Free (sigh) at last.

Between bites of milk chocolate raisins, I reflect on the beauty of the day. In a literal sense, the day is profoundly breath-taking: the cool breeze, the gentle beaming of the sun & the clarity of the blues and neat demarcation of cumulus nimbuses (nimbi?) in the Southern California sky is a rare, yet exalted event. I mean, I guess there are plenty of sunny days here, but how often are those sunny days apart from the oppressive southern California smog? I feel that the world around me is singing hallelujah, we're free at last. Or at least, free for the moment.

Today is also beautiful because I am celebrating a newly discovered sincerity regarding the beauty of God's love and acceptance of me. Well, I've been "celebrating" since Easter, but it was more like a "trial celebration." I think I was making sure that all the joy and freedom that I've been feeling wasn't some fluke. Thankfully, it's not and it is one of those defining moments that will/have change(d) me significantly. God didn't wave a magic wand to fix my life. In fact, nothing has changed much about my situation, except for the fact that I actually trust Him. It sounds so simple, but I went through Hell to figure that out. And I am so thankful that God wanted me to get it. I feel like I just woke up from a zombie-like indifference to the fact that I was allowing bitterness and anger to [continually] poke and prod me towards the precipice of self-pity and depression.

If you were to ask me to describe how I'm feeling, as stupid and lame as this may sound (and for the sake of avoiding Christianese) I feel like I have rainbows and shooting stars coming out of my chest. I am just so...happy. Like, Rainbow Brite happy. This baffles me, mostly because I know that the next couple of weeks are going to be really stressful, in terms of how much work I have to do for school. And I am facing huge financial difficulties, not just for me, but for my family. And to top it all off, I have to deal with a very real, and profoundly annoying, desire for marriage that has yet to be met.

I think I truly see, with the eyes of my heart, what the good news of the Gospel is (remind me later when I forget and hopefully I won't). Jesus died to set me free, not just from the wrath of God and the punishment of my sins, but from losing myself in despair. Jesus has given me a reason to fully trust God and to know I can have hope. Life is unambiguously hard, and even worse when I don't trust that God actually does care about me and my desires, or about how I feel about life. It's unbearable when I cannot accept His unconditional love. It's impossible when I cannot allow myself to rest in His grace. In short: God does care. His love for me is explicitly demonstrated through Christ's sacrifice. And the best part is that He will change me for the better, as I learn to trust Him.

To think, I was fighting to be happy on my own terms, when all I had to do was let go. This further solidifies my theory that God is indefinitely "backwards."