A Day in The Life: An Honest Journal Series by Heather 10.11.16
“This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
I love mornings. But every now and then when I wake up, I wake up feeling dreadful and just plain sour about the day...
I woke up yesterday morning feeling defeated right from the start. The moment I woke up I was attacked by thoughts like "you're a failure... you have issues... you say the dumbest things.... you 'tried' and you failed, how do you like that? Get used to it because you're never going to win this." Things like that...the most ridiculous things.
So I started some coffee and sat right down at my favorite morning spot to talk to God about it. I knew that if I didn't deal with this head on it would destroy my whole day, if not more.
The truth is I did try and maybe I did "fail" in my own eyes.... maybe it wasn't what I hoped for in that situation, maybe it wasn't what I saw to be a "victory" in saying the things I wanted to say and being "courageous" in that particular situation. But the TRUTH is, I trusted God, I put myself in a challenging situation and I tried, and I trusted. What happened is the moment I stopped trusting and started feeling negative about my actions and what I saw to be "failure" I lost faith, and I let the negativity overtake me that morning.
So as I sat down that morning, I just let it all out. I wrote down all of my thoughts, opened up the Word, and then I just talked to God, I had a heart to heart with Him, and I will be completely transparent here, I just let it all out, I sat and wept and I fell apart and I just opened up to God and told Him what I was going through. (Side note - there's something about sharing with God, speaking your thoughts to him as you would do with a close friend. Even though He already knows much more than we know about the situation, inside and out, there's something that's healing about sharing with Him in this way. Reminds me of when I was in school and I would feel so lonely and like such an outcast and so I would just sit down and get my journal out and write letters to Jesus, I would thank Him for being my friend, for being there for me, and it got me though some tough times back then in school.)
...but back on track here...
I decided, as I was writing and talking to Him, that this was enough of my dwelling on what I saw as failures, this was enough of feeling defeated and dwelling on what I saw as mistakes and not being good enough... that was getting me nowhere but down. I decided that I was going to proclaim my trust in God...
"I trust You, Father!"
And that's when He showed me that what sometimes what feels like a failure or defeat in our eyes, is really a step towards victory in God's eyes. He can see the bigger picture in our lives when we cannot. That's why we have to decide to keep trusting Him because as we are obedient, as we keep trusting and trying, He will lead us to victory.
That very challenging morning turned into a beautiful new day, and I felt renewed and ready to move on.
I don't know why I felt led to sharing this extremely transparent moment with you guys.... it has nothing to do with weddings or photography, but maybe there's someone out there who needs to know that we're all facing challenging days, we all face our own battles and they're all a little different. That's okay. It's an opportunity to take those things to God, to vent to God, and to allow him to renew us and dust us off, pick us up and put us back on the path of life again... this time a little wiser and a little bit stronger, whether we realize it in that moment or not.
xoxo
Heather