My 397-Day Journey

 Today marks day 397 – the end of this journey of contrasts. Pain and joy. Betrayal and forgiveness. Despair and hope. Apathy and love.  

When day 1 was logged, I had no idea how long this journey would be.  When I sprinted across the starting line, I didn’t know I would be running a marathon.  If I had, maybe I would have paced myself differently.

When I reached 166 days, I “hit the wall”, ready to completely crumble, not knowing how much longer I could survive it while somewhat resembling the woman God wanted me to be. 

Chronicling this leg of the race in my life would have created a meaningful blog, but I dared not even journal it privately.  I would prefer to erase the hurdles that tripped me up. I wonder if someday I will regret not documenting it in writing.  If I don’t have the written tangible evidence of how concretely God worked in these difficult days to show me what it means to live like Jesus, will I forget?

 I look at the topics of my blog over the last 397 days for any record of the valleys and mountains of where I have been and here are a few posts inspired by this journey:

·         Getting a Grip When Under Attack

·         Victim or Warrior – Choosing Unshakable Faith

·         The Meaning of Hope

·         Life is Hard: Hype or Hope

·         Prickly Burs – Forgiving the Little Things

·         Should I Forgive If They Aren’t Sorry?

·         No More Mr. Nice Guy - Speaking the Truth in Love

·         Loving a Brother Who is Hard to Love

At times, my flesh exposed all my selfishness, self-centeredness, and ugliness that I bowed in shame, clinging to the foot of the cross.  At other times, my spirit soared with compassion, empathy, hope, and love at times when I could have felt disheartened, frustrated, resentful, or self-righteousness instead.  Maybe in these times, this is what it looks like to live and love like Jesus.

 I can find no rhyme or reason why one wins over the other, why God sometimes infused me with unexplainable strength and other times left me on the verge of unravelling.  Yet He sustained me.

I want to find out why I sometimes have “it” and why sometimes I don’t, and then find out how to have “it” now that I know “it” is possible in the most unexplainable of moments.  In any circumstance – even despite circumstances. 

I want to live “it” all the time.  The outcome of this 397-day journey – it’s a gradual transformation through which the obstacles serve as catalysts.

So now one chapter closes, and a new one begins.

Linking up with A Pause on the Path