chapters and changes

Where does one begin?

Seven and a half months ago I was stepping onto campus, starting the third and final year of my undergraduate degree. Did I know that this would be the hardest year of my degree? Nope. Not a clue.

I did not anticipate the academic demands. I thought nothing could beat second year for school stress. Boy, was I mistaken.
I could not know then that I would experience the heartache and loss, grief and tear-jerking disappointment, brokenness and weakness that I have known.
I could not know that God would strip away and shatter dreams.

But all that happened.
And with all of that, I grew to treasure the One who is
E V E R Y T H I N G to me,
more than I did before the desolation.

I also did not know that through these things God would teach me to walk by faith in ways that I have not before. I could not foresee the favour that He would give me in places unlooked for and undeserved.
I could not imagine how He would turn my mourning into dancing, my grief into leaps for joy.
For a season I struggled to see the twinkle in His eye as He stripped away the shallow, temporary things of this world that I was putting my trust in. He broke down my confidence in things so that all my expectation would be from Him alone.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. It is delightfully easy now to look back on the last eight months — even the last three years — and be so grateful for everything that God has done; the hard things, the easy things, the open and closed doors, all the varying answers to prayer and so on.
But hard stuff will come again. Tears will come again. And that’s ok. God will be there.

So the page turns. Finals — what a strangely symbolic term — graduation, summer… Who knows?
But the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
Either way, blessed be His name.

Selah.