A Time For Everything

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."
~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This scripture has been running through my mind for the past few days.

Some may take it as instruction to both, say, love and hate. But here's how I look at it: life has cycles. Life has change. Life has seasons. Heck, even the weather has seasons!! The point is, it's in those cycles, it's in those changes, and it's in those seasons that we grow.

The past 5 months for me have been plenty of variations of cycles, changes, and it's definitely been an interesting season. In coming home, I think I expected my burden to be light and my life to just be filled with joy and happiness. Which in some ways, that did happen--but in others, just the opposite happened. All of a sudden I was faced with starting my own life out for myself, which can feel a little overwhelming at times just even from a logistical standpoint let alone an emotional standpoint. All of a sudden I was juggling a bunch of things at once, and I found my heart trying to process at the same time.

At some points throughout the past 5 months, I kept thinking to myself "I just don't feel myself today" which is the worst feeling when you know you're feeling that way but don't know what to do about it. For a while I ignored it. Then for a while I got hard on myself for not reaching my full potential--which to an extent, it is sad I wasn't reaching my full potential and pushing myself to do so. However, in God smacking some sense into me, I realized that was just my heart processing things--which, as it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything, including processing. And maybe sometimes in the time being of our hearts processing, we don't feel ourselves. In fact, it would make sense that we don't feel ourselves when it's happening. But accepting that it needs to happen, and that it is just part of a season and part of a cycle, helps you put it all together a little easier--at least it did for me.

For me, this just came to a point the other day where I realized that season of me processing is over. That season of me feeling melancholy and not totally myself is over. That season of me not reaching my full potential and pushing myself is over. Which I'm sure there will be times where these things will come up and happen from time to time, but the season of it as a whole is done with.

Another part that plays into this is the chains that needed to be broken inside of me within me processing. I had chains of who others had defined me as, of who others told me I would be, of where others said I would get in life, of who others destined me to be. When faced with the reality of those chains and how they were holding me back in not only relationships and my own well-being, but my ministry as well, the realization and decision that I had to break them was one of the most freeing feelings I have ever experienced. To surrender those words of discouragement, those words of defeat, those words that were not in any way life-giving, and leave them at the cross was such a humbling and just freeing feeling.

I'm ready to start being me.
I'm ready to start being who God fashioned and destined me to be.
I'm ready to start taking even more action in my ministry.
I'm ready to start being His hands and feet in ways I cannot even dream up myself.
I'm ready to start living with a joyful spirit.
I'm ready to start living free of chains and bondage.

Here's to living the destined life..