Reverb 10: Day 17 - Lesson Learned

This is the last in my attempt to catch up! Tonight I'll be writing the prompt for today, in the meantime, here's yesterday's reverb10 prompt:

December 17 – Lesson Learned

What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

(Author: Tara Weaver)

I've learned this year that I am far more resilient and stronger and able to handle major changes in life than I gave myself credit for.

It's not just the physical stuff of circumstances either.  While I have weathered a car accident, the loss of a job that I'd had semi long-term, and a crazy living situation,  I've also weathered quite a lot of internal turmoil.  Deep wounds exposed.  Changing and shifting relationships.  Things settling into patterns that are new and entirely unexpected.

And if you had told me a year ago that I would be sitting here and feeling joyful (in fact, in many ways more joyful and at peace than I've ever been) after all of those things occurred, I would have told you you were crazy.  Nuts.  Loco.  That you'd lost it completely.

But here I am.  I've not only survived, I've occasionally thrived.

I'm getting better (though I'm by no means an expert, and I'd be very okay if I didn't have to practice any more for a while) at rolling with the punches life has thrown.

And in the midst of all of that, I've met Jesus in a way that amazes me.  When all those other things were stripped away, He was the constant, and I'm coming to know and love him deeply.  I can say today that I really do trust Him.  I think of Job, so desperate, in his misery, crying out, "I know that my Redeemer lives... and even if my flesh is destroyed, I'll see him.  I'll see him for myself.  With my own eyes."  I feel like I understand in an even greater way the deep hope and trust of Job's cry.  It's a passage that has always grabbed my heart, one that meant a lot in the many years of depression, but it's one that speaks even more deeply to me now, in this crazy year of deconstruction, but a year where my confidence that God is present and I will see him, with my own eyes, has grown in ways that words can't quite describe.

And that ability to trust, to adapt, to lean into Jesus as constant?  That's something I want to cultivate, to carry with me, to let bloom inside me in new ways as I move forward into the coming year.