tell him.  So, after weeks of telling Him like it is.  I told Him that I was frustrated, and confused.  I told Him that I was hurt.  I told Him that I was doubting his goodness that his will was better than my own.

I felt bad for doubting, and being mad at God and still walking in church and professing his love.  Yet, to be honest this is what life is all about.  We are in the refiners fire and every once and a while we have to struggle with things and wrestle with them.  And why not ask your most probing questions to the one who created the universe.

Doubting is not a bad thing, it can make us stronger.  It is just how we handle it that determines our character.

So, the other night I was really struggling with pain.  God said hey remember that time when you didn't make the cheerleading team and I got you through that.  If I can get you through that I can get you through this.

You see, my freshman year I had worked so so so hard to get my back-handspring and round-off back-handspring so that I could be a sophomore cheerleader.  I had it all planned out.  I was going to be a cheerleader all four years of my high school career and then maybe try-out to become a cheerleader in college. Well, it was all riding on the test of my back-handspring.  If I passed that, I could try-out and my family and I were pretty sure if I made it past the test, the try-outs would be a breeze and I would make the team.  Well, I made it past the test and I was celebrating.  I made it through try-outs too, but we were wrong.  I didn't make it.

My whole family was confused.  So confused that my dad had not prepared what to do if I had not made it only if I did.  I stared at a list of girls names where my name was missing sitting in a car decorated for my celebration.  I will never forget that moment.  The moment of confusion.  My mom trying to console me as she was trying to make since of it herself.  

The next few weeks were filled with there is something better out there.  There is a reason. God has something better out there for you.  Then, one day I had had it.  I said, "Mama, I know that there is something better out there for me, but right now it doesn't change how I feel"

I trusted God, and knew his plan, but it was still hard for me to sing "Blessed be the name of the Lord, who gives and takes away" the next day.

I will never forget these moments because they shaped who I am today.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, for you know that testing of your faith develops perseverance, perseverance must finish it's work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything"
James 1:2-4

I later on discovered I had misplaced my identity.  My identity was in cheerleading not in who God made me to be.  I became thoroughly involved in show choir, which I ended up loving a whole lot more than I love cheerleading but what's crazy is show choir didn't become my identity like cheerleading did.  God still was.

I feel like recently I have placed my identity in the wrong things, and usually God takes those things away. God is our God not to make us happy but to make us whole.  I can only be whole if my identity is placed in him.

 I place my hope in God and how He is in control and that there is something better out there for me, but until them I will wrestle with the pain, and come to God with my doubts.  I'm in the refiners fire and I long to come out more mature and complete than when I went in.

So, to the heartbroken, the lonely, lost and confused, God says: Come to me, I'm all you need.