Contradictions

This will be my 100th blog post, spanning over four years of being here on Blogspot, two and a half of those years out of high school and in college, three years of them being a youth group leader, one year of them being employed and the past two years being unemployed. Two of the years as a coffee lover, one month of it being 21 years old, and all four of them being completely single...lol.

I look back on it all in the blink of an eye and I'm extremely thankful that I'm here, alive and all. But more than that, I'm amazed because there were times when I used to think "How will I ever get out of this one" or, more sadly, "I wish I would just be done with all this". I've really got God to thank for that though, He never ceases to amaze me.

I once read a reflection by Mother Angelica, in her writing "The Healing Power of Suffering", in which she talks about "interior suffering":

"It is in our souls that God does His most magnificent work. The world may look upon the aged, the sick and the retarded with sympathy, but God's work in their souls, through the power of interior suffering, is doing a greater work than when He created the Universe. Only in eternity shall we see the beauty of the soul and only then shall we realize what great things were accomplished by interior suffering." - Mother Angelica, "The Healing Power of Suffering" 

It's incredible to me to find out the realization that, when I look out into the universe, at the stars, all the beautiful landscapes, at the sunrises and sunsets, that through all that beautify, God is actually doing "greater work" within our souls. And to tie the knot, I'll take my liberties and quote one of my favorite writers C.S. Lewis:

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.". - C.S. Lewis 

I get so fatigued sometimes by my own personal suffering that I have to remind myself constantly that God is in control of everything that happens to me, that he fashioned all that I've gone through and fashions what I will go through, He allowed and only allows what I can handle to happen - all for my benefit. And that He loves me (and loves you, too).


I forgot who actually came to this thought but the statement is: "people make actions based on fear". I don't want to be like that anymore. For a long time I've been contradicting myself - saying and believing one thing and acting the other way, and I won't lie it's been based on fear. I don't want to be a living contradiction  to myself anymore. As I look back on this blog, it's the one thing I've been secretly ashamed about to myself - through a lot of my blogs it's been creeping beneath the surface of my skin, in between the lines in the words I wrote. 

Perhaps I will never be completely fearless... but I want to make sure that by my 200th blog, or 1000th blog, I'd like to be able to write that I am no longer a contradiction to myself the way I used to be, that I lived despite all the fear.