A Time for Everything

I cannot find a way to put into words everything I have felt this year. It has been perhaps the most critical, transitional time of my life. And to be quite honest, I've hated it. I still do. And I hate it because of all the sin I see in myself. If I could put the extent of my feelings about myself into words, it would horrify you. For I feel that even hell itself would spit me out upon the bitter taste of my soul. I am a selfish, arrogant, lustful, hypocritical lying thief - and I see no less when I look into the mirror.


This is why I want to stay the way that I am, for I fear that if I lose sight of it and become unbroken, I will become even more evil (however possible that may be). This contrition is the very thing I asked for. Without my full realization, I pleaded with God that He would fill my life with wormwood. It was not until such a bitterness entered Jeremiah's life that he saw the incredible mercy of God (Lamentations 3:19-24). And the "wormwood and bitterness" have caused me to see God's mercy in a new way, for the first time ever. I wouldn't trade it for anything.


However, like Jeremiah it seems that hope for me is only a distant light nearly drowned by all of the darkness around me. That small portion of Lamentations 3 is the only hopeful part of the book; the rest is misery. Because of the struggles, choices, sins, and difficulties faced this school year, I am a totally different person. (Many people are witnesses). Once I was mostly happy, with little room for sorrow; now the opposite is true. Once I would speak much; now, not so much. There was one time I would take hold of things I now shun. I would enjoy things I that now make me sorrowful. I believe things I once didn't, and I do not believe things I once did.


Everything has changed. And I am reminded of Ecclesiastes 3: there is a time for everything, for every event in this life. And this time is a one for dying, for uprooting, for killing and tearing down, for weeping and mourning, a time for throwing stones, for shunning embracing, for giving up, for throwing away, for tearing apart, a time for silence, a time for hatred, and a time for war. God has seen fit to make these appropriate for this time. And though I never could have imagined myself saying it in all of this, this is the time of my life. Because this is when I grow and change. This is how character is built. There is no other way. So in this time, I am content.