All I Have Is Nothing.

I can't tell you when it started. I can't tell you what happened exactly. I don't have a time or a date. It's been gradual. It's been subtle. Sure, my life is good and I have a lot of good moments. Things aren't bad for me and I think a lot of people would assume that my life is great, but what they wouldn't know is that it's been a struggle for me in the last few months. 

From the outside looking in, it would appear as if I have things figured out and that I'm pretty solid. However, on the inside, that's not the case. I've been feeling my relationship with God drifting away. I don't dislike God or want to go off on my own without him. I don't have the guts to walk away from everything that I've known the last almost two years since I've been in Kansas City and attending World Revival Church. I'm too afraid of what my life might be like if I walked away from God. But that's not what the issue is. It's as if a wall has been slowly being put up around my heart. Brick by brick, the wall is getting built up higher and stronger. I've gradually started pulling farther and farther away. I've stopped caring so much about what God thinks. I've stopped putting in the effort to love him. I've stopped feeding my appetite for him. I've stopped cultivating the relationship. I do what I can to get by. I do what I think people would want me to do. I go to church because that's all I've known. It's not that I don't want to be there, but the excitement, anticipation, and expectation are almost non-existent when it comes to gathering in a room full of people that are desperate for the presence of God. I worship out of habit. I put on a smile even though I know I'm surrounded by people who can see right through the facade. I have simply stopped trying. 

I've felt God here and there, in moments when I have genuinely tried my best to connect with him. I see visions of what my life has the potential to be. The problem is that I have been so full of myself that I am completely empty of God. I've seen glimpses of what it would be like to worship God out of a heart full of love, passion, desire, devotion, and hunger for him. I've seen glimpses of what it would be like to spend time crying out to him for the things that he cares about, instead of my own complaints or grumblings. I've seen glimpses of the type of person that I want to be, but I've felt as if those images and visions have been dangled in front of me, teasing me, taunting me, saying that I can never be that person. 

There has been one constant through all of this though, through this season of emptiness; HOPE. I have not lost hope. Even when my head starts telling me that I will never be close to God, loved by God, or any other lies, my heart has kept me hoping. Hoping for better days. Hoping for intimacy with my Father. Hoping to be the person he has created me to be. 

So, I can't tell you when this started, but I can tell you when it all changes. Today. January 8, 2016. Today is the day that the excuses stop, the voices get silenced, and the past gets erased. Today is the day that my life starts over. Today is the day that I start caring again. Today is the day things are made new. Today is the day that I start emptying everything of myself and start letting God come in and wreck me. I don't care how ugly it might be. I don't care how uncomfortable I might get. I don't care what anyone else says or thinks. I've spent too much of my life being concerned with everyone else around me that it's crippled me. 

Today is the day that I get to Begin Again.