twenty-one months...

since I last blogged. Wow...seems like at some point in this last year I would have had thoughts profound enough to blog...but probably not. Gods been working on me lately though, we wrestle late at night when I can't sleep, it seems he pushes me to write things out or at least hash them out in my head. Not long ago He led me to write letters to my parents that I had been thinking on for quite a while. I wrote them at 2 am with tears streaming down my face and the next morning tried to second guess what I had written...is this too sappy? Too honest? Will they think I have lost it? But I mailed them anyway because God said to write them. This most recent late night I absolutely had to write down my testimony. There was no way around it, I would never sleep till I did it. It is amazing to me that having been a Christian for so many years I had never written it out or even completely put it into words before. Sure I have shared my faith, here and there, and shared my story, but I hadn't really thought out how Jesus and I developed our relationship. So I will share it here. The shorter version at least.....I will just say that thru my whole childhood and teen years I was always desperately seeking something stable and secure, someone predictable and loyal..... I looked in so many wrong places. I searched for belonging in the accolades I received for my singing and in the attention I would get from obnoxious or flirtatious behavior, or the stares I would get for my choice of clothing, I even enlisted in the Army seeking stability. All of those things are temporal and change like the weather....what I really wanted and needed was someone who would love me NO MATTER WHAT. Jesus first called me down the aisle of a church when I was just a kid, I didn't understand it but that's where we began, he called me again in high school at a deeper life rally, and again just weeks before my wedding, another time when my first baby was a year old....he keeps calling me to him and I just have to keep listening. I did not have a head over heels, instant change experience with Jesus....I just learned to trust him and then learned to follow him and so here I am, still seeking, still following and still trusting and for me, that's what its about. I found in Jesus Christ the one and only, unchanging, unconditional love of my life and I can't imagine how lost I would feel without him. It breaks my heart to see other young people so very obviously trying to fill the void with things other than Jesus. Thats been weighing on my heart lately......just thinking.....