This was an especially good Easter. It wasn't really due to anything in particular, but just that every year I continue to go deeper into its meaning to me personally. I could never stop wrapping my head around the cross; I hope I never do!
And I was thinking about the things I've done in my young life, and how I can't imagine that that was my life. It's so different now, it's been so different since. It's left me waiting til I do something like it again, to feel like I'm really living a life; maybe my life. Right now I feel like I'm living bills and a job to satiate those bills. So I'm constantly thinking about what's next that's different. And I have this tendency - a very human tendency - to come up with every idea possible. I could tell you the array of things I've conjured up, and they're so different: moving away, moving far away, getting more educated, getting more spiritually educated, being a nomad, and putting down big-kid roots. Then I think about how any of these plans "would just be easier if __________".
But among the greatest lessons I learned from my big journey of 2011, was that following God's plan is significantly better than anything I could come up with, while still fulfilling the desires of my heart. So I just had this sort of revelation, Jesus went to the cross (not that my life decisions even big to compare to walking oneself to such a fate) knowing full-well what He was going into, and the bible is fairly clear that it wasn't easy...for the Son of God. The best things in life aren't easy to get to, but they're well-worth it when you do.
My sister-in-law recently having a baby, I think of the process: nine months of your body changing in spite of you, then pain, then more pain, then a baby laid in your arms. I can only imagine the feeling of holding your first child after all that you go through.
I know this all, in the better part of me; the better-developed, more rational side of my mind. I know that the good lies with Him and His plans that are to bless me and use my gifts, if only I could get my heart to follow suit. To walk through the seasons of the difficult, the preparation is to find the utmost happiness.
And then inevitably crave more.
