This spring marks a significant point in my journey. A year ago I set out on a rather risky and daring adventure to intentionally work to change my life and what I lived for. For the next year I went through a self-induced identity crisis. I prayed for the things I grasped on to for my identity to be stripped from me. What followed was the sometimes violent process of understanding that things here on earth do not make me...me. At times over the last year I have felt more alone than I ever have. Yet, coming out of that time I am beginning to experience what I wanted so badly a year ago...peace. I wanted so badly to be ok with where my life was at. Last year I found myself always dissatisfied with how my life was turning out. I wanted the "love of my life" to magically appear before me...yet all along...the true love of my life was there. The true love of my life was calling my name, and I sensed it. In my head I knew where my hope and happiness needed to come from. I knew who I needed to fall in love with. I knew the man I wanted to become. I had no idea how to get there though. So I stepped off the cliff. For months I fell in this epic plunge of rediscovery. I hit the bottom and to my surprise, I felt the bottom and it was painful. As I clambered around trying to figure out how to get back up to the top I felt the true pains of the promises of this world failing me. Slowly I was led to the top.
Through this climb I uncovered places in my heart I had never gone before. Painful parts. But I learned something so important; unless we unearth our buried pains and feel them for what they are. Unless we understand them and allow ourselves to hurt and cry over them we will never overcome them. Forever they will haunt us, controlling the way we live our lives. The way we interact with people. If we really want to change we have to cry, we have to hurt, we have to be angry. We have to be willing to go and face our worst fears...the secrets of our past. When we enter into those painful places we begin to truly understand what real grace is and what an amazing love our Father has for us. These moments will change us forever.
Through this hard time I discovered the true love I was so desperately searching for. And I feel I am beginning to become the man I want to be; a man who can embrace and feel God's unfathomable grace and love. When this is glimpsed and embraced...our lives can never be the same. So this spring, I am not inspired by the warm sun or the melting snow or singing birds; this spring I am inspired by looking back and seeing how my Father answered his child's desperate plea for change...for this, I am forever thankful and forever inspired.
