I want to start off this tea time by saying that I am supposed to be writing a paper right now but clearly I have other thoughts flooding that space so here I am, writing a tea time as my outlet. Also, my birthday is in two days and I’m really heckin’ excited. Okay, now on to the tea.

I’ve come to a very important realization over the past couple weeks. These weeks have been filled with mini mental breakdowns, pick-me-ups, encouragements, discouragements, and a whole lot of time in my room, due to this wonderful mystery illness I’m suffering from. Because of that, I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with myself and have given myself grace from going to social events and instead allowing myself the time to think. I’ve thought about what things I truly value and need and want in my life, and I feel as though I’ve discovered all over again who I am based off the things that I know I don’t need. God truly works in mysterious ways. Just when I thought I was pulling it all together and finally blossomed some true friendships, God pulled me away because I became envious of them. I wanted to be them. I started dressing like them and acting like them and was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I knew it too. It was around that time that I became sick with the illness that still has me slugging over today and as much as I’d love for it to go away, I know God sent me it to learn some things from it.

1. I am my own person. I wouldn’t say I’m weird or strange, but rather unconventional. I always have been. I love the beauty of ambiguity and change because I see it as art. I love being able to change my hair or to wear or not wear makeup or dress completely different simply based off of a mood. I think those are the things that keep life exciting. That girl I was becoming a month ago would’ve liked stability. A brand. A solid ground. She isn’t me.
2. My relationship is no one else’s but mine. I saw how in love her and her boyfriend seemed to be, as I was surrounded by girl friends who had been in relationships for years on end, and I was jealous. I was mad that I couldn’t keep one for 2 weeks without spazzing out and leaving them. I thought I was a terrible person for having fear that it wouldn’t work out. I had to come face to face with the fact that I’m insecure about how heavily my past affects me now. I was mad at myself for allowing another sincere, innocent person have to put up with that. I was also upset at the fact that I don’t get to see my boyfriend every day and we don’t have some cute backstory. We met online. I was insecure about that too. I questioned if I even knew what love was, let alone how to love another person outside of my family. I thought I was incapable of it and that I must be some type of sociopath. But then my boyfriend told me to just wait because it will all come with time and that’s when I heard God speaking through him. I needed to wait. I needed to breathe. And most importantly, I needed to hand all the voids I still felt to God. All the worry. All the shame. All the anxiety. All the fear. I’m still learning to trust Him. But I know that this must be the test that God puts me through to establish the trust that I’ve been struggling to have in Him for a long time. And that leads to number three.
3. I needed to trust. I’ve always done things my way. The way I know best. The way the trial runs always worked out from what I’ve experimented with. It was comfortable to me. I continued to stay in this shell because I knew that if I came out of it, the enemy would get me. That’s what always seemed to happen and I’d wonder why I even stepped out in the first place. But what I wasn’t seeing was that that was the enemy trying to keep me out of reach with God. He knew I was powerful if I came into contact with God and if I trusted God, he was doomed. When God put the people and the illness into my life at the right times together, both made me check myself. I began to realize who the true Victor was here and that was God. I broke down. My weaknesses became clear to me. But so did my strength- God.

Well, I’m going to end this tea time quite awkwardly. Thank you for reading. Enjoy your day, evening, or night. Xoxo, C.

“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” ~ Psalm 139:14