While reorganizing files on my computer the other day, I read all of 2008 here on Esther. I save all of my blog posts on my computer for posterity's sake (because I don't really trust the internet and what if they all mysteriously disappeared online?), so while copying them into a document, I started reading a few things here and there, which turned into re-reading everything and reflecting on what God has done in the last year and a half of my life. Unlike my journals, which are filled with a lot of the complete garbage that comes from my gut reactions and unfiltered thinking*, most of what I'd written online were things I'd processed through a little more carefully, trying to look at situations from God's perspective and understand the theological implications of what was going on. Still, in re-reading myself, I noticed a distinctive brazen tone and snarky attitude in my writing. In some ways, I was impressed at how brash and honest I was able to be during that time - sharing very raw thoughts and emotions - but a part of me was also sad to see the sort of bitterness and frustration that my writing expressed. I almost deleted my blog entirely, wanting to start over on a new site, under a new pseudonym, now that I feel like I'm in such a different place.
I wondered how many more times in my life I was going to think that.
Seeing my "old" self in light of who I am today reminded me of a conversation I had with my cousin Mark earlier in the year. I was gushing - like actually, for real gushing about how swell I think my boyfriend is (I know, me...gushing...), and he said something to the effect of, "it's good to see that you're starting to come around." [Come around from what?] "...you know...you used to be so man-hating." Me? Man-hating!? I couldn't believe he'd said that.
But it's all very clearly communicated in my writing - not that I necessarily hated men during 2008, but by saying things like "I'm not sure if I believe in love" and discussing my frustrations with the culture of dating and relationships, I can see how people read that. Rather, I can see how my blunt discussions of dating and love revealed deeply seated heart-issues; I feared and idolized men, and I harbored a lot of hurt and resentment.
In a way, I think the relationship I'm in now has been a sort of taming of the shrew. Like Kate, I was sharp-tongued and quick tempered, at times even spurning the idea of marriage and family - hoping to quelch the longing for marriage that God had put in me because it wasn't convenient to desire a family and have none. Somewhere around June, I started to realize just how much I had changed and began praying for God to soften my heart. I felt that I was becoming maybe...oh...just...well, kind of...I mean...a little bit...uh...bitter...
I was Kate. But my Petruchio in this case was not a man. Hearing my prayers, it has been God working in my heart to massage it back into flesh. He has so graciously used my current relationship to bring to light many ways in which I had grown cold and afraid, ways in which I was looking for someone else to fulfill me and had not been trusting God to care for my heart. Not that I have by any means conquered these struggles, but I praise God that He keeps working in me each day to make me more like Jesus and less like the shrew I see riddled throughout my writing.
For this reason, I'm going to keep Esther as she is - because the very same writing that brings me to deep sadness over the idolatry in my life, also brings great joy. In exposing my sin and weakness, God is all the more glorious - because He knew (and knows) every desire in my heart and yet still loves me and forgives me for ALL of that sin.
"On Monday, I watched the last sun of 2007 set over the ocean. Being on the West Coast, where the day ends and the sun dies, I feel my age all the more. 2008 starts to settle in my bones as I wonder if the year ahead could possibly bring as much change as the one preceding it...I am constantly amazed when I think back over the years gone by. On the cusp of yet another, I am easily nostalgic and perhaps equally hopeful as I look to what '08 has in store--the course my life will take and the ways it will change me forever."
- January 2, 2008
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*Aside - There is great worth to reading over my journals because they reveal the rawness of unedited sin. I haven't decided yet if I am going to do the "great marriage purge" and throw out my old life whenever I make that transition - surely it would be embarrassing if my husband or children ever read about all of the flagrant idols I pursued, but in some ways, it is just another testament to God's work in my life.
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