honestly

I saw my best friend today. What a blessing. She's good at drawing the true things out of me. She gave me this journal for my birthday last year, and it's one of those old dusty books you get from antique stores, but she covered some of the pages in colorful paper and included random quotes and verses. And the book she chose to use for this thoughtful little project is titled "A King's Daughter." It's a play, and I've tried to read it, but most of it is covered- honestly, it's the coolest thing ever. I love it. And the more I think about it, the more I feel like it's a perfect analogy of what my relationship with God ought to be: a book with structure and words from Him, for me, but with pages that I need to fill in with my own thoughts to Him, from me.

Honestly though, I'm really no good at it. No good at all. Relationships...are just scary for me, and if I'm being completely honest, I spend more time questioning and trying to figure out if I believe Him than I spend actually believing Him. For some, like my best friend, it isn't difficult to believe Jesus. For others, like me, it is. And today I realized that maybe I need to do whatever I can to just...start over, and accept whatever place I'm at with God instead of aiming for this goal or this standard that I keep trying and trying and trying to attain WITHOUT Him because I'm just not there yet.

So. *Ahem.* Lets make a list. Cause I like lists.

THINGS KATIE NEEDS TO ACCEPT:
1. I am a King's daughter.
2. I do not believe in Jesus like my best friends do. I am not them. I am not supposed to be.
3. My life is MY life. It's up to me, and only me, to make of it what I can and stop just letting it happen to me without a fight.
4. I am an introvert. AND THAT IS OKAY.
5. The only power I have is in what decisions I make each day, each moment. Things are not out of control when I come at my problems one at a time, as they arrive, with Jesus as my adviser.
6. I can be paradoxical and messy, but I have value. And one day, the right man will discover it. There will come a day. There will.
7. The Holy Spirit is One who falls beside, and He has and does and will fall beside me with wordless groaning prayers. Jesus will intercede for and love me like I could never deserve. And the Father will smile at me and call me by name. This cannot be un-given.
8. It will be difficult. It just will.
9. I cannot be the perfect anything. I cannot be the perfect person, lover, daughter, friend, wife, mother, Christian, guitar-player, writer, woman.
10. Every day is the chance to be new again. Be new again.


Since leaving college a year ago, I demanded that God give me some sort of plan. I felt like I needed one- I like knowing what I'm doing and why. It didn't take me long to realize that though God has a plan, the current plan was to just not have one. I now know what it's like to go a year without having any sort of end goal in mind. I'd still like one, mind you, but I've come to terms with the fact that I will most likely never know what I'm doing! So, I'd like to officially move on from that state of mind and into a more personal, more important FACT- that I am a King's daughter.

I need to make a lot of changes. I need to stop making excuses and justifying myself for not doing what I need to be doing. Those things include: accepting the above ten things, actively participating in a Bible study, intentionally making new friends, patiently treating my family with respect, working as though it were for the Lord, and building my relationship with God from the ground up- not from where I've left off or been before. It's been a year since I moved home, and very little progress has been made. It's time I take control of my life, and ultimately of myself, so that my life will stop being about me and start being about others. I need to stop pretending I am who I wish I was. Because what healing can come of that?