Meet the New Me

For a long time, I non-consciously believed that life simply happened to me. There were somethings I could control such as which latte I ordered from Starbucks, or what time I was going to go to bed at, but the bigger things were out of my hands. My job as an obedient, trusting Christian was to sit back and wait for God to do whatever the heck it was that he was going to do in my life, and be grateful for it. As my one friend would say, "you get what you get, and you don't get upset".

So when things kept "happening to me" that I did not like - being passed over for a new job, not being offered a position that I honestly thought was going to happen, being single - I got mad. Like, really mad. Toddler-temper-tantrum-on-the-floor-in-the-grocery-store kind of mad. I was fed up and sick of constantly being disappointed. I kept hearing, and thought I believed, that God was a 'good father who loves to give good gifts'. Sitting in my room in my parents house at 28 years old with no job prospects, no romantic prospects, a lot of debt and no cash in the bank, I gave up on that idea. How in the world was any of this a "good gift". Between lockdowns and cancelled events and rising infection rates and BLM protests and anti-maskers and American nationalism and Trumpist evangelicalism, I had a hard time finding anything good to point at and say proudly, 'this is from my Father in Heaven who loves me'.

Anyone else feel that? I lived there for a long time, not sure how to find my way out, or if I even wanted to. By staying there, at least I could point to a reason for my struggle.

'I don't know what it means to trust God'

'I feel like God broke my heart, and I don't know if I believe him'

'Does what I want and dream about and desire even matter to him?'

'What if none of the 'good gifts' he has for me are things that I actually want'?

It was easy to ask these questions in my head and heart.

It was nearly impossible to ask God these questions.

Asking him these questions meant that he would inevitably answer them, and I may not get the answer that I wanted...which was why I was in this predicament in the first place.

Eventually, as I usually do, I got fed up with my whoa-is-me attitude, and was determined to find some answers, even if I didn't like them. This was something that I could control in the midst of a pandemic and doggonit I was going to take the opportunity and run with it!

So I opened up my podcast app for the first time in a looooooong time, and picked one of the many episodes waiting for me. I can't tell you which one was the first one, but it was definitely a Girl's Night Podcast with Stephanie May Wilson. Whichever one it was doesn't matter. What does matter is that instead of choosing to live in my pity-party, angsty, bitter, rotting flesh of the dead self I had already put off, I decided to act as the New Creation that God had declared me to be, regardless of my sin or feelings or disappointments or mistakes.

That Stacey-of-the-New-Creation is one who is constantly surrounding herself with other believers that she looks up to, whether she knows them personally or not. She is a Woman of God who makes getting to know Him a priority in her day. She is a Daughter of the King who seeks to bless others the way that God has blessed her.

She is an imperfect child of God who, after continual promptings and whisperings and encouragement, decides that enough is enough. God did not design her to simply accept the way the world was operating, to be influenced and changed by the chaos of the shifting winds. Instead, she is grounded in the Word, in her identity as God's Beloved, and is not content to sit back and wait for things to happen to her. She was given a sword and a mission to complete that is hers and hers alone - no one else is going to come along and slay her dragons.

She is a woman who has as much grace with herself as she does with the students she mentors.

She is a women who is not put off by imperfection, but enchanted by the big and small ways that God shows up in our moments of flawed humanity to reveal his Glory.

This is the new me.

I am a new creation.

The old is gone, the new has come.

I have put off the old, stinking, dead flesh that keeps me locked up behind walls of fear.

I am taking captive every thought and making it obedient to Christ.

This is a daily posture that I must take, not a one-and-done kind of deal.

If it were easy, it wouldn't mean anything.