i cannot not write

for awhile now i've been itching to write but just...can't.
i've been feeling devoid of emotion for a really long time. i've been stale, complacent, and bitter. i've felt devoid of direction, purpose, and meaning. separated from God, from my heart, from who I am. i've been wrestling with both change and lack of change. i wondered why i felt so much like i was just....floating....especially when i was back on campus...my home away from home. this place that has transformed me. this place where i normally feel so much more, and feel a greater connection to my spirit...
i began praying for God to shake things up in my life, not having any idea what that would look like. i prayed, while in the back of my mind thinking of practical ways God could "shake things up," allowing me to feel again. i was at such a state of complacency, i was almost hoping and preparing myself for anything...anything at all...even if it was negative. i just wanted to be broken and i didn't know how to be.

~~~

then spiritual renewal week came upon Taylor's campus....

and God shook things up.

a greater peace and love and joy and freedom and reverence for God filled many people on this campus, including me. once confession began to happen, walls were broken down, masks were taken off, and there was vulnerability like i have never seen vulnerability. and it was beautiful.

for the first time in a long while, i was able to feel this connection to my soul, to the Holy Spirit within me, that was missing for so long. it's something that is truly unexplainable and sounds foolish to the world, i know, but it was real. i began to see everything more clearly. i was convicted in so many areas of my life and God pushed me not only to a public confession, but stirred in my heart desires i didn't realize i had. He simultaneously convicted me of relationships i need to repair and/or build up, and things i needed to quit in order to devote more time to things that truly mattered. and let me tell you, a lot of what God was speaking to me wasn't comfortable or something i necessarily wanted to follow through with. but He often takes us out of our comfort zone, and His call is for us to be radical. We are to live fearlessly, foolishly for Him, and with so much love for our brothers and sisters--even those that have wronged us or that we don't like or that are just hard to connect to--that it seems ridiculous to us.

He exposed me and broke me down so that i'd begin to change how i live, how i viewed His power, His grace, His might, His mercy, His forgiveness, His love, His undeniable sovereignty over everything. He humbled me as i realized how LITTLE faith i had that He would do anything at all, and yet He answered my prayers in a way that i would not have been able to fathom. in a way that is not even close to being simple, or practical, or reasonable. and definitely not negative.

Praise the Lord.