It's a new day...

So I have been reading this blog of myself over the past couple of days. I don't even recognize this person. I've come so far and yet fallen so far from who this person I am reading about was. Since this time I have plumbed the heights and depths of love, grace, sin, pain, joy, and sorrow. I feel a bit like worn leather... it's soft, pliable, and usually has been around long enough to be something you wouldn't part with... however, it has also been beaten up, worn thin and damaged. This season of my life has been the most rewarding and the most devastating of my entire life. I found love, lost love, found the best friend of my life and lost them in a matter of moments. Oh the consequences of our choices. I am painfully aware of it...

The one thing I do know is that it is a new day and God's mercies are new today. They will be new tomorrow and the next day and the next. What an encouraging truth. As much as I am pained by the reality of my life right now I am truly coming into contact with the Living God in a way I have never experienced before in my life. In the midst of the greatest loss and pain, I am experiencing great joy. I am finding myself for the first time. Jesus is, for the first time, becoming my closest friend. He has always been there but now I am choosing Him and oh how I love Him. He has loved me through all my stuff, internal and external. He knows my deepest darkest thoughts... He knows that my heart is deceitfully wicked and yet He says to me, "My love, My dove, My fair one... Oh how beautiful you are to Me." He is always speaking and has been speaking this long before I was born but now in this moment, in my brokenness and pain, I am actually starting to believe it. I am learning to listen to what He says about me. I have secretly based my worth on what others have said or believed I am. I have been an insecure little girl begging for the approval of those around me but for the first time I am finding the woman I have become. I am beautiful, successful, and loved by the most High. I don't believe it fully yet or at all some days but I know it's real.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

I AM a new creation. I AM made new. He really is giving me beauty for ashes.