dear one.

this is a snapshot from an email i got a few years back. i can't believe someone actually said that to me.

maybe at the time, those were my attributes. maybe i was filled with passion, talent, and love. maybe that was me. sometimes i just think, "where did i go? what did i do with those things? what did i do with me?" and then i regretfully remember: i got caught up in the opinions, views, and feelings of others. i became consumed with insecurities. i moved God to the end of my to-do list (as if having to put God on my to-do list at all was a good indicator of my relationship with him...), and i surrounded myself with the things/people i knew to be "secure". not a good idea you think? good gosh i don't think so either.

i also became proud. i'd been really burned by the church i was involved with and i felt like God didn't really have my back all that much. sure, i became a little calloused and jaded - but hey... christians can suck sometimes (myself included, most definitely).

"...[it is] a poor thing to come to God as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. if God were proud, he would hardly have us on such terms: but he is not proud, he stoops to conquer, he will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to him, and come to him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had." - cs lewis.

i love this quote. but how do we keep ourselves from getting to that awful point in time where God is a last resort? how do we preserve our relationships with the Lord to be as beautiful as the original, awe-inspiring, can't-believe-God-can-do-stuff-like-that moment when we first said "i do" to him?

for me this has meant really discovering who the heck i am. it seems weird that i would have to go back into my teen years to scoop up the confidence i left on the floor with my green eye-shadow and strange obsession with pins, but ya go where ya gotta go man.

in finding that long lost person - i have also found that she never made God a last resort. even amidst the greatest pains (which i feel amounted to a very large hilltop that i am on the downward slope of), God is faithful.

i came across this verse tonight and immediately thought of a few people, but it really made me think and feel so incredibly overwhelmed at the just straight up care of God for his kids:

"you're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. with less of you there is more of God and his rule. you're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you." matthew 5:3-4

my prayer for you is to lose it. i cringe at some point every single day over the dear things i've lost, but immediately following that twinge of awful is a rush of wonderful. knowing that i am being embraced by the one who is most dear to me.