pruning...

It is 12:44am...technically Monday morning, but I'm just finishing up Sunday night. This is when my house is quiet, and I can think. There are dishes in the sink, crumbs on the table, evidence of a dripped freezer pop on the dining room floor, and papers piled on the kitchen counter. They will remain there until the morning. Or maybe the afternoon....next week? We'll see....

I was deeply convicted this morning as I listened to my pastor's sermon. He talked about worship...about who or what we worship instead of worshiping God - the creator of the universe. He also talked about how we prepare to worship...about how we come before our God. Yes, He loves us unconditionally as we are, but I realized that I've taken the "come as you are" idea as more of a "this is what you get" attitude. This is the attitude I'm bringing to my Savior and Redeemer. I have knowingly harbored flagrant bitterness, anger, and pride in my heart for some time....and worry...don't even get me started on worry! And I haven't wanted to let go of these things - sometimes it seems easier to hang on to those things rather than lay them down at the feet of Jesus and admit that I don't know it all and that I can't fix it all and that it's okay to TRUST. Oh, why is trusting and surrendering so difficult? Season after season, I find the Lord still peeling away the layers of surrender....and season after season I find Him gentle and good. I'm exhausted by my own bad attitude...even more exhausting is trying to cover it up! Good grief! This is not a new realization, however. God has been tapping my shoulder about these things all summer long, and at one point He made Himself startlingly clear....it's time to own up. Deal with the attitude, and let go. Easier said then done, we all know....

It is now 1:30am, and I almost deleted this post for obvious middle-of-the-night-emotional-confessions-you-may-regret reasons...but I'm going to have to keep it real here and leave it. Anyone reading this who knows me will understand and think nothing of the vast shifts in tone of my blog posts! (This is how my written journals are...I was so hoping that my blogging would be more consistent, but here we are....)

Thank you, God, for loving me enough to prune away the dead branches so that I can grow. I trust you.