I came to the end of myself and I found God; His arms were open and His path was straight. His understandings were healing when I realized He knows and I don’t. My “understandings” left scars, unanswered questions, pride, judgement and really they didn’t make much sense at all. But His, they were beautiful. You see, His ways are good. My ways are broken and sinful, so how could I make much of anything worth something? I couldn’t, but he could.

So he taught me to let go of my independence. Independence from Him that is… we’d all be foolish to say we haven’t been there, no matter how long or short we’ve known Him. Somehow, some way, sometimes, we get it in our head that we “got this.” That’s when pride and grace battle… our flesh is full of pride while our Lord is full of grace. Sadly, we too often throw in the towel and chose our pride, not knowing we are actually choosing death. We freely chose pain and everything we are truly scared of; we chose the things we really don’t want. We don’t even realize it, but because we are broken we cannot do what God intends.

Independence must die; He must live in us. We must not try to act like Him or try to copy His example, instead, we are to let Him live in us and change our very being. His Holy Spirit must come in and breathe life on us. We must surrender our soul, heart, mind, hand and all in us and let Him have control.

It’s not slavery, but pure freedom. 

In the surrender, we see our ways just lead to brokenness and God’s ways leads to beautiful places. We see who we really are and that we cannot do it. 

And in this, we become new.

My weary heart: I left and I showed up for my own life. I looked forward and walked away from the past. Instead of running from the past or ignoring it, I dealt with it; in that I grew up. With God’s strength, I chose to live in the present and very moments He’s given me. 

Life has meaning again… it’s only found in Him.

-chee 12/27/11