Never Felt This Before

So back in the spring, I started having these little "bubbles" -- moments where I felt like I was briefly touching on a memory, something good. Those moments have ebbed and flowed over the course of the year, not always there (I still had many dark paths to travel) but still growing all the time. Lately I feel like I have little flashbacks, just randomly when I'm doing random things. But not to negative things. To good feelings and memories. Sometimes I can't quite place what I'm thinking of, it just tickles the edge of my memory. Other times it is quite powerful.

Well, this morning I was looking up a couple of songs on Spotify, then the next thing I knew I was sorting playlists and such. I came upon my "Shelf" of beloveds and started listening to songs that I've loved over the years.

And this incredible feeling came over me. Like crazy. I can't even describe it. It was like being sucked back into something and yet being propelled forward at the same time. Explosive. I started remembering all these places and moments and feelings from times past so strongly. So, so strongly. Like they had just happened. Things that I thought I had lost forever. Pieces of myself. It was a feeling I can't even describe because it's so explosive and so complex. There's like, amazement and the beauty of the memory, the thrill that you hold something like that within yourself, the sadness that you forgot about it, the joy and relief of rediscovery, the gratitude, and that "something" I never had a word for to begin with.

...I don't like the person I've been the last few years. *sigh* I was swept up in things I don't even completely understand yet. But I know the I was worshiping at dark alters, and the person that turned me into -- yeah. That was the most internally barren I've ever been. I don't like what it feels like to live in guilt and self-pitty and needyness. I don't like the actions I made from that place. So the fact that I have pushed through (somehow) and that I'm finding myself, more and more ... is just more than I could have ever hoped for.And  I'm learning to forgive myself for everything.

Something that I read recently and has become a huge source of encouragement to me. From the 1st chapter of James:

^2-4 Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

^5-8 If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.

¹² Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.

^16-18 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

^19-21 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

²⁵ But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

GAH! That is all so beautiful -- so LIFE FILLED. So deeply penetrating. And sums up so much of the imagery and "nudges" God has been sending me for months. "For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life." I want that so much, that love and that life. And as I have begun to cultivate that desire my life is changing in amazing ways. I look so forward to the rest of this journey, even though I know the hard parts aren't entirely over yet. I just wish I could have had this attitude from the start. :P But you know. No regrets and stuff. It is what it is... For the first time in, well, a long time, I feel like God IS giving me a FUTURE. Which feels incredible. Astounding. And I don't know, I think I'm starting to ramble so I guess I'll just end this now.