Dear me,

I wonder did you ever think this is where you would end up at this time in your life. Always, looking back in the rear view mirror, seeing how much closer your past keeps gaining on you. Or maybe this time your looking back to see how far away it is from you. You can get engrossed in the past, so much that you begin to not like who you are. Even if you don’t like yourself, God still does. And He doesn’t just like you, He loves you.

You will always be that girl who takes the longest possible pathway to the destination that is nearly a straight path in front of you. You will always be impossible, strong-willed, determined, stubborn, direct, and driven. Faith and perseverance, it is what defines who you were, who you are and who you will become because when you were being formed in that secret place, woven in the depths of the Earth. God saw. God knew your unformed body. God knew your disposition, He knew your battles, He knew how you would wrestle with Him, even though you hate wrestling. God knew. He knows the hairs on your head, and which ones get out of place, even if you don’t care. He knows when you try to hide from Him and from the world because He knows your in hiding, He will find you. God is searching for you even when you are not looking for Him. God reaches down and places His hand on you oh, so gently. He reaches down. Tower of Babel tried to build a ladder to God, but they had it wrong. We don’t reach to God. God reaches to us. He captures us. He swoops in taking us from the wilderness to find rest.

Little one, you may look at life as if you can’t escape the past that it is always creeping behind you. That what was, is what is. Remember Jesus sits with the sinners. Jesus eats with the needy. Jesus seeks. Jesus is watching every time you take the longest detour to climb the mountain. Jesus is drying every tear that streams down your face every time you fall to your knees because of a missed step. Jesus is cradling that scarred heart, mending each chipped piece of it. He is that constant that is leading you from the darkness into the light. It is He who is healing the unseen need that the world can’t see. While the world looks on at you from a distance- gathering their opinions and drawing their conclusions about you… you will keep moving forward. You will keep asking God to undo you. To refine you. You will pass the bridge of death. The bridge of death, that contains fear, uncertainty and confusion. You will come out from it no longer asking God to remove this thorn, or fix the thorn, but to change you. Change your perspective. Refine you and undo you. You will keep seeking the depths of the Father’s love for you. And you will seek that until you have taken your last breath in this worldly place. One day you will discover that only God can fill it. And as hard as it is for those words to march across your heart- it is the key to you finding a lasting peace. But know that as long as you keep breathing, and your faith keeps growing in God, those Earthly Father’s will be even more proud of you because you are walking in the way of the Lord. You are finding your security in something far greater.

Psalm 139:1-18

“You have searched me, Lord and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the Heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there you hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light becomes night around me even the darkness will not be to dark for you; the night will shine like the day, for the darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you. when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days of my life ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of the sand when I awake, I am still with you. “