Welcome new things.

I had a pretty good year. 

I think about that on the first day every year and I always end up with the same conclusion. 

It was good! 

God has had my back this year. 

I'm blessed with a job, great friends, incredible church, somewhere to live and I'm about to step into a dream that I have been working towards for years. 

I went to America for the first time with three of the people I Love most and Got to spend time with one of my first leaders who I admire and love. I went to the beach. We got my Dad a puppy, I spent a lot of time with friends and built good relationships with them and completed foster care training. 

Thing is I could say it was crap if I wanted to, it would be equally as valid. 

Crap stuff happened, I had hard days, things did not go as I planned. 

I lost a job, fought with my friends sometimes, I got sick, at times I hurt and didn't get everything I wanted. 

Of course those points are valid. 

But does that determine the outcome of my year? 

Does that determine the attitude I am taking into this year? 

The point is God wants to do new things. 

He has more for us. 

He has answers to prayers. 

There is growth for us. 

There is challange. 

There is breakthrough. 

As there was last year, there will be new things this year. 

So I'm choosing to have a welcoming attitude to those. 

Trials will come. 

But Welcome the new things. 

My life is well and whole.

"As long as you are still speaking, the devil is loosing"- Joseph Prince 

I tend to panic. 

I don't talk about it often and I don't think I have really written about it properly, but I think I understand it enough to attempt to do so now. 

So I panic right? Before I think about the problem logically.

Before I think about a possible solution.

Before I think about that fact that it will actually be ok, because I know it will. 

When life is chaotic and I'm getting stressed and nothing is going right. 

I know without a shadow of a doubt that it's going to be fine, that God will come through. 

Even still I can't seen to stop myself from first freaking out and going into meltdown mode before I, or a friend, or God snaps me out of it. 

Sometimes I freak out a little, sometimes I freak out ALOT. 

This is a story of when I freaked out a lot. 

So I had one of those weeks where everything started going wrong. 

Just the usual adult life stuff, a few huge bills that I needed to pay, a parking offence that I did not commit, Christmas shopping that I am still yet to start, I writting piece that I needed to pass my foster care assessment that was particularly difficult to edit and then my car broke. So I was slightly stressed but these were all fixable problems and I knew that so I was a little overwhelmed but I was dealing with it so I was only having little freak outs here and there and then moving on from them. 

Then one day I went home after work earlier because when I get stressed I get nauseas. 

I opened a letter that was basically about more money that I did not have and so I called to see what it was about and the second the lady on the phone asked a question I lost it. 

I mean lost it completely and I think I shocked her.

I had a panic attack, on the phone to her!! 

She very quickly and awkwardly gave me another number to call and sort it out. 

So after I hung up I did all the things that everyone tells you to do when this happens, I do them all for about two hours until I am calm again. 

Few days later I am telling someone about this, laughing about it cos it's over and it's not a big deal anymore. 

Next day I get a text "psalm 55 read all of it" 

So I do in every available version and I see this line 

"My life is well and whole, secure in the middle of danger"- verse 17ish MSG 

It makes complete sense to me. 

What happens in a panic attack is something happens and your mind sends all these messages to your body that your in danger and so your body pysically responds as if it's in danger. 

But your not. 

So this verse is just a reminder, that in the middle of chaos my life is well and whole. 

And that in the middle of "danger" real or otherwise I am secure. 

Thing is God comes through and since has come through in do many ways for me and I know that. 

That's what I need to be looking at. 

That's where my focus needs to be. 

And that's what my attention must be on. 

Why having time to myself is the best and worst things for me in this season.

I Love and also Hate having days off. 

I'm always complaining that I need a day off to do nothing! So I can stay in bed all day and not leave the house at all, because it sounds appealing, it really does. 

I have friends that do it often and they talk about how they had the best day doing nothing and I want that day, I want to do nothing.

 The thing is though I can never ever  do just "nothing"

I used to be able to, but now I can't sit still. It sucks a little and so I'm trying to fix it. 

People said things like "you'll be bored after a few hours" and I so wanted to prove them wrong. 

So I had a quiet week, where I worked less and had some time to myself.

Just a few afternoons which makes me think God is trying to ease my into this slowly. 

It was the best and also the worst thing ever, and I only just realized it was because of my own terrible attitude.

I used to be so good and being alone and just entertaining myself, I need time to myself to enjoy spending time with people. 

But for a very long time I forgot to have it. 

I went from work, to one social event, to another and then back to work again. 

I did this day after day week after week for months. 

I was exhausted! 

I was the kind if exhausted that left me unable to stop.

So I just kept being busy until I could not and NEEDED to stop, then I would get busy all over again. 

So when I had time off, I hated it! 

I wanted to Love it, but I instead accidentally slipped into a hole where I felt crap and acted crap simply because of the fact that I had so much that I needed to but I just didn't have anything left in me to do it well. 

So I just didn't do anything. 

At the end of it I still felt physically rested but I wasted a lot of my mental energy on stuff that was not at all worth it. 

So I'm learning there needs to be a balance, a little time to stop but not too much and to stop for the right reasons.

More on trust.

Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God, (Deuteronomy 1:29-32 NIV)

The thing about God is that he has not once given us any reason to not trust him. 

He has not once failed us or left us or broken a single promise. 

He has been faithful through every moment and season. 

He has shown us time and time again that he is worthy of our complete trust. 

The thing about us is we find it hard to completely trust him. 

Why is that? 

Maybe it has a lot to do with our human nature, we want to have control over our lives and by putting our complete trust in God we surrender that control to him. 

Maybe it's that we were born into world were people are incapable of being 100% faithful and so we learn to distrust and in doing that we perceive God to be the same. 

The fact is that even after God showing us his faithfulness and keeping his promises every single time as if He has to prove himself to us, we struggle to give him our complete trust. 

But the truth is that until we do that, He cannot fight for us. 

He only does as much as we let him do, with as much of us as we give him. 

So if we are holding onto anything in the hopes that we could do it better, we are fooling ourselves. 

We will forever be fighting a loosing battle with weapons that are only effective if we place them in his hands. 

So we must choose in spite of ourselves to place everything we have into his hands. 

We must choose to let him fight for us, just as he has done before. 

Just some thoughts on trust.

It's so much harder to trust Jesus with the little things. 

It becomes a choice then, when you could do it in your own strength but hand it over to him anyway.

When you could do things your own way, but trust His way is better. 

When something happens that is so huge and overwhelming we are not left with any other choice then to trust God with it.

When it's too big for us we have to hand it over to the one who is bigger. 

It's not a choice then, it's just a matter of surviving the season. 

The choice to trust comes in the little things we trust Him with. 

Nothing is more frustrating to me or awakens more anxiety within me then being able to do something, but letting someone else do it anyways.

Lately my trust journey has gone from having to trust him to choosing to. 

I've found it was so much easier when I had no choice and nowhere else to go. 

Trust became my only option. 

But what about when it is not. 

Do we choose it anyway? 

It becomes more about putting him first? 

It becomes a choice. 

I can handle almost anything if I know I can practically do something through it. 

I have spent so much time in this season continuously asking God to tell me what I can do when all he saying is "Let me" 

So I choose to trust him. 

And I need to choose to over and over again. 

Isaiah

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. (Isaiah 43:2 NIV)

Note to self: it does not say you will not go through anything. 

It's not saying you will avoid all trails and tribulations. 

It's saying when you go through something tough, you won't go through it alone. 

God will be with you. 

It's saying when you have to do something that seems too hard, it will not overwhelm you. 

It's saying when something happens that could damage you, you'll come out of it unharmed.  

I am sure that when I accepted Jesus that my life changed, I am sure it is now a million times better and I am sure I would make that same choice a thousand times over given the chance. 

I am also sure that it did not get easier, in fact for a season it became a lot harder as I fought to undo my 15 years worth of living in this world without Him. 

I did not know any better and in my blissful ignorance I did as I pleased and was left to face the mess of my past. 

Often it's so much harder and Jesus never promised it would not be. 

It's harder to not take the easy way out. 

It's harder to see the bigger picture. 

It's harder to move past moments I want to stay in. 

It's hard to do the right thing.

It's hard to look past how I feel and do what I know he is asking of me. 

Even when it's the last thing I want to. 

Because I know better now. 

He never said I would not go through raging rivers or that things would not get hot. 

He simply said I will not drown and I won't be burnt. 

And it's worth every moment. 

Believe.

Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” (Luke 1:45 NIV)

This verse is the first thing I read this morning. 

A friends Mum posted it and to be honest a looked it up to see if said "He" not she. 

It's actually taking about Mary and Elizibeth. 

It's talking about after she has already believed that God is doing what He said he would do. 

It reminded me of one thing. 

God ALWAYS does what he says he will do. 

I have read countless verses on it and I feel like in this season more then ever I keep being reminded of it over and over again. 

I feel like it's easier to believe a promise when it's far off into the future, when it's something God has for you in years to come. 

The struggle to believe is probably more when it's just so close to happening and then things start going wrong. 

Or you start feeling like maybe you can't do it anymore? 

Or maybe you heard wrong and you have worked towards nothing? 

In these moments its even more important to stand on verses like this and believe that even when it does not look like it,

God fulfills his promises every single time.