God is working something in me.

I can’t talk about this past month without talking about the sheer faithfulness of God. It’s important that this blog be accessible to everyone no matter what you believe in, but my faith is such an important part of my life and I want to share my experiences to encourage others through this platform.

God has been bringing me to a simple place of honesty and humility to take a look at the spaces in my heart that make me feel like I'm not good enough. It is one of the hardest things we can do, to sit in our most broken places and not run from them or try to fill them with things that feel good but don’t last.

I consider myself a confident and self-assured person, but a part of me was operating on old stories I believed about myself. Stories that came from the lens of painful experiences of rejection. Stories that limited my belief about what I was worth and accordingly, my expectations from the relationships in my life.

What are the stories we are living by? Are they true? Are they necessary? Are they serving us any longer?

The defining story that I was living by was that if someone who had once been important in my life didn’t believe I was worthy of love, then I must not be worthy of love. The danger of living according to old stories is that they start to define us, whether we're aware of it. We create patterns around our stories. Because if I am not worthy of love, I will act, react, and make choices from that vantage point. I won’t expect to be loved and won’t allow people to get close enough to leave and disappoint me.

I didn’t know that these stories were engraved in my heart in such a way that didn’t allow for new stories of love, redemption, and light to be built. We must not let old stories tell us who we are and stop us from creating new stories. We may not even realize the stories we operate on whether they come from self-preservation from past experiences or the perception of other people. I’ve found that God often wants more for us than we could imagine for ourselves. As painful as it is to look at the deepest wells in our hearts, I believe that is where God wants to show his power and love for us.

God has been lovingly showing me the places where he wants to fill, breathe life into, and build a foundation of worthiness based on His unconditional love for me. It is excruciating to feel all of it, to sit in the ugliness of pain and vulnerability. But God wants more for me, and for all of us.

God is that good. He doesn’t want to leave us in our mess or even in the good enough. He wants us to experience the grand plans He has for us and overflow of His mercy and grace. And I’m so f***** grateful. That He loves me enough to tenderly hold my heart so I can see who He has made me to be- strong, loving, and a reflection of his divine image. In due season, God takes the dirt and let's the flowers bloom.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

-Philippians 4:8