Me vs. "NothingButKat"

I found my old Xanga tonight, and spent the better part of an hour reading through two years worth of high school angst. If you ever had an old blog of any sort, strain your memory for possible usernames and passwords, and find it. It will make you laugh like none other. I can't describe to you how ridiculous a few posts were regarding a certain Edward Cullen or how dramatic I was about the most trivial things! And I annoyed myself with the big words and long sentences that I strung together. I think I used some of those words just to show that I knew them. Ugh, that's obnoxious.

But here's the thing. I saw the person that I used to be. She talked to me. She made me relive things. She reminded me of the small little worries that I had forgotten about. And while part of it was humorous, another part of it really made me uneasy. I can't quite put my finger on why. I guess you could say that I still see pieces of me in her, and some of the rawness that she made me relive - well, it wasn't pleasant the first time around either. And oh, how much I wish I could've warned that girl about what was coming if she didn't wake up and smell the roses! I can see the snowball as it's forming, and I know the disasters that are coming, and I want to jump up and down and yell, "STOP!!!" And even I can see straight through the Christian facade I had up. Blech. My life was guys, tennis band, show choir, skepticism, and myself. Not God. That's obvious.

I suppose the most irritating part was that I can see things that I'm giving over and ironing out now working full force back then. For example, in literally every other post, I said something about how much I overthink things, or how easily I let the guard around my heart down, or how jealous I was of someone or another, or how much I hated disappointing people, or how I needed to be needed, or how I just wanted to win for once. Those are all things that I've had to work on in my efforts to follow God's lead, not my own, and many of them are things that I have to daily make up my mind against. So, I guess what bothers me the most is that I'm still dealing with them. I mean, that was the old me. She died. I'm done with her. So... why am I still fighting battles with those same themes? I thought I had changed.

This bothered me. I know that God's changed me. I know, with full confidence, that I'm new. I was, like, "Okay, Satan, you're freakin' hitting the crap out of me right now, and I'm not going to stand for it," and I started thinking of this:

"Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God's Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears." Philippians 1:3-6 MSG, italics mine

 The truth is, that girl who had that Xanga - she is dead. She is gone. I am no longer her. But at the same time, I wouldn't be who I am right now if it wasn't for her. In a way, I'm extremely grateful for her. I would be an entirely different woman if it wasn't for that girl, if it wasn't for her ridiculous words, if it wasn't for her weaknesses and mistakes, if it wasn't for the huge brick walls she was running right into - both literally and metaphorically. And yes, I'm still working with versions of those same issues, but I'm not a finished work yet. God is nowhere near done with me. Just because that girl died doesn't mean that I still don't have those same tendencies. It just means that I handle them differently, that I'm fighting them instead of giving in to them. And really, they aren't the same fights, because I've conquered so many aspects of each of those issues! The hardest parts, the most crucial parts, have already been done! There has been incredible progress! And by incredible, I mean incredible. The life I used to live isn't even a shadow of the faintest glimmer of the life I live now!

 And God isn't done. He started a work on me - not only that, a great work! On top of that, He isn't ever going to quit on me either. I am going to keep being worn down and built up and molded and shaped... mmhmmm. All in love. The best part is that, even though scraping away at the rough places and hitting the weak spots hurts, beneath all of that stuff is something vibrant and beautiful. I just know it. I can see it shimmering through in some areas. I am vibrant and beautiful because I am God's daughter, and He's working on me every single day so that it shines.

So, thank you, Xanga, for that road marker of where I've been and how far God's taken me. It's exciting to think that, just as much as God has changed me from that point in time to now, He'll keep on changing me. I deleted that Xanga account. It's in the past, it doesn't matter anymore, and it's already served its purpose.

"Not yet what I'm gunna be, but not what I used ta be." - Lecrae

 It's true, dude.