Stripped

No matter how many people are reading this, I have felt the need to right this blog for a long time. It has taken a long time to figure out my feelings on it but righting it down has been good therapy for me and is probably the reason I haven't blogged in a while. It starts out a pity party but there is a happy ending  :)

    Over the past year I have been stripped of, I won’t say everything but a lot. Let me just go through what this past year has been like for me.

     I had lost my voice, not in a literal sense but in a way that has nothing to do with my vocal chords working. It has something to do with a voice from much deeper inside me, the voice I use to use to fully worship and sing to God with. This voice and passion for worship and singing seemed to have left me almost completely. It had felt like the power behind my singing and even just the words I spoke had gone. I felt as if most of the time I was babbling, not really ever saying anything and not ever really meaning what was in my head or heart. I had lost the ability to relate myself, my thoughts and my feelings into words.

     A year ago this summer, I walked away from the church I grew up in. The church my parents attend and the church I became a Christian in. While this was a good thing, a God thing, a growing thing it was still hard to do. This also meant that I stopped being involved in the youth group at that church. This was the youth group that brought me to Christ, that gave me so many memorable moments in high school, that I had built so many relationships in and that I had spent my college years being a leader in. This made this move in my life even more difficult because some people felt as if I were walking away from them, my relationships I had built felt the strain.

     My time for horses had also been taken from me. My love for horses runs so deep in me and has been apart of my life for the majority of my life. School, work and studying, among other things had taken up all my time and the time to ride and just be out at the barn had been used to do more ‘important things’.

     As I was leaving to go in search for my own home church, and to tell the truth maybe the reason why I did so, the Youth Pastor of the church was leaving to go lead his own church. Him and his family were moving an hour away when before they had lived 1 and ½ minutes from me. He had become like a big brother to me, a spiritual leader to me. He had taken me in as a babysitter, a ‘personal assistant’ and an extra family member. I had grown close to his wife, she was now a close friend. Now that they have moved away I see them 1/10^th of what I use to, yet another thing gone from my everyday life.

     Another devastating hard thing to loose that has left me stripped is relationships. One in particular but a few others as well. Relationships that were left to be a had-been and a jaded connection, were changed from what they once were to what they now are not. Yet another chunk out of my life.

     For the most part those are the big loses. Other things did happen like having to put down my only pet that has ever really been mine, and other things that will only add as little losses to all listed.

So there I was with chunks of me gone, things stripped away. As a result my creativity, adventure and even happiness had been tainted, compressed, not free to be and go full force as I once was. I felt as if everything had been stripped from me and I was bare. It felt as if a roof had been put over my head and for the first time in my life I was truly unhappy. You may think this is impossible for me to say that this is the first time I have ever truly been unhappy but its true. I had definitely been unhappy before about things or situations but never unhappy in general, everyday life. It’s just not my personality to be unhappy. That’s not who I am. I live my life happily blessed, always looking up, always moving forward, trying to change the world with God, living life to its fullest with amazing family and friends. I think that’s why this time was so hard for me. I had always listened to friends go through there struggles and pain but this time it was my own struggle.

     So now that it is all behind me I feel the change. God’s will for me is becoming clearer. I know that there is a reason that God stripped me of everything. Maybe it was to show me that stripped of everything else I still have his love and my faith. I am still learning from all of it and am not completely free from it. I now see the blessings that God did place in my life during that time. I have found an amazing home church. I was baptized on the beach in the fall. I have an awesome, fun, supportive bible study group. I am part of a Christian sorority where I have met many woman of God who are now my close friends. I have also made many new relationships with wonderful people.

     I am so excited for the change. So many new and exciting things are happening in my life and I am learning what to hold onto and what to let go of. There is so much more to say about all that is new but that will have to wait for another blog or blogs to come :)