stuck between seasons

Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV 

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Ever been in this place where you have gone through some things and you feel as though it’s time to just move on yet you are in a limbo state between seasons?  You know, that feeling of being stuck and almost wanting to go back to the old way of doing things yet you sense there is a break through coming into a better place?  An emotional ball of ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and valleys…  A collage of old thinking and new ways of approaching things…  A messy paint by number painting which looks nothing like what the box shows…

Sometimes life is messy, much like a box of chocolates left out in the sun on a 90 degree day.  Nothing makes sense.  Nothing has shape to it.  Days are just running together.  Emotions are on autopilot.  You are not sure what is reality and what is lies from the enemy.  You have days where you take everything people say as absolute truth and then apply them your life only to discover none of it is really who you are?  Ya know those days where you just can’t put the chocolates back into their appropriate squares.

You read into everything as if you are not good enough.  You can’t do a single thing right.  You tried so hard to be what they wanted you to be but failed.  Even your own expectations for yourself do not warrant any attention.  Those days where you would rather just shut the lights off and pretend you are not home.  Those weeks where you would rather be hibernating than being with friends and family.  Those months spent chasing after some unattainable goal.  The years of just going through the motions but always thinking you are on the edge of some big change.

Yes.  Yes I have days like this.  Sometimes weeks.  A few times months.  And I had 18 years of wanting things to change but never believing they would.  No matter how accepted I was I still was not good enough.  A few years ago God stepped in and asked me if I wanted something different for my life. He then proceeded to walk me through several very tough things to bring me to this precise moment of time.  A time where I have allowed God to show me who I am and I believe it.

Still there are days.

Even though I have seen the mountains moved and the waters parted in my life I still get caught up in thoughts from yesterday.  I’m not good enough.  I have failed.  I can’t do anything right.  Nobody really cares.  I hate those days.  I despise those thoughts.  It is in those moments when everything I  know to be the truth about God and who He is disappears for a minute and I am left in this faded picture of yesterday.  I am right back in the time where life did not make any sense.  It brings tears to my eyes to revisit the me who usually thought she had to figure everything out before she could bring it to God.

Thank God these days are few and far between in present day life.  I now know these are enemy tactics to get me to doubt the goodness of God.  The lies try over and over again to trap me into believing I have not changed.  They whisper to me that I am still the same broken person I was 10 years ago.  They try to show me the fuzzy pictures of how life should look like and I have to strain to see any truth in the photos.  The lies beckon me to go back to seasons which are over but it never works.

When you have been delivered out of something, the desire to go back is quenched.  When you begin to walk in the truth of God and He changes your perspective you start to realize there is nothing to go back to.  There is no reason to see the old you even for a visit.  When God moves your mountains and parts your seas He means business.  When God says “Don’t look back” choose not to look back.

Seasons will continue to come and go in our lives.  We will learn the truth from the lies.  Our sense of who we are will be the definition of how we live life.  As Winter gives way to Spring and Spring to Summer and Summer to Fall there are still reminders of those preceding seasons.  These are not meant to be something to dwell on but rather a moment to reflect.  A glimpse of what once was a part of who we were where we believed a lie about ourselves.  They are simple reminders of the grace of God.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Today I choose to live in the today of life.  I pray for anyone reading this that they would sense Your presence in their life and they would begin to see the lies from the enemy.  I pray for Your peace to overtake them right now wherever they are.  I thank You for what You are about to do in their lives as they choose to not look back.  In Jesus Name AMEN