These last ten months have been a period of incredible pain and growth. Last July, when I headed to Camp Moses Merrill to spend a week as a counselor, I was fat, spiritually broken, and emotionally lost.
I spoke at the final campfire about not giving up your faith even when it gets discouraging because I was at the end of my rope. Stress from my job, a new marriage, a dangerously low body image and serious doubts about the faith that I had believed in for all of my life had beaten me down to next to nothing. I can remember sitting with Greg in the swimming pool, watching campers splash each other and enjoy the sunshine, feeling completely lost. As we talked he told me that maybe this period of darkness and pain was stretching me and preparing me for something. Internally, I laughed at him. How could God be preparing me for anything bigger? I was stuck in a painful job, living in the hometown that I swore I would never go back to, and suffocating in a body that was on its way to a life of fast food, diabetes, and a fullfillment of my family's history of heart disease.
As I was driving to a baby shower this past weekend, listening to some different song ideas that Greg had recorded, I pulled over and just reflected on where I've been and how far I have come since that awful conversation on the pool steps. I've quit my job, become a fitness instructor (going from a XL to a M shirt size in the proceess), read and learned more about the Christian faith, and finally found peace in knowing that growing pains don't last for an eternity. It all culminated in my facebook status the other day, "Sometimes I have to remind myself that maybe God isn't closing doors in my face to be mean. I think He's got some totally wonderful and amazing door for me, but he's making sure I'm ready when it opens."
Growing pains are frustrating. For the past several months I've been writhing around in my own agony, feeling abandoned and alone. This past weekend I finally relaxed and found comfort in the hope that I am near the end of this growing streak.
One of the songs that Greg and I wrote talks about how I'm just an average girl with dreams of something more. It talks about how I need to know His plans so we can get this show on the road. And while that is very much how I feel, I'm going to spend the time that I have been given stretching and forcing myself to grow even more so that when that door finally opens, when that plan is finally revealed, I'll be ready.
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