Life... is.

A certain thought has occurred to me a lot in recent months… “Life just is.” Before going through this grieving process with losing my mom slowly, I found myself always striving to make my life what I wanted it to be… reading this book or that book, hanging out with that person, taking this trip, pursuing this career path, finishing college degrees… and on and on. Now, at 27 years old, with a Master’s in professional counseling working as a counselor to Liberty college students, I feel as if I have hit some kind of a wall. I wouldn’t say that I am pursuing anything like I used to. My ultimate goal right now is survival… getting through each day is a victory. One of my biggest fears has always been losing my mom before I was ready to let her go, and that reality is here staring me in the face. I struggle right now to put into words what kind of emotional state that reality has placed me in because I feel that there are no words to adequately describe it. The only words that come to mind are extreme sadness in my spirit… that place deep down inside a person that dictates their very being in this world. This sadness weighs me down and steals most all my energy, leaving little energy left for actual living life. Necessary tasks like grocery shopping, cleaning, and working now seem incredibly hard. So it seems that life, for me, just “is.”

All my life, I have known that as a Christian, I am to find my fulfillment in Jesus. I have always wanted this for myself, but if I were being completely honest, I do not think that I have experienced this for myself very much in my 27 years on this earth. Now, I find myself contemplating it more than I ever have. I’m coming to a place where I’m beginning to realize that life is beautiful one minute and has the potential to be a living nightmare the next. It all can change so fast. It’s made me realize that my life simply just is whatever God wants it to be. I think I’m learning to be ok with God bringing the life He wants for me day by day, which seems even now, to be a passive and vision-less way of living… so opposite of how I have been living life with the idea that my life is whatever I make it. Where is room for God in that thinking? There is no room for Him there. Maybe life isn’t one thing or that… maybe it just is… it is whatever He wants it to be. Maybe that’s how it really should be. My Americanized brain is just now starting to think more about that. I think that maybe even this is the key to finding my fulfillment in Him over anything else in my life. Living the life He brings me each day and seeking to find Him in it wherever I can. I know He’s there… just waiting for me to pay attention…

I am Not Alone - Kari Jobe