The raw truth of the matter.

We had Annie Garrett recently come and speak at a team night, she was real and honest and spoke out of a struggle she had faced. 

I feel like it's season where people are just being raw and vulnerable, something that usually I avoid. 

It's been the best thing for me because it's allowing me to let God do some stuff he could not do otherwise. 

Pretty much everything she said was spot on and completely in season for what I was going through. 

She spoke about not giving up, she spoke about being aware of what was happening and about using your weapons. It was all so relevant and I literally hung on every word.  

One line in particular stuck out to me. 

"Just refuse to move from the place that God has put you" 

One of those moments where you hear what you need to hear in the exact right moment. 

After feeling like an intense attack of the enemy was happening in my world on every side. 

I had not long become a foster Mum to two beautiful children, I was expecting one baby and had planned for one baby but God apparently doesn't work that way. 

So I was blessed to be caring for two, not an easy task and to be honest I had never felt more out of my depth. 

I just stepped into my calling and all of a sudden felt like I could not do it, thing is everything thought I could. 

A couple of weeks in I started getting sick and then I kept getting sick. I was so stressed and run down that I could not properly recover. 

I finally went to the doctor to be told the stress was causing my body to become run down and get sick easily. 

She also said that I had an option to just give them back in order to recover properly, basically to give up. 

I knew that was not what God wanted me to do so I kept going. 

Thing is I got sicker, the kind of sick that scares you because you start to thing think it might be serious, the kind of sick they tell you won't go away. 

I did not have time to be that kind of sick. 

I reacted badly to the medication she gave me and the tests just led to more tests. 

I do not have time for tests. 

I so wanted to do this well but I didn't want to do it like this. 

I got more and more afraid because this is all I wanted, all I have ever loved doing and all I prayed about for so long and now I hated it. 

Not because of the fact that I didn't actually like it or enjoy it anymore, but because it was so hard, like exhaustingly hard, harder then I know it should be. 

Because deep down I did not think I was good enough, I had the strongest feelings of doubt and of not being good enough. 

How could I not do what God had called me to do? 

How could I hate this? 

Maybe I heard him wrong. 

Maybe I am not right for this. 

So much so that I did not go to the Mother's Day service because I didn't feel like I deserved being celebrated as a Mother. 

I wasn't even a "real" one. 

I could not bear to be told how inspirational I was, or how I was changing these kids lives or what an awesome job I was doing when I felt so far from those things. 

Basically just feeling like I was living a lie just to keep everyone else happy. 

Because when everyone thinks you are something you just be that rather then disappointing anyone. 

The minute Annie started speaking this message I knew few things. 

1. That this would end- nothing lasts forever even when you feel like it will. 

It's a season that I can and will last out and it's for a reason. 

It's not forever. 

In the middle of it it's so easy to be like "I'm not going to do what you've asked me to do if it's going to be like this God" or is it just me that has felt like that? 

2. Staying is always worth it- 

Sometimes it's the hardest thing. 

But regardless of how hard it got, everything pulled me back to that one conviction. 

I will always end up back at his feet.

It is never going to work another way and I don't want it to. 

3. If he is attacking, you must be doing something right- 

It's just funny, not in an actually funny way more in a frustrating way that the second I got exactly what I wanted everything started to go wrong. 

Annie also said another thing that stuck out 

"Whenever there is a fight, there is a victory on the other side" 

It became just that, I constant fight to stay on course. 

A fight to arrest my thoughts before they consumed me. 

A fight to do what I know I needed to do even when it wasn't what I wanted to do. 

Of course it did because I am exactly where I need to be and there was no way it was ever going to always be easy, but it was always going to be more then worth it.