Growing Pains
You may or may not know that I moved to Miami! It has been quite the transition, it’s been four months and it’s just starting to feel like home… The truth is moving here was hard, it entailed saying goodbye to the city, people, and things I considered home for years. There was pain in saying goodbye to the people I called my best friends, the college campus I called home and the city where Christ found me. The truth was moving to Miami wasn’t the plan I had for my life but it is God’s will for my life.
“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
Proverbs 16:9
The truth is in my transition to calling a new place home and adjusting to the realities of everyday life here in Miami. I had to go back before I could go forward, I had to mourn the loss of my “old life” in Jacksonville and accept that I was now single, as well as I was no longer in a sorority so saying “slay” was no longer socially acceptable (I found this out the hard way haha), and my college campus was no longer my ministry field. There were lots of people, places, and things that would no longer be in my life at the capacity they once were. It was an adjustment, it took time to receive closer. If I am being honest (way more) time than I thought it would but I learned to give myself grace and time to truly heal and let go.
The truth is in order to properly move on in a healthy way I had to feel my feelings, not simply brush them under the rug or cut myself off from my emotions like I had been doing for so long. I learned that it was okay to miss the relationship I was no longer in or to be sad that my best friend no longer lived two minutes away. To be human is to feel and the last time I checked I was human. Meaning that to deny my feelings was also to deny the reality that feelings are a component of what it means to be made in God’s image. I came to realization that in order to grow into what christ was calling me to do. I had to go back and take inventory of the emotions that were preventing me from fully stepping into the door God has opened for me in Miami.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26
Once I took inventory of my emotions, I then had to learn to change my emotions from a negative to a positive. “if you don’t like the way your feeling, change the way your thinking”. This doesn’t mean ignoring your feelings, it admitting they are there but acknowledging they aren’t leading you in way you want to go. For example if I focused on the feeling of missing my ex only it would only make me more upset that we had broken up, instead of reaching the desired outcome of healing, so I started thanking God for his rejection, in order to protect me. Instead of spending that time mourning the loss of that relationship, I started spending my time praying for my future husband. That’s just one example of the many emotions I have been working on altering. God’s been revealing to me that my thoughts matter, because they direct where you’re going and how your feeling. You can’t live right if you won’t think right.
Once receiving closer, I had to accept the reality of my new life in Miami, I was no longer a communication Student at Jacksonville University, on my sorority exec and leading my campus ministry. I was now working in full-time ministry, living with my amazing parents and working to complete a Masters in theology at VOUS college all at twenty-one years old. The truth is I felt very underqualified for the season I was in and I struggled to accept that I was right where God wanted me. By accepting that I was right where God wanted me, I was able to change the thoughts that tried to convince me otherwise. Once again by changing my thinking, I changed my feelings.
Let this serve as reminder that just because it’s God’s will doesn’t mean it will be easy.
My life has been looking a whole lot different. Stepping into this new season hasn’t been easy but I am being stretched, pushed, and grown in ways I never expected. Which has resulted in a season of growth. A season of growing pains if you will, the truth is everyone wants to grow but no one wants to go through the pain. You have to endure the pain to see the progress. After four months I am finally starting to see the progress of the work the Lord’s been doing on my heart and can confidently say that his plans are better than mine were going to be! I am so grateful to call Miami home for I am living in so many answered prayers and blessings because of it.
with love (and lattes),
