{Be Real} Change of Heart

I’ll be honest. I went through a bit of a grumpy season earlier this year.

Do you have those moments when you get a bit of vision, a glance of a dream, and all you want to do is run toward it? But instead, you turn around and run straight into a wall?

That was me at the beginning of this year. Ready to do. Ready to fly.

Around the same time, however, my family bought a restaurant, something we all agreed on, and it was a piece of work. It needed to be completely gutted, which I was excited about because I actually love renovation projects. We started demolition in January with a projected April grand opening.

Boy, were we optimistic. 

The actual opening ended up happen in August. The process took twice as long as we thought. And I’m used to things taking a lot longer than originally planned. But what I didn’t prepare for was having endless vision bubbling over in me and no where to put it. I had all of these goals and plans and ideas and I didn’t know how to carry that because my time was spent on this family project.

I believed in the restaurant, but I unfortunately began to grow bitter because I felt there was no margin, no time for the things I felt growing inside of me. I felt stopped up, about to burst.

Instead of being thankful for that time to let my dreams simmer, I was the complete opposite. I wanted life to look differently and I was impatient and maybe a little angry that I couldn’t seem to move forward. 

And here’s the thing. We can wish and plan for changes in life. We can want something new and make the changes and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when those desires are from a place of anger and bitterness, it steals our joy. It causes us to constantly be running from the things we don’t want instead of chasing the life we envision.

When our desires are rooted in gratitude for what we do have, when we thank God for the place He has us and wish for change because we want to live our best for Him, we are set free from the bondage of thinking we don’t have enough. We get our focus off of ourselves and cast our gaze towards Him and His desires take over our desires.

In the midst of the chaotic and discontentment, I sunk into an unhappy place because nothing was how I imagined it.

Looking back now, all those times when I felt like I couldn’t live for God in the way I wanted to, He was doing a work in me. He was teaching me patience and endurance. He was allowing the dreams He’d place in my heart to simmer and incubate a bit. He allowing my heart to rest, to prepare it for the next season.

What I considered “lack” He used for a purpose to bless me in ways I had never even considered. 

Because that season ended and I felt completely ready and confident to step into the new one waiting for me.

So when you’re in the middle of a season that you want to rush out of, when you feel discontentment weighing heavily on your shoulders, take a step back and find all the reasons to say, “Thank you.”

Maybe in your singleness, God is calling you to draw even closer to His heart. If that business isn’t thriving, maybe God wants to use this time to open your eyes to an entirely different opportunity. Maybe you’re still working that job because you’re meant to connect with a specific person. If you feel restless for the next season, maybe God isn’t done teaching you something to equip you for the next step.

When you stop seeing your circumstances as lack and start covering them with gratitude, everything changes. Worlds open to you. You start to see all the possibility in the things you once thought as limitations. You start to see traces of God in circumstance you once considered dry and desolate and hopeless. You start to trust that that he has perfectly orchestrated your life and you are right where He wants you.

So take a moment and cover your biggest struggles with gratitude. Choose to see the good buried deep within. Say thank you. And if anything, trust that God is at work in you.