CONFESSION: I’m writing this post 5 days before actually being back ,but I’m just SO excited to be back! So…that’s THAT!
October?! How are we even here, guys? But before we start the much anticipated blog series (which you can see more about HERE), I just wanted to talk about September. It was just what I needed.
And thanks, Facebook, for trying to guilt trip me by sending me a notification about how those 362 people hadn’t heard from me in awhile. It had only been like 3 days when the notification popped up! REALLY?!
It was hard to keep quiet, but it got easier and easier to let the pressure of writing & sharing fall away. And it was exactly the right medicine for my heart. I spent a lot of September in some personal reflections and found the courage to open up a new journal and write through some personal struggles. My sister knew the specifics of my heart and just like the love of a sister, she sent me so many fun, uplifting trinkets.
In her small package were tub crayons. I have the best sisters! I took the purple one to the shower wall and named the valley. I spelled it out. I wrote my way through it in pretty purple letters. But you know what’s incredible about tub crayons? The colorful words just smear down the walls of the shower and wash away. Purple streaks of a difficult valley steadily trickled down and I was reminded that even this won’t last forever.
And God is good! Even still. Forevermore!
I wrote through some of my feelings, listened to the quiet, and faced my heart without the comfort of noisy sharing and blogging. I found a place to sit and stare at the blue sky and reflect on this life…right here, right now. With nothing else to distract me, I peeled the bandaid off the big, gaping wound and gave my heart the room to heal right.
Perhaps, one day I’ll tell you more…but it usually takes me a good year after a hard time to spill out the valley, the grace, and the healing of a God so powerful and so gentle that the name Great Physician has a meaning I never knew it could have.
As I faced some of these deeper heart thoughts, I also realized how much I love writing. I just plain love writing. I don’t need a big audience. I don’t need a Facebook page or a thousand readers, I just need to gather up my world and write to YOU…whoever is here, whoever stumbles down this lane, finds this place, needs encouragement, or holds up their hard things to say, “yes, let’s do this together, and reveal our mess, and know His grace, and seek Who He is, and be together until we go to our real HOME!”
A silent September taught me to pick up my courage and face my heart head on, and it showed me that I genuinely love to write and this place is just a tiny part of that big piece of me. A silent September reminded me that I’m passionate about sharing the life that God makes worth living.
And these dark valleys and deep emotions don’t have to be faced alone and we are all, every day, in a place of falling into the grace of God while also putting on the strength He gives to move forward for Him.
We are, none of us, perfect or fit for this great walk of life. No one has it figured out. There is a deeper part to every heart. There is a nightmare of some sort that keeps us up at night, and a shame for the past we have to let go by the grace of God. And we have all thought deep and horrible things, and have done great evils toward others…if not in action, then in heart.
We have all struggled against bitterness and found an ugliness that scares us to the core. There are so many times we are struggling to keep these heads above water, these hearts from the soul plummets of desperation, these minds from the darkness that entwines…but every day we fall into the best place possible–
the grace of God
This powerful strength and love is poured on us as we begin to move forward for Him alone. And we, who once had nothing, now have all. We run after God, forgetting these edited images that we clothe ourselves in, and fall into His grace not because we are abusing it… but because we need it and we love Him.
And we want to be more like Him.
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Sierra V. Fedorko 