Last year was one of the hardest and darkest times in my life but through some work I now find myself in a state that I can only describe as undeniable joy. The last couple of months have been the most amazing, redemptive season of my life.
I had a lot of really important people in my life, people that I trusted, turn on me and stab me in the back. It hurt… a lot, but I think there are some really important lessons that I was able to learn from those experiences.
Summary of the many lessons:
It’s who He says I am and what He says I’m capable of that counts, not what other humans see or say from their limited perspective.
Once I realized that God is, indeed, a loving father who will never abandon me or let me down, as many humans have done, I finally knew what it truly means to rest in the Lord. It means living outside the ability to be destroyed by other people’s opinions.
It doesn’t mean you just sit on your hands and wait for good things to happen. It means trusting that whatever God has you working on right now is for your own future benefit. It means doing everything you know to do to reach your goals, but at the same time, accepting that some things are beyond your control and not letting that break you.
You have to choose joy. You make a conscious choice to believe that God has your back and that while you can’t control everything, if you push through the bad stuff you’ll eventually see the good in everything. You have joy in knowing that everything you are working on is all a part of a plan bigger than you can imagine.
Wake up every day and decide that no matter what happens, you’re going to walk in joy.