Running

For the majority of my life I have run away from my problems. If I had issues at work I quit. If I didn't like the way a relationship was going I left. If I didn't like where I lived I moved. Instead of facing my problems and working through them I ran. The problem with this is that you never really learn how to work through your problems because you are too busy running away from them.

In September I will have lived at my current address for 8 years. In October I will have worked at the same company for 4 years which is the longest I have consecutively lived in one place and the longest I have consecutively worked for the same company since the 80's. My behavior of running away is changing. It is so much harder to stay and fight than it is to run away. I have had to do things at work that I never in a million years thought I would ever do, like apologize to a co-worker for being mean to them. And on the flip side of that I have also formed some really deep and meaningful relationships with my co-workers which rarely ever happens. I have gone from hating my boss to understanding him better. And that too rarely ever happens.

And this I think is the lesson God is trying to teach me. I need to work through things with people and I need to stay in this space for a while and figure me out and figure out where I need to be. I need to work on myself. Nothing in life is ever easy, so taking the easy way out by quitting and walking away is just not a good long term solution for life. And I feel like my character is so much stronger now that I know how to be in the same place for a while and endure things that normally would have driven me to run.

I decided to turn on Pandora and read some bible verses today so I could connect with God. I have missed these moments this year and I feel so guilty about that. And God showed up like He ALWAYS does! I was sitting here thinking of how I always run away from everything and I hear this song "Forever Reign" by Passion Worship Band. The chorus says "Oh I'm running to Your arms I'm running to Your arms..." . Get it? Running?! And then just to confirm that God was with me the next song I heard was "When God Ran" by Phillips, Craig & Dean. Of course that one made me sob like an infant. God always uses these amazing worship songs to connect with me and get my attention!

Life is full of change and I embrace change. I love change! In fact I love it so much that I made a lot of it by running away, but God has stopped me from doing that by creating circumstances that forced me to stay where I am and deal with my life and my issues and my mistakes and my failures instead of running away from them. I always say that I go where God leads me and right now He has led me to stay. And I trust Him!

2 Corinthians 2:14
But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.