the {not so} good girl.

I asked Jesus into my heart when I was little. Little little.

But I didn't really start walking closely with Jesus until junior high. Junior high camp where I asked Jesus to reign in my life. To take control. To flood my life with His voice and His power. Honestly, I think in my naive twelve year old brain, I expected Him to do a complete overhaul of my entire life.

and He did. Just not in the ways I would have thought. I thought and hoped that everything would be better. easier. prettier. softer. whole.

The overhaul came. it still comes. in many forms.

That fight with a parent. The friend that leaves. The selfishness that rears its ugly head. The emotional tidal wave.

But the worst change? The goody-two-shoes attitude I claimed and carried with me. I adopted a presence of arrogance, and thought my Jesus-loving passion could not be matched.

I thought I'd been doing pretty great keeping my act together as the "good girl" for years, but it was nothing compared to the weight I felt once I started following Jesus. Grace wasn't in my vocabulary. If I was a good girl before Jesus, I had to be the best after Jesus. Because if I wasn't, people would get the wrong idea about my God. and I obviously couldn't let that happen. I knew I was being watched. I had to prove that this wasn't just a phase I'd grow out of... I was really being changed. refined. molded.

It's been almost eight years since that junior high camp. The camp where I first spoke with Jesus in a really intimate way. And it's been eight years of sin. of ugly twists and turns. of some really hard sharpening. My yearning for the appearance of perfection only got stronger as I got older, especially as my circles of influence seemed to widen as a teacher, a writer, a friend. I had to keep it all together, letting nothing slip through the cracks.

You know what? That only works for so long. The cracks start to leak.

The past couple of years have been a fight for truth, a release of the need to be perfect. It's been a process of learning how to be comfortable in who God has made me to be. It's been sharing with others the seemingly gigantic, ugly ways I've messed up. The gigantic, ugly ways I still mess up. It's been telling my story, my testimony, no matter how pathetic and awful and downright unattractive I might look in its light.

At this point in my walk with Jesus, I've been tested and tried through the fires of being authentic and vulnerable... of letting people know of my constant sinning... and falling back into grace every.single.time. It's okay not to be okay. and though I wrestle with this, and will probably struggle with this my whole life, I believe and claim that no one's opinion of me matters except One.

I am just a girl. Flawed. Imperfect. I'm trying my best to love Jesus.

I'm holding on to truth that I chose not to believe for so long.

The truth that no matter what I say. No matter what I do. No matter what happens to me...

Grace is there to catch. Love is there to redeem. Hope is there to remind.

I'm loved.

Deeply. Perfectly. Forever.

That's what's changing me.

You are loved,
Lyss