Brave with your past

I wrote last year about being brave with my past but I was thinking today about being brave with my past. A new friend on Instagram just announced her pregnancy and in doing so wrote a meditation about pregnancy and anxiety. I realized something as I replied to her post - that I knew exactly what she was writing about. I spent every day of my pregnancy with Grayson in a state of low level anxiety, a low level anxiety that leapt up into high-alert anxiety at every chance it got. I wondered why it was that God asked me to be brave at the beginning of a pregnancy. I didn't understand then, when I was walking through it, how much I was learning about what it means to choose brave, to embrace the bravery that God offers to us, until now, as I look back, and try to offer hope to a new friend. Being brave with my past sometimes means sharing what God has taught me. It feels awkward sometimes, but I think it is in important part of what it means to be a community - online, or in person - it is important to be brave and speak up and share what God has done. To say, yes, I know what that feels like. I know what it feels like to have the day after day burden of anxiety trying to crush the breath out of you, and the hope and the joy and the love right out of you, but I know what God did for me. He carried me all the way through that season, close to His heart, and He brought us safely to the other side of this season. 

Because when your hubs cleans the bathroom it is sparkling clean and the boy is playing in the bath and doesn't want to get out you blast worship music from the living room and take bathroom mirror selfies and choose thankfulness and love over fear and anxiety - in ONE WEEK from today (if he doesn't come sooner) Grayson will be here.

A photo posted by faith raider (@faithraider) on Sep 1, 2015 at 6:57am PDT

Being brave about my past means that I am not always so forward focused or present-focused that I never take a moment to sit back and notice what God did. Sometimes it takes a friend going through something similar for me to remember, sometimes it is a moment when I catch myself responding better than I used to. I am not the person I used to be. God really is doing something incredible inside of me - and inside of you - and I hope that we will be brave enough to really see what God is and has and continues to do, and then be willing to share it, when it is appropriate.

I want to help you with this - I will be hosting a weekly link-up, kind of like a Misc. Monday style link-up. I think initially I'll be keeping it open Friday - Monday just to see how it goes, but it will be a place to share some random little things - books we are reading, TV shows we are enjoying, music we discovered - but especially how God is working in us. Something we have learned this week, a moment when God showed up and reminded us how much He loves us, a moment we choose to embrace love and bravery over fear and anxiety. Tomorrow will be the first one so I hope you'll join me!!