WOW 

It’s been over a WHOLE year since I have poured my heart out through little words and I can’t even explain how sad and lonely that has been for me. Everyone around me would encourage me to sit and write but if you’ve been around awhile, you’ll know that when I don’t want to process, I avoid writing. & what the heck?! How have I managed to avoid it for an entire year!! 

To be 100% honest like always, I am in a really weird place right now and it has been this way for the past year and a half. So much has changed in my life (church, friendships, relationships, jobs, where I live, etc.) and I feel like it left me paralyzed and I still don’t recognize my life or myself almost 2 years later.

I’ve asked myself so many times, “will you ever feel like you again or is this just the new “you” you have to embrace?” & I don’t know the answer to it. But here I am trying to figure it all out by writing. 

Here is my biggest problem. God & I…. we just haven’t been the same. I feel as though I got into a fight (a one sided fight) with Him and now, He’s just a stranger I see and have no recollection of. And how crazy is it for me to feel that way? Have you ever felt that way? Because I’m sure many of us have but we never talk about it. So I’m sorta lost on where to go from here… I know without a shadow of a doubt that God is GOD and God is GOOD, but it still doesn’t change the distance I feel and the sense of “where am I?” It’s almost like typing an address in your GPS and after driving for 30 minutes or so, Siri says “Arrived” but you look around and don’t see the location, the building, the sign ANYWHERE but your map keeps saying arrived. That’s my relationship with God right now. I worship, I show up, I pray, I talk about it, and yet there is still this emptiness inside, a wandering. 

This walk is a relationship and relationships have seasons, they have good times and difficult times so this has to be normal. Except no one talks about it. Everyone pretends like submitting to His will or raising your hands in worship is just natural and it has to be done, or else. But or else what? Yes, He’s worthy of it, no doubt but there’s more to this than how you “should” act. To me, God is interested in our hearts, in a relationship, and we are humans! It’s not always going to be butterflies and tears rolling down our face because He is good (and that He is). There has to be room for anger, for confusion, for doubt, for pain, for any other emotion. Because if not, then God is not truly interested in relationship with creation or I am not a human with a soul, a spirit, and a body. 

I refuse to believe that this isn’t a normal part of this journey. So as I live my days trying to feel, trying to hear His voice, trying to find the road in these dark and lonely woods, I will choose to believe that He is near. That this is exactly where I am meant to be in this very season. 

Why? Because this darkness makes me desperate. Desperate for His presence. Desperate for a way out. It feels like an elevator that stopped working and we’re stuck. Stuck on our way up or maybe stuck on our way out but nonetheless, stuck. 

Stuck. 

I don’t share any of this for pity or for anything else except for you to be encouraged. I’m not sure why I decided to start writing today (I started this blog 2 months ago and decided to finish it today) but the bible verse of the day was very fitting.

“This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭91:2‬ 

The Lord is good. He is my safety, your safety. This season is a growing one, one that will require trust – even if we have to declare it every morning and every hour. I hope you find strength, hope, and a sense of understanding. I get you, I get it. 

But He will never leave us nor forsake us. 

Find rest in that friend. 

Forever dancing in His love, 

Leslie Tatiana