Here now, making lemonade.

Hi self, this is for you.
    Happy birthday, another year of life has begun! In 24 years you're the happiest you've ever been, you know yourself more than you ever have, you find comfort in your own skin, and your finally standing in your feet right where you are. Welcome to the good life, the full life, the life not of this world but IN this world. You know yourself and there is no way you'd be where you are today at 24 without the struggles, leaps, heaps of crud and confusion, shipwrecks, and tiny tears, no, PUDDLES Gods allowed you to cry. 

    In the midst of those painful moments in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood you were not only broken, but blind. You didn't understand, couldn't comprehend, or even fathom why a God, YOUR God, so loving and beautiful, would allow you to hurt the ways we often do walking through life. It took 20-something years for you to figure out your struggles, our brokenness, our imperfections, and insecurities bring us closer to our Father, YOUR Father. We find that we need Him. You NEED Him. You're not God, nor do you ever think you could be, but if we were perfect, if life was perfect, we wouldn't need God. You want to need Him. You know you can lean, trust, and depend on Him and you're safe. No matter the circumstances, trial, or storm, Tessa can be content knowing He has a bigger plan for her, one much better than she could ever dream up for herself. Its a matter of finding this in the midst of our sufferring and learning to s u r r e n d e r. Surrender, a term that is so often used, heard, and thrown out loosely, its meaning completely robbed from the original intent. To surrender, to let go, stop fighting, and die to your old self, release the reigns, admit to yourself that you are not completely in control of life; that you need Him to the very core, you recognize you were created with a place in your heart just for Him and nothing, NOT-A-THING can fill it except His love and presence.

   You find that He loves us so much that He allows us to hurt as He too hurts.  All the while,we are growing closer and closer to finding Him and the solid, intimate, real, and raw relationship with Him we all long for. At times it takes tragedies and afflictions to come to Him, FINALLY, for healing, for anything because we find ourselves so lost and so broken. Yet, he was there all along knocking gently at your door. It just took a thunderstorm, tornado, and tsunami to knock down that guard gate and cement barrier we'd built up for so long, we couldn't ever hear Him. 

   So here you are now Tess, and this time you know not to build up any walls. Your house is open, free, and peaceful and when life hands you lemons, you'll be making lemonade..with Jesus.