Playing With Scissors

I really like how I'm doing life right now. I woke up thinking that this morning, and it's kind of been the theme of my thoughts all day.

Almost six months ago GOD showed me some stuff that I needed to cut out of my life: bad habits that seemed too small to be important enough to really get rid of, old wounds and hurts from the past that my bitterness held onto, and places and people that my selfishness just couldn't bear to let go of. (Ha! I just ended a sentence with a preposition and now I feel rebellious!)

I didn't want to let go of any of that stuff. So I didn't. I held onto it all and let it cause a lot of problems.

Holding onto all of those things wore me out. Gradually I just decided that I had had enough. I'm not really sure when, but at some point I pulled out the scissors (metaphorically) and just started cutting away at my life. At first, it was one of the scariest things I've ever tried to do. These things I'd been holding onto had become my entire existence, and I was desperately afraid that once they were gone I wouldn't have anything of myself left.

But I kept cutting anyways.

And then yesterday I woke up and I realized I was done. I had finally managed to purge my life of the things that were holding me back from being happy, from being complete, and from being obedient to GOD. It was a little bit of a saddening realization; some of the things I had cut away weren't bad in and of themselves, but my idolatry of them had made them despicable. They had to go.

This morning when I woke up I felt really and truly and deeply at peace for the first time in a long time.