I feel like I have been stumbling around a lot lately. Between school, work, relationships, and life in general... I've let this world get the best of me and leave me broken.So, with only four days left in my first semester of nursing school... The end is in sight!
For some reason, I frequently have the misconception that my life is a book or a movie. I think that one chapter will distinctly close before the next opens. I like things to be clean cut and neat. I want background music to play to emphasize what I am feeling or experiencing... I want the bad things to be separate and balanced from the good, and everything to have a happy ending.
However, as bad as I want that cookie cutter, it's not how God intended us to experience this life. Even if I am experiencing. One of the most bittersweet chapters of my life, it is also one of the most beautiful chapters and a time sparkling and twinkling in celebration. They are the same thing, of course! There is always light and dark, sorrow and sweetness, beauty and blood...
It's just like the story of Christ, a holy and precious baby born, a gruesome death on the cross, and the sweet life when He rose again... Life mimics this, life after death, bitter in the sweetness. Although we experience pain and heartache, we easily forget the sweetness: a crackling fire, the sweetness of a fresh strawberry, the high after a good run, a hug from a dear friend, and other ways goodness is tucked away in our lives waiting to be discovered.
Tomorrow is Monday. Tomorrow will be a fresh start. I promise to leave the past in the past and move forward in life to discover and celebrate God's plan for me. In the words of one of my favorite writers, Shauna Neiquist..
"I believe still today what I have always believes; that God is good, that the world he made is extraordinary, and that his comfort is like nothing else on earth!"
So my prayer for you is not that you live a life that's only sweet and never bitter... But that even in the bitterest of moments, you will find the comfort of Christ, deep and enduring, powerful beyond all imagination!
Tomorrow is a fresh start to a true me.
