Honesty Pants

In three days, I

1. Graduated College
2. Moved from Kansas to Houston, Texas
3. Started a new job.

And this is what I am discovering to be true:

New is hard and that is exactly why New is necessary.

Confession time:
I bark a ferocious bark when it comes to saying I'd move anywhere (because I could) and that I would be fine (because I would). But recently, I've discovered my actual bite may be more like dentures than some ferocious pitbull ripping a stuffed animal to shreds (that's just what I envision when I think of this expression, but to each their own I suppose).

Moving somewhere new (or starting something new) and unfamiliar is unsettling and frustrating but it also can be exciting and revealing - that is, if you let it.

Right now, God is shaking things up, moving things around - and I'm not going to lie, I kind of feel like He is doing that borderline not-okay Helen Keller joke (the one that says, "How did Helen Keller's parents punish her? By moving the furniture.") But God's not punishing me. He's refining me.

But it's kind of like rearranging things in your room. Finding new places in your heart you didn't realize you needed to dust or clean. For me, it's a pride check, right in the spiritual gut. Double checking my humility, double checking where my true security is. And definitely reminding me what a true servant heart looks like.

And the shaking and moving is good for my spirit, good for my soul. But it isn't easy. It isn't comfortable.

But it is incredibly necessary.

I am one week into the most different part of my life to date, and there is so much more ahead of me. Satan wants me to be afraid, to be discouraged, to be bitter, to be apathetic. But God just wants me to be willing, to be faithful, to be dependent on Him, to rest secure in His truth.

So tonight, in those moments where I want things to be familiar or easy or like they used to be (just one week ago), I will remember those places and faces with gratefulness, but will rejoice in the unknown, the new, the next, because I believe it is absolutely necessary for my soul. I believe God continually calls us to be uncomfortable, because when we become comfortable we forget we need to be completely dependent on Christ.

I believe He empties us, to simply refill us again.