Blank Space

That new T-Swift song is great, but I've got a completely unrelated story.

I'm a writer, right? I'm designed to be a bit broody and ruminate and turn that into words.

So maybe it's my disposition toward slow processing that's made my experiences of last fall so difficult for me to...get out of my system.

There's a lot I don't remember. There's a lot I do remember.

Last year: three weeks of silence and one week of fighting to complete November, the waiting month. Sometimes, good things don't happen to those who wait.

A whole host of awful happened after. Awful that I only found out in segments. Awful that I still don't understand. And I don't need to. And I probably won't ever.

I came out of chapel today to see the retreating figure of a girl I have spent nearly a year's worth of energy and thoughts and behaviors in practical hatred.

And, though I had contemplated it before and decided against more than once, it was finally the right moment.

It does not matter what happened last year.
Or how it happened.

My response to it has been entirely my own to own.
And I have allowed myself to hate and behave in every manner contrary to the grace that I have been shown in my own life.

That ends today.

Today I apologized for my sin.
Didn't wake up thinking I would.
Still kind of shocked that I did.
And I've got that just-graduated feeling where you're having to readjust to not having homework hanging over your head or dreading the homework that will be hanging over your head.
All this space.
All this opportunity.

I don't know if I did it right or if I would go back and revise to make it perfect, but it was sincere and hard and time.

God is good.
God redeems.

Without that one catalyst (and all the ones that followed), literally everything in my life would be different. I would not be in Arkansas, I would not be with Julius, and I may not be who I want to be, but thanks be to God I'm not who I was.

The journey continues.
And it's slow and annoying and endless feeling, but I'm really thankful for these kinds of moments, when I see how God is making good on pain and moving me forward.