A Time For Everything

So I find myself on the last day of a very long Christmas break.  When I first got home three weeks ago, it was mere days away from Christmas so i was swept away into a whirlwind of activities that occupied my mind and body for almost a week.  Then things got quiet.  Much quieter than I was used to or even enjoyed.  I thrive off of having a schedule and having things to do.  And then, at the end of a busy day, I love to be able to do nothing because I've earned it.  This break has been full of forced and total relaxation time, and I fought it fiercely for about a week.  It made me miserable.
 
I don't really know how to explain what changed.  Maybe the circumstances changed.  Maybe I changed.  But for the last week, I found myself going out of my way to find things to do and to find people to do them with, and that helped.  It gave me a schedule of sorts, and it gave me something to do rather than watch I Love Lucy and House Hunters (which isn't a bad decision most of the time, but after a couple weeks of it, you need a little change!).  But then I realized that things still felt off.  I have spent a lot of time in prayer over the last few weeks.  Every night I took off walking (much to my parent's dismay) and as I tread the streets and wished it was warm enough to bike, I would pray.  I would pray the way my mind knows best, out loud, just like I'm talking to any other friend.  When I talk to God like that, I tell Him all the things that He knows.  I tell him what's going on, I thank Him for what He's doing, I let Him remind me of His faithfulness, I pray for others, and I pray for myself.

These past few weeks have been a little different though because I have been doing more than just what is written above.  I have found myself more often than not, pleading with God over a certain area in my life, just begging him to help to heal certain wounds in my heart that have been building up for a long time.  In the past, I have been expecting him to move in this area, but I hadn't been praying about it the way I should have been.  A week before break, my friend and I decided that she and I both needed to start praying more about this "brick wall" of hurt and fear in my life.  I promised her I would!  So I did.  But even though I started to pray more over this break, I still didn't believe that God would actually hear and listen to my pleas for healing.  How could anyone heal the hurts and fears that had been building up, and worsening, and trapping my heart for months?  But something started changing during the past few days.  I started to pray even more differently still.  I realized that what I was praying for was something that wasn't just a silly wish from me.  It was something that was so very deeply a part of God's will.  I knew that He would heal me.  I just didn't know when.  I started to pray in a way that acknowledged God's promises and just asked that He would work on my heart soon because I knew that He would do it.  Not many days later, I realized that the fears were starting to diminish.  Suddenly, I felt like maybe, just maybe for the first time, that it might just be ok.  I can't really explain that feeling other than to say that suddenly, I feel peace in places when, in the past, the circumstances that are around me right now usually indicate near panic in my life.  Is this healing complete?  Absolutely not.  I know I still have a lot left to fight through.  But I am realizing more and more that God has given me the tools to fight through it, and that even though I know there will be days and nights when peace seems far away, I know that He has started this healing process in me.  For the first time, I can be absolutely sure of that.

These verses in John keeps speaking to me over and over again because it couldn't ring more true in my life than it does right now.

Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.  Yet I am not alone for the Father is with me.  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.  (John 16:32-33)

I'm here.  At home.  Everyone has left me from school.  I am alone!!  But God has proven that this break, no matter how hard it has been, has been good.  He hasn't left, and He has used the aloneness in a powerful way.  He is stronger than the troubles in my heart, and in Him I may have peace.

So last night, I found myself back at my bridge.  The bridge that I always run away to when I need to be alone.  It's where I feel closest to God.  I don't go there often during the winter, but it was almost 40 degrees, and I knew i needed to go.  As I sat there, listening to the water flowing, I heard God reminding me, "there is a time for everything."

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

He reminded me that the struggles I've been going through over the past few months have been part of His plan.  There is a time for struggling, and that's ok.  But there is also a time for peace.  I've been beating myself up for the struggles I've been going through, but last night God just whispered to me that it was really ok to struggle and not be perfect.  I think I'm starting to believe it.  He hasn't and won't let me go or forget about me because of it.  But like everything else, I know that I'm not done struggling.  I never will be.  But there is a time for everything, and whether that time is easy or hard, good or bad, full of struggles or full of peace, God is still there, whispering to my soul, telling me that I can let it go and trust in Him.