I've been away from home for quite some time. This has allowed me to spread my wings and find who I really am. My first initial instinct to come to Seattle was to be closer to family and make new connections that needed to be made in the soil buried beneath. What I didn't expect was to have the soil within my own soul be overturned by my Creator. I have always been in love with the way that God does these types of works. We think we know what it is that we want and are fully focused on it, but in turn He shines a different light that leads us to an even bigger and better feeling of love. My biggest struggle being in Seattle has been finding my place. I see myself as just another small girl swallowed up by the big city. It's easy to say "you'll find it once you find your people", but the people that I have been surrounded by 90% of the time are either under the age of nine, or over the age of forty. I have struggled to find my people and emirs myself with their fellowship. I'm not quite homesick, I'm just homesick for my friends. I've been blessed with the best support system I could ever ask for back home. I've grown roots with people and we've planted seeds together, and being absent for the harvest is hard to watch from a distance. I've learned that seasons of loneliness are often God's way of speaking something into our heart that you need complete silence to hear.
In all honesty silence has always been a lonely friend of mine. I've found that it tries to whisper lies in my ear and tell me that I am not and never will be good enough. Surprisingly through these feelings my faith has grown stronger as I have learned to focus on the one true voice that is speaking to me. I have stopped looking behind me; to my past, to my mistakes, to my failures. I know that God is not there in those moments- He is here in my present pulling me out of them as I reach for His hand. I've lived in these dark moments, and it is no longer a place in which I want to be or be found. I know that as I walk alongside and listen to my Teacher, there will come a day when my beautiful, brave soul that He has crafted will tell the truth about myself- the whole tale, and not the half truth that I have had to give the world in the past. We all have that one story, the story we made up for the world to hear because it was too weak to handle what had really happened. There have been seeds planted within me. Seeds of hope, joy, humility, and endless worship. But God isn't the only one with seeds in his bag. Theres a farmer who plants seeds of doubt, anger, sadness, and lust. My soul of a garden has its fair share of produce to spread and share to those around me, but it also has weeds that are engulfing the given space. Pulling up weeds within ourselves is a hard process to go through, but I know that at the end of the day my garden will flourish with grace and peace. Learning to be honest with the hidden secrets of ourselves and speak the truth of what they are is the first step in confessing them to our Father. If we ourselves can't pull up the weeds within ourselves due to the strong deep roots that have grown over time, our gardner has the strength. It doesn't matter how we come to Him; how broken, wounded, hopeless, sad, or lonely- He just cares that we have come to Him in the first place. Making that first step is always the hardest, but it leads to freedom. I know that one day when I wake up I will find that I have become a forest, my garden will be full and overflowing. I will have grown deep, strong roots and found strength in what no one ever thought I had. I have become stronger and more beautiful than the girl I was a year ago, I am now full of the life given qualities He has given me. I have learned to take all the negativity around me and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing. A variety of beautiful birds rest inside my mind and I call them memories. I have become an incredible self sustaining woman of epic proportions. And I should be proud of myself, of how far I have come from the seeds of who I used to be.