Learning

What I just understood tonight while getting ready for church was this....

It is easy to be confident and sure of yourself when you are always surrounded by people who love you and accept you.

I just realized that it is not so easy to just be confident when you are always surrounded by new people and new things. It is then that you get your confidence not from those around you who are cheering you on constantly, but from searching out who you are in the Lord. It is a lot harder.

I have been struggling with walking into a room of strangers with as much confidence as I had back home. It is not that I am completely without confidence but there is a significant difference in my level of confidence these days. And what I realized tonight is that back home EVERYWHERE I went...church, work, anywhere really, even Walmart...I was surrounded by people who loved me and built me up and supported me, so I was constantly being filled with love and support and encouragement. But here I am surrounded by strangers, people who just don't really know me at all and are not vested in me.

Understanding this, I think will help me to run to my Father for any confidence that I need. It also makes me miss the wonderful people I was surrounded by back home. It also makes me eager to have those kinds of relationships and that kind of love and acceptance again. That only comes with time though and lots of time. It sure doesn't happen over night but neither does it happen in six months or a year. It takes a lot of time.

Relationships take time to build and cultivate. It absolutely takes a long time to be in a place where you are surrounded by people who love you and support you as well.

I am thankful to have gotten this understanding, it makes me feel less like there is something broken in me. I understand now that it is simply that things, the atmosphere, is different and it takes time to adjust to.

I am adjusting. Slowly.

I am learning to make friends very slowly because so easily you can move someone into the friend bucket only to be surprised when they are unable to fulfill that role and your heart gets broken. I am learning how to truly rely on the Lord in so many different ways that I never had to before.

I understand that this is how we learn...we experience different things...things that take us out of our comfort zones completely...like moving to a new state NINE hours away from all those loving supportive people, going back to school after eleven years, starting a new kind of job with new people on a completely new pay scale (one I have been on since I was EIGHTEEN years old), and starting over at a new church and slowly making this new place with all of these new things and new people your home, for at this point it is your HOME.

I am learning...it seems at a snail's pace...but learning all the same...and I know that I could not learn these things without having experienced them like this.

Thank You Father for all of the things that you are teaching us, thank You for this time of sowing for I know that one day we will indeed reap the benefits of our sowing!!! I love You and I trust YOU Father!!!