Reflections: reading my words back

I am about to sit down and do something I have never done before and I'm kinda nervous about it. This week will be my 12 month anniversary of being home. It will see the curtains close on what I would call a gap year, a year dedicated to God, to laying down my life and placing it in his hands in an effort to reconnect to myself and my purpose. Overall it has been a year of tuning into the small quiet voice that lives deep inside and following it. 

A lot has changed in my world this year, I have worked through a lot of messy emotions, revisited some of the ideas I had about myself and my life and reevaluated a lot of my dreams. It has been a hard year but a great year and I have documented every second of it..

As I sit here there are 9 journals by my side - 4 of them are bursting with words written by me, they are documentation of my daily life; one is a visual journal half filled of images of hopes and dreams for the future; one is my emergency journal kept in the overnight bag in my car just in case something happened and I had to spend a night at mum & dad's - it contains a few entries written in the spare bedroom of my parents house late at night after watching my father be tormented by the voices in his head; one is dedicated to visions of the future; one contains my reflections as I slowly work through the gospel of Matthew and the final one is a baby journal that I picked up last week to document the end of this transition phase. Between them they capture the bulk of my year.

There are also a few books from evening college that document the weekly classes that really pushed me along on my journey with God. I also have access to my online spaces, this public blog and two private blogs which document specific parts of my journey and healing plus there are the brief moments captured on twitter and facebook. Every moment of this year will be captured somewhere which both scares and fascinates me and I am both terrified and excited by the thought of reading them..

The person I am today, the peace and joy I feel, the foundations on which I have built my life, the decisions I make.. all of it is soooooooooo very different from what my life looked like as I nervously packed to come home.. for the first time ever I feel happy and free perhaps it's because I actually feel like I know myself. I feel like the hopes and the dreams I have for my future come from a place that is in me and not from the outside world. I guess I am curious to discover how I got to here so I am going to read the words I wrote, the things I went through to get to here.

For the first time in my life I am going to take some time out to reflect. I am a person who reflects and processes as I go, scribbling notes, cutting out images, having conversations in the moment but rarely (if ever) do I go back and read what I previously wrote. The idea of it makes me a little afraid but at the same time it seems like the perfect way the end my gap year, so over the next few days that is what I am going to do...

I am going to be still and examine the last year of my life. I am going to take time out to remember the things that God has brought me through, to remember the wounds that have been healed, to remember the people that allowed me to get to here.. the friends who sat back and watched as I stumbled into myself loving the me that lived under the baggage, those who guided my steps, those who held my hands, those who encouraged but most importantly those who allowed me to love them and in doing so taught me to love the world again.

I am afraid of what I will find but I am also excited. Much of my reflection will be offline, in my baby journal or in my private spaces but I will share some moments here because this space was one of the biggest leaps of faith that I took this year.

So my prayer today is simple and somewhat selfish, I pray for the courage to revisit my year and to honestly reflect on the moments that have changed my life xx