growing up...sort of.

Today I had the morning off, so I decided to visit Kent State and some of the students there. I ran into some of the new freshman from Navigators who proceeded to tell me they had watched my "navimony" from a couple years back. Navimonies were little videos Greg made during my sophomore or junior year  where he asked each person to tell a little bit about how Navs had made an impact in their life. I had forgotten all about these and so I looked mine up on youtube.  I was instantly struck by how young I looked. (Also I laughed for a good bit about my hair poof...gosh.) Then, as I was leaving the student center, I ran into a good friend who I haven't seen in awhile who exclaimed, "You look so old! I almost didn't recognize you."

I really do look a lot older than I did. I'm not sure what happened or when, but when I look in the mirror these days I see a woman instead of a girl. This is not just an outward transformation though...I feel it inside too. My heart is growing up.

This past year and a half has been an adventure to say the least. Relationships, graduation, car accident, moving out for the first time, fundraising...just to cover a few things. I know my life experiences are not unique...this is all normal for a person in their early 20s (except maybe fundraising ha). But as I look over the recent past, I am very aware that things have not been easy. Not to dig too far into my personal life, but God had not sent me sailing smoothly through this time and many of my recent experience have been pretty painful.

But I get it now. I look at my heart and I am amazed, thankful, and still desiring more change. Perhaps the most painful experience of all has been God revealing to me my really ugly ways. All that junk that I can hide from mostly everyone but him. Or the junk that was not hidden and caused pain in the lives of others. I have loved wrong, I have said awful things, I have put myself first. And truthfully, I still do. Isn't that part of the earthly battle? Our stupid flesh.

But God has used the pain, the scars, and the holes in my heart to fill me with Himself. He is making me a thing of beauty. There are days I feel awkward and unlovely, but I am His treasure and He calls me beauty. His perfect patience has given me room to grow up in love and learn how to treat His people more like the treasures they are.

The older I get, the more I know, the more I realize I know nothing at all. One of my constant prayers is that God would continue to teach how to be a woman after His heart. And it's proven to be a slow process (could it possibly be my own stubbornness? ha), but He's doing just that.

"And this is my prayer; that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God." - Philippians 1:9-11