When I first started this blog two months ago, I made myself only one rule: don’t be the person who starts a blog, writes one or two posts and then seemingly gives up or forgets about it.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.

After an emotionally and spiritually full start to the summer, I let myself retreat into a life of complacency and comfort.

I come to you confused and ashamed of the way I have let this time slip away from me, aware of the ways I have failed to take responsibility for choosing my material comfort over my God.

Even now, I want to come up with excuses: I have been trapped at my parents’ house without a car, I was traveling with my family and had no time to myself and I have been busy with trying to find a new car and figure my life out. I have been unrightfully blaming my circumstances for the way I have allowed myself to become distanced from the Lord’s presence.

The reality is, amidst God clearly working to bring freedom and rest to my soul, I stopped showing up. After creating this space to share, document and celebrate the big ways God was moving in my life, I stopped letting Him move within it.

Becoming complacent in my relationship with Him, I started craving spending life-giving time with Him less and less while at the same time drawing closer to activities that normally make me feel numb. Suddenly I found myself utterly absorbed with pleasing my family, binge-watching TV and obsessing over my physical appearance.

I have been choosing to hide myself away in material comfort, free from feeling the need to care about God or His people, gradually feeling more distant from my source of life and sense of self. This brings me back to a theme that has been central in my journey of faith: what is true freedom?

I’ve always been too quick to trade my freedom for a cage, believing the lie that the security that I perceive it to provide is the better deal.

I have had the most precious opportunity of a completely free summer to spend with God alone, and I have wasted it chasing comfort, forgetting that it is simply not restful to spend time doing nothing. Real rest and transformation instead come from doing nothing but sit in the presence of God.

The difference, I suppose, is an awareness and intentionality that I have completely lacked: feeling too defeated, trapped and then numb to make space for the Lord’s healing presence.

And, as hopeless as the reality of sin always is, the truth I know is far greater.

My God is faithful to redeem and is constantly pursuing me, even when I don’t want to be pursued. He loves me and delights in me even when I fall short (which is all the time). All I have to do to experience the power of the gospel is show up and let Him move.

So, this is me confessing, releasing and turning from my idol of comfort, believing fully that Christ has the power to bring life to my unfeeling soul.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set me free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Romans 8: 1-2