Beginning Again

So, a new blog for a new season of life. This new beginning is with the hope and intention to write more, and to write from a place of wrestling with God.

Because we all wrestle. And my life, up to my 38th birthday, has been an endless wrestling match with God. Wrestling can be invigorating and it can also be exhausting. There are times when I have embraced the struggle, my adrenaline pumping, and I felt like I was up for the fight. And there have been times when I have felt brittle, near lifeless, and I was convinced that the battle would destroy me. It didn't and it hasn't. Apparently God knows what I need, what I can handle, and when I can handle it. Apparently. Because I haven't always seen eye to eye with God. Shocking, right? And I have had other plans and other ideas about how my life should go. And so we wrestle.

Over the last couple of years I have become enamored with the story in Scripture about Jacob wrestling with God. Jacob tried to go it alone, to live a way of selfishness, and to chase a life of comfort and ease. Jacob tried and he failed. Because God wrestles.

The battle is never wasted and the victory is often in the struggle.

I feel a new gratitude for God wrestling with me, changing me, and shaking me into not settling. That's a gift, the struggle. God wrestles. God engages in the fight to keep me from always choosing, well, me.  God wrestles to keep me from wandering aimlessly.

So I will continue to wrestle, and I invite you into the ring, into the struggle. Because it's always better to have others in the ring with you, to not go it alone.

Grace and Peace.