Ash...wake up...

Have you ever just wanted to wake up and have your life be different? I'm not even talking about a new job or new friends, but that the issues inside you that you struggle with could just be gone and the things that you fear could be replaced with confidence. Like Eustace Scrubb in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (Chronicles of Narnia)--at the beginning of the book Eustace in a jerk and then suddenly Aslan turns him into a dragon and Eustace has a dramatic realization of the kind of person he is and he becomes a new person. Still Eustace and still working out his life, but the very essence of him is different. Or take Randy Dupree in "You, Me and Dupree". Amber and I watched this the other night and it actually was an amazing movie, very inspiring to us, and Dupree has the same kind of "full-circle" life change that I'm talking about. He has a explosive moment of realizing the way he is living his life and then he turns from it. Again, it takes some time for everything to get worked out, but he actually becomes the person he was meant to be.

I want to be the person I was created to be. I want to get rid of all the stuff in my room that I don't use. I want to clean the bathroom regularily. I want to eat healthy and go swimming. I want to take piano lessons and spend more time writing and drawing. I want to pray and read my bible and spend time worshipping Jesus everyday.

I'm not saying I'm completely dissatisfied with my life. I am absolutely not. And all the things I want changed seem so little and practical but represent a heart change that needs to happen in my life. When I was in high school I couldn't wait to get out of Swift and become who I wanted to be. When I started realizing that the real me is assertive and excited over small things and introspective and emotional and more, well then I started working out the bugs in my life and didn't keep exploring what else might be inside me. I've been "pressing on" whilst dragging the last 5 years with me. Dragging that stuff takes so much energy and hinders my progress. I need to let the past go so that the future, so that today, can be fully used by God to impact my life and make me more like Him. So though the changes I want to make seem small and insignificant, they actually add up. And added up they are the lightning bolt that strikes my identity in the areas that it is still not like Christ and takes those areas into obedience.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy