The Hopewell House

This weekend was such a good, but busy, weekend. 

I was planning on posting about it for you all today,

But I have something else that's lying pretty heavy on my heart.

As most of you know, or are at least catching on to through my postings,

There's just been a lot going on in my life lately that I've been struggling to overcome.

Call it a mid-20 crisis if you would like, but there's just a lot of questions I just don't seem to have the answers to and I don't know why. 

I've been battling an inward struggle lately with the purpose of my life and the potential I have. 

I keep ranting on about how I thought life would look so different at this point, but it's true. 

I just thought I'd be at a point where I was at my dream job, doing creative and interesting things, feeling settled...but the further I go, I have this consistent lost, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach....I felt like God had abandoned me and left me to figure out things on my own. 

Frankly, I just feel like I'm missing some big piece in my life, like God had some wonderful purpose in mind for me and somehow I just missed that boat.

I've been fighting these feelings a lot lately.

Friends tell me it will happen, trust God, have faith, just be patient.

It's good advice, but to be honest, I just hate hearing it.

I just hate not knowing.

I just hate this void in my life and I just want so much to have control that it's driving me crazy.

It's an obsession that every time I have a chance it's like word vomit coming out of my mouth: how annoyed I am, how frustrated I seem, how completely lost I feel, blah blah blah poor, poor me.

And frankly, I know all this is completely annoying to everyone else; I know I've been horrible and selfish and pathetic. I know I'm just being a bitter old woman.

It's just that it's been eating me alive and I just want to find out why. Why me, why this, why that,  why can't I seem to have the fortune that everyone else around me seems to be having.

Why can't I just feel happy again?

[insert the sob fest]

And then I went to church on Sunday, and it's like God slapped me upside the head.

[don't worry, I deserved it]

We learned about faith...you know, the real faith, not the faith I've been having where I say I trust God and then brood and complain...no, like the faith that I trust that God has the best in mind for me.

The faith that he knows and he really does have a plan.

The faith that when God places trials in my path, it's testing all that faith I supposedly have, which after Sunday I realize I kind of lack

.

After the term faith, I then got hit with the word refinement and I went ouch.

When a piece of gold is getting heated and formed into a piece, it must go through a process to be at it's purest and most beautiful form.

Refinement means that this gold must endure the flames to help all the bad to rise to the surface so that it will leave only behind the good, the gold.

The same way that when you face trials, you are enduring the heat to deal with the bad to leave behind only the good.

And then I realized just how much bad was surfacing in my life and just how many things these trials have been bringing to the surface. 

There are so many things coming up in my life and I have yet to deal with them.

Here I am worrying about the "why"s and feeling pity on myself, and here God is trying to show me I have yet to work on the bad before he can produce the good.

I've allowed bitterness, resentment, depression, and anger to surface and yet, frankly, I've not really dealt with any of these issues. 

I've talked about them, I've addressed that they exist, but if they are still here in my life, have I really worked on any of them?

I've stood in the way of the very things God is trying to teach me.

I've been so focused on me .

Trying to take control of my life is not going to get me anywhere,

It might get me away from where I'm at currently, but it doesn't mean I won't face these same struggles...I can't move on until I learn to address the bad things I have allowed to creep into my life.

I can't be transformed if I'm refusing to change.

So the purpose of this post?

I guess it's to admit to you my little faith and my weakened spirit and a vow that things will change.

Bear with me and my word vomit, and I will try my best to be more positive and really work on these issues...to stop acting so immature and instead bring a true self of maturity into my life.

and

Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we are all in a process and it's all on how we deal with those trials that will make all the difference.