A Chance to Change.

Father,

You have opened my heart, You have gently held me. 

You speak sweetly in my ears and into my heart.

Your tenderheartedness is so clear. 

You are wanting me to see me as You do. To be proud of myself as You are proud. To view myself as beauty and grace, as You have given me Your beauty and grace. I am all things from You and yet I struggle with accepting Your truth. 

I feel like I've been stunted at ages 16-18 when my parents divorced. I didn't receive the affirmation of how beautiful I was from my dad or see how to show my femininity in a healthy way from my mom. (My parents are great and they did far more greater things than negative things in my hindsighted opinion.) I'm thankful for how content I was as a kid, but that contentment became paralyzing for me. I never changed my outlook on myself. My clothes even stayed the same and excuses to stay the same only grew. "No money, I don't like to shop, I don't feel comfortable in the clothes, I look fat, etc." I wonder if  I even would've gone shopping if my mom took me. I'm sure she tried but I just didn't care at a young age and I'm sure she took that as my same stance when I was older. I was given money to buy clothes myself but I chose what was important to me at the time and it wasn't clothing. It was people and accessibility. I used my money for that.

Now, at 25, living with my dad and family again back in my hometown, I'm back to being a kid. My inner "16-18 year old" self is reliving in a new perspective. It's almost like I have a chance to do things differently this time around. I'm starting as a teen and becoming a woman. But a woman of God, a woman with a solid foundation of faith.

Father, create in me a feminine mind and thought, of myself and how You see and have made my femininity. Begin to eclipse my previous mindset with a new one, one that is precious and full of beauty, seeing and experiencing myself as a woman. When I look into the mirror Lord, rid my mind of excuses and settle me in what You say when you see my reflection. You have created me as beautiful, simply as I am. But when I put on make up or choose clothes Lord, I want it to be as I am adorning You with what I choose, not to receive compliments or attention to to make me feel better in the moment, but because I am a Holy Temple and I want to be beautiful for You.

"My Life"

In my first few days away from Nashville, I've been settled, comfortable, even excited. It's odd to feel and even say those emotions out loud. I have a hinge of guilt in saying that I'm not bitterly sad. I mean, I've lived in Nashville for 7 years and had my life here. All that I ever wanted, all that I ever desired. And now I'm in the process of my drive back to my old/new home in Indiana.

The list of reasons in my head for why I should be more sad should be enough to have changed my demeanor already, or at least put me in an emotional "funk" for the week/s leading up to my departure. Here's a few, just for my sake of writing them down:

• Nashville was my first move away from home. I left my little town of Warsaw, Indiana in 2005 to come to college in another little Christian university.
• During college, I found my niche. I majored in radio communications and became successful in getting an on-air radio shift where I continued to grow and create a one-of-a-kind radio show.
• Because of my radio career, I found Rocketown, a non-profit youth ministry that has a music venue, indoor skatepark, after-school programs, and a coffee bar. They did ministry in the way I always thought the church should've done it...go where the people are and start a friendship. 
• Graduated college in 2009 with the best friends I would've never reached out to on my own. I'm so thankful for their acceptance of me. 
• I ended my radio and got a job at Rocketown where I worked for 4 years. It was my life. The staff and kids were my life. I found another calling.
• Then I made one of the best decisions of my life: I went to the Anchor School of Ministry in January 2011. Everything I knew about myself, God, religion, and people were healthily broken down and reconstructed in the mindset of Christ, giving myself a secure foundation. What a journey, and it is just the beginning.

My friends, my church, my college, my career, my calling, my life was all in Nashville. I don't feel like I've left it. They will always be there and my memories will always be with me. It will mean just as much to me in the future as it does now. But my existence isn't based on those things. I can have all of that over again. I'm not sad because I'm following God. He is directing me from what I called my life and has already been working on the transition to leave Nashville. This has always been His plan. Now I have the privilege of following it. My life is not mine. My life is His and my life isn't because of the people who are in it, the place I live, or what I experience. My life is with God and defined by God. That's what I'm learning.

I've always experienced my friends leaving Nashville. My bestest friends would always move away, onto greater and better things for themselves. I didn't think it'd happen for me like this. But it is, and all I can do is smile.