Whether or not you believe in or know anything about the bible, it's true: in life there are seasons. I'm sure I spend a lot of time talking about seasons and life and growing, but it's just what fascinates me. That is when I'm not lost in it.
I feel like I'm on the exiting end of the tunnel, from a long season of feeling at odds with myself, and having lost a sense of who I am. You could read this and know me, or follow my blog and think, She's just over-analyzing and over-thinking, that's her thing. And that is sort of my thing, but other than the occasional case of anxiety, it's never done me wrong. Cognition is what gets me up in the morning, and somehow (mostly by miracle of God) gets me from A to B, helps me retain the wisdom I gain from the revelations I have and the things I'm taught, and causes me to forget the things that are seemingly less important...and help me process happenings in my life, such as this.
The most notable end of a season is harvest. I am in the harvest of a season. Not that it was something where I particularly knew I was in a sweltering, stormy growing season, or like I'm being "plucked". In retrospect, I don't think it was quite so obvious. I felt a little detached from myself, though 'a little' isn't a fair assessment. Since my trip to France and Vietnam, coming up on two years ago now, I haven't felt fully myself. They have this phrase, once you do YWAM you're "wrecked for the ordinary". I thought for so much of these past two years that that's what it was.
In some respects, it was: I returned to an unraveled version of the community I had before, with what was left of it focusing on empty things. I had the choice to move forward in an uncharted fashion of my own, or walk with those I had around me - not to say it's their fault, any of the wandering I did. I think transparency is essential, and will fully acknowledge anything about these last two years, to anyone. But I think I made that choice aimlessly, maybe even unequipped. Ignorantly, is the word.
I felt in the last year that I have not been myself; not fully who I would claim that I am, or who I've known myself to be, in my life. All the time I would get asked why I was so happy, or told there was something different about me. I haven't gotten that in a while, and when I specifically realized that missing in my life, it made me sad. I know that joy is a part of who I am, I know it's a mark on my life. So where has it been? Who have I been being?
I can't explain yet, because I don't yet know why I went through such a long drought of a season, but the beauty is in the return. Over about the last month, I have felt a shift. Like I was suddenly reminded of the person I'm made to be; the reason I bother to get up in the morning - and it's not just to think about things all day! Largely, I can't explain the change because it's not a story. It's almost as if I've been waking up over the last few weeks, struggling through a day, only to find at the end that the joy and hope I have has compounded. And it's sufficient.
In the last few weeks, I've felt like the person I've known myself to be all these years. And what changed to cause this, you may wonder? Nothing. Except God has been working on me, restoring me to myself; to my true identity that reflects his heart. I've always set myself on - if nothing else - two characteristics that I know only because of God, and they are: truth and joy. For a while it felt like I was trying to skate on only my head-knowledge of the truth. Now I feel I'll be able to move forward with my heart's understanding of joy.
Little, human parts of me whisper worries that this is not a lasting change, but I've just felt so different than I had, yet familiar to my make-up. The fact that it's so inexplicable makes it all the more necessary (and confusing) to share, tears of relief well as I write. Jesus spoke to me months ago that He would stand with me and fight for me, and I thought that encouragement was enough; that it was it. I didn't know that I wasn't operating as my true self, under the ailment of whatever plague; in all my knowledge of Him, and so I didn't expect that He would bring me back...
but He's just so good.
