Home Is Where My Heart Is

Oh hey!

I got a job.  I work at the Moka Coffee House.  I like it.  Love the people I work with.  Love making coffees, and interacting with people.  The hours are descent(ish)

My heart's not in it though.

I'm working a lot of hours, and I'm finding myself sooo stretched.
I guess I have been spoiled for the past few years.  Trevor has made enough that it was an option for me to not work and stay home.
The past few years, it probably wasn't the best idea that I stay home alone all day, as it gave me ample opportunity to indulge in eating disorder behaviour, and unhealthy habits.... but even in that darker time of my life, I loved cleaning and cooking for Trevor, laundry, baking.  I loved decorating and making our home feel homey.

Home is where my heart is.

Psalm 113:9 says (Amp)
He makes the Christina to be a homemaker and a joyful mother of [spiritual] children. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)

God, please make me a really good Homemaker.

Since Mercy, I feel like I have been on a bit of a journey, searching for purpose, learning healthy ways to spend my time and energy, learning to be healthy...... Learning to walk again.

I feel like I have been in full time school of Life in God.  Most everything I have learnt in the past eight months has been somewhat trial and error.....through heartache, and healing.
 I have spent a lot of days floundering, a lot of days feeling lost, hopeless, questioning everything.  I have shed a bundle of tears, beat myself up, ran a few hundred laps around the same mountains.
I have learnt the power of my words and choices through the pain of their harvest.  I have learnt the smallness of a life, time, and possessions hoarded.  I have been faced with my own weakness and limitations.  I have fallen when trying to find strength in my own frail frame.  I have seen my own imperfections, and had moments of acceptance despite.
I've wasted some days, hours, moments.  I've layed down.  I've hurt and been hurt.  I've felt unheard, and chose not to listen.

I read a quote somewhere that said

"If you want to change the world, pick up a pen"

I really took that to heart, and learnt that if I really want to change my world, pick up my modern day Apple pen and type.

And so here I am.... writing, learning, wrestling.
 Its funny that my word is Moments, for this year..... and as I look back, that is exactly what stands out for me.  Moments.

The good, bad, hard, happy.
I have learnt so much and grown so very much.

I feel like dots are beginning to connect in my heart.  I feel like my eyes are beginning to be opened to Grace and what it means to be In Christ.
I'm learning to see my weakness, not as a shameful "unique to me curse", but as a human experience.
I'm learning that the things I do, and say, and struggle with, do not even come close to defining who I am.

I am learning to replace utter hate and disdain for myself with Love and kindness (a very hard, and surprisingly healing process for me)

Inside this girl, who doesn't know which way is up most days.  This girl who doesn't easily learn from her mistakes.  This girl who always seems to choose the hardest, longest way, and lives more for instant gratification than long term success...... I can feel that there is a strength that is building inside of me.

I am learning...slowly but ever so surely that life is found in God alone... and I feel like my trust in that statement is building in the days when I can't find my faith, run to lifeless idols and end up disappointed and hurting.

Oh Faith, and Trust.  Believing that I am utterly lovable to God, and wholly accepted in Christ.
Righteous
Holy
Pure
The object of His Love and affection

I have been challenged to treat myself, and speak to myself, love myself, nourish myself, like I would my own daughter who I would see with eyes of kindness, Grace.
As I would with her, I want to be willing to see the why behind the what for myself, and respond with compassion, and tenderness.

Criticism, coldness, disdain, and negativity stops growth.
I heard once that a child stops growing when you stop believing in them.

I want to believe in myself.
I want to stop solely looking for the affirmation I need from others and start believing in myself.
Trusting that God is for me.

That the same power that raised Christ from the dead, lives in me and also gives life to my mortal body.
God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than I could even ask or imagine, according to His power at work within me!..... Right now!

It's in His arms that I come alive, that I'm completely seen, and I'm so incredibly loved.

He can see the dance that has been locked up in my heart, the one embedded in insecurity.  He knows that I just need someone to believe in me, to call the dance out, someone to fall in love with my heart.

I was listening to Joseph Prince tonight.  He was speaking about Psalm 23. How God prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Whats on the table?  Food, a feast.
What is the food?  God's word.  His truth about who I am, who God is.

When I feel condemned for eating too much, eating junk, saying hurtful things to Trevor, lying.  When I feel ashamed, or not good enough.  When I have no strength, and the enemy is having a hay day reminding me.  When I lay in bed watching the clock as my failures run laps in my mind....

He gives me food.

Truth

That I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

He Loves me.
He lays beside me, wraps his arms around me, surrounds me with appectance

Psalm 139

Even if I say, "Surely the darkness (my sin, fear) will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to You, God.  The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You"........ WHY?.... Why is the darkness just as light to You, God???

Because,

You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.... You see me, and you know who I really am!  The things I do... are so far from who I am... and You see that God.  You see the Jesus on the inside of me!

You are So good!

Your word brings me so much Hope!

Father, Help me.  
God, I want to see myself as You do.... I want to receive all the Love that You are pourring out to me.  Please open my eyes to see Your heart. Help me to see what I have not been able to before.  Help me to Love.... especially right now, my body (which bears the harvest of bad choices), with caring and nurturing myself.
Teach me to live healthy, God.  To honour You in my body.  Help me to find delight in You by caring for myself, as I would care for a precious child that You give me.

Life is so much bigger than I think it is... and there is so much I don't know yet.  Never let me stop learning, God.  I know You believe in me.. help me to believe in myself, and never stop growing.

To a year of, 

Kindness
Care
Love 
Acceptance

Another year covered in Grace

XOXOXO