Growing

Today I met a girl named Rachel. Okay...a woman named Rachel. She's probebly my age...or close to it. I shared with her about moving here to Ottawa, and how hard it is. I feel uncomfortable. Anxious. Nothing is "the same". I feel my old issues being triggered, as I fumble for a way to deal with the new stress. I try to push the feelings away, because I'm afraid they may overwhelm me. (And who has time for THAT?) hehe.

She could totally relate. She herself is in recovery from addiction. And in that area, she often feels the uncertainty that sobriety brings. How do you function in a world without all that you had to keep you safe? So this is the thought that I walked away with thanks to my talk with Rachel:

Feeling safe feels really good, but you don't grow in that place. When you are uncomfortable you can be sure that you are moving. You now have a choice....which direction will you move? Forward or Backwards? Into the new growth God has for you? Or back to the old 'safe' things that you worked so hard to escape from?

I never thought of the uncomfortable-ness as being a good thing. I just tried to find ways to avoid it. Push it out of my mind, push past it etc. But what if I allow it (as God's process) to refine me? What if I let the fire burn instead of hunting for ways to extinguish it? What kind of treasure could be found in the end?

Lovely sentiment.....but a whole other thing to walk out.

Okay..I just started to giggle. I thought of a great book title idea. "A Pain in the Ash."