Settling.

Transitioning is never easy... but I never thought settling would be this challenging. The last two years and eight months of my life have been spent going through transition after transition.

I moved from Canada back in with my parents (decided, packed, and executed in two days), I got divorced, I joined a church, I started dating, I got kicked out of said church for dating, I went through depression, I started working a real job for the first time in years, I started community college, I started a business with my boyfriend, I joined a new church, I started counseling, I moved, I quit my job, I got accepted into a university, I moved again, I got a new job, Charlie and I got engaged, I got pregnant, I got fired, we got married, I moved to Seattle.

Pretty much nothing (with the exception of Charlie) stayed the same for longer than six months. But here I am, and though I am about to have a baby in less than two months and go through THE BIGGEST transition yet, my life is finally starting to settle. Or is it? There are still so many things that are changing. We are looking for a church, I am planning on finishing my personal trainer certification after the baby is born, Charlie is trying to figure out if he should take a different career path (or yet, an additional one), we are praying about where/what God wants us to go/do after he graduates. But I guess that is getting a little ahead of ourselves...

But something that I've known about myself for a long time, the thing that made it so hard for me to let go and trust God about staying home with our baby, was that I thrive on the transition and the stress. It was so exhausting balancing full time school, work, our business, church, friends, boyfriend... but I was too busy to have the energy to hate it. It occupied me, it distracted me. I never had to sit still and think about my life.

The stillness kills me.

The stillness makes me day dream about a better life in which I eat perfectly and workout with ease and never have trouble getting me and baby out of the house and Charlie and I are a part of a small group of other young couples who love and support us. And we serve and make a difference and use our talents for the greater good, and we save for a house and we live frugally. The stillness makes me obsess over all the things I don't have, over all the things I'm not. And I spend more time obsessing than I actually spend doing. And I fall into this pit of self loathing where I stop eating healthy and exercising and I spend money on things I don't need and most importantly... I don't pray about how I'm feeling.

And so I ask God to forgive me and I ask Charlie to forgive me. And I pray that the stillness wont be so bad this week because I just can't take it. I pray that I will use this time and opportunity for good and not just fantasizing about the good.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,  in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

Romans 8:1-8