Posted by Have you ever wanted to do something over? Maybe it was missing the final shot in a game or flubbing that high note in a song or saying the wrong thing to someone in an argument or not speaking up when you had a chance. Regardless of who you are, we all have parts of our lives that we would love to have another shot at. We believe that, given what we know now, we’d be able to do it even better than we did before.
But what happens when you actually get that opportunity?
About 5 years ago I went through a pretty dark time. I was lonely, angry, hurt, and bitter to name just a few of the many emotions I was experiencing and trying my best to suppress. I loved God but I didn’t love myself so, even when I tried to love others, I didn’t really know how to do that well. There was a period of time when I wasn’t working and I discovered that I didn’t really know who I was. My life had been built around this worker-bee identity and without that I was lost.
This is my do-over.
I’m currently in a season where I am unemployed by choice, but I am not devoid of purpose. I now know who I am, who God is, and that he has a plan for me. Instead of boarding myself up in sadness and shame, I am choosing freedom. I am using this season, this gift, to help people. The anger and bitterness I experienced years ago isn’t present now. This go around, I am full of joy and peace. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have bad days where I get sad or lonely or think “what was I thinking?!”, it just means that I don’t allow myself to live in those spaces.
I’m learning about redemption.
Redemption is a word that you hear a lot in churches but often don’t talk about outside of the 4 walls of the church. I am learning right now that God can take the old and make it into something completely new. Though it can be tempting to react in a less than healthy way to circumstances, I know that I don’t have to. When I feel drawn back to my old, workaholic identity, I can choose to stop and realize who I really am. When I begin to beat myself up about past failures, I can choose instead to celebrate those mistakes because they’ve set me up for success in this season.
I am immensely thankful that God was with me through every hard moment, every tear shed, and every time I threatened to give up. But I’m also thankful that He is with me now. He truly can take a person and change them. He has redeemed me, rescued me, saved me, and made me new.
And the great news is that I’m a work in progress and so are you. There’s nothing really special about my circumstances, you and your situation can be redeemed too because nothing is too big for God. He is the Redeemer and will let nothing we bring to Him go to waste.
Work in Progress 