Time to be honest.

I've kept many blogs online over the years. Usually they were self righteous rantings of a lost and wandering soul, or broken and thinly veiled cries for help. I fully and heartily believed everything I posted in each of those blog entries. I've spent the last 29 years carefully orchestrating my life as it would appear to others. Who I was, is who I wanted you to see. I was never real. I hid, and lied, and built my walls higher, until I no longer knew who I was, only who I wanted everyone to think I was.

I've spent my life trying to create my own value and worth by doing good deeds. I honestly believed if I said the right things, made the right sacrifices, gave the right way, others would see me as a good person (therefore, I would BE a good person), and my life would be worthwhile. I clung to this idea tightly, especially in the past ten years. I knew that without that distinction of "good person" and "my" ability to help others and make the world a better place, I was nothing, and life was not worth living.

So this was my constant battle. I had to be perfect, sacrifice everything for the cause of the moment, chasing this idea of "goodness" to one dead end after another. And once I hit that dead end, the only way out was death. And thus, I was once again suicidal. And I would remain thusly despondent and hopeless until someone, or something came along and re-kindled my passion for creating glory in my life for myself (in the guise of doing good in the world), and leading me on yet another wild adventure, destined to failure.
About 2 years ago, I hit another dead end. After five years of vain attempts to solve global poverty and win the love of a man who wasn't capable of it (and I didn't need in the first place) I found myself in the darkest place on earth, inside my own heart.

That is where God found me, and called me on this journey.

He led me to a group of Godly women, living intentionally, and in community, for the glory of the Lord. God showed mercy on me, an unrepentant sinner. In the last two years, God has revealed himself to me, in a careful process, unveiling himself to me in layers, like peeling an onion. At the same time, he began to reveal to me my own heart of wickedness, and the impossibility of this idea of "goodness"

In short, I finally understood that all I really needed was Jesus.  God knows that I am a wicked sinner, with a black heart and any attempt to clean myself up is futile. He knows.....and he loves me anyway. So much so, that he sent his son to die a horrendous death thousands of years ago (before I was ever thought of, God knew I would need him) to pay the full price of all the sin in my heart. Sin was my birthright, as a human being. Its inescapable. Without the cross, I was doomed to eternal death. Even in life on this earth, I would be dead in my sins, with no hope.

But Jesus IS my hope. Christ has been pursuing my heart these past few years...maybe even my whole life. He could just as easily let me fall, let me die, and let me burn. For all the wickedness within me, that is surely what I deserve. But HE has given me this great gift of life.

Its a process, and a painful one often times. I have 29 years of lies to unravel. And so many lessons to learn. I was raised in the church but I am in infant in Christ. I just want to write honestly about God's pursuit of my heart. This is entirely for my own benefit. Its just a sounding board, to help me sort things out and explore them, honestly. Thats the only rule. I will be honest. It won't be pretty. But its time to be real.