A Thriving Life

Little Miss took this picture for me, to document a new beginning for her blankey.  The crocheted edging on her blanket which I made when I was pregnant for her was unraveling, falling to pieces and literally disintegrating from all the loving it has received.  It was beyond repair and so the other day I talked her into letting me snip it off.  As I sat there taking off the edging my heart was a bit sad.  It was hard taking off all that sweet crochet from almost 8 years ago.  I wanted to keep it and yet I knew it was time to remove it.

As I cut each connection of yarn to blanket, it made me think about how often in my own life I have wanted to hang on to the things that were tattered and no good.  I did not want to get rid of them because I knew them.  I was used to them.  They were part of me and defined me.  I was comfortable with them.  With them I had control (or so I thought).  And the thought of letting them go actually saddened and frightened me.

But, with them I lived a half life.  A doubled over, weighed down, survival mode life.  It wasn't a powerful, joyful God filled New Life.

"But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!"  Romans 8:9-10 (Message)

As I sat almost every night for three weeks putting on the new bright pink yarn on Little Miss' lovey, God brought to my mind how when I agreed to finally lay down my burdens, sins, lies, and wrong thinking that He never meant for me to carry, He brought Newness into my life.

No longer was I in survival mode, but instead God brought me to a thriving life!

He brought me into a life of expectation in Him.  A life of New Growth, a flourishing, abounding in God-adventures life! It has been amazing!  No longer am I weighed down by things that I was never meant to carry. No longer am I grave tending, but instead I live each day looking forward to what the Lord has for me.

Each day is full of the power of the resurrection of Christ!  Just like my daughter's blanket edging; I am NEW! 

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"  2 Corinthians 5:17