11 & 300

On April 21, I will turn 11.

For eleven years, I have walked with Christ; I have written music; I have seen His faithfulness in every aspect of my life.

And in preparation to celebrate, I have started my annual trek through old prayer journals. I can only stand amazed at the goodness and faithfulness of God.

Even in my moments of utmost foolishness, He was fully faithful. Every year, I walk away with some main thread of what God has been teaching me. Perhaps what this year is about is coming to an understanding of the faithfulness of God.

I picked up one of my prayer journals from my best friend back in December. She had borrowed it many years ago and had kept it for several after that.

It is this journal that I picked up tonight when I couldn't sleep. I can't tell you the last time I read any of its pages, but its pages tell of my last year of high school and my first few years of college.

I must have been an odd specimen as a teenager, though perhaps it was the depression that I constantly battled that made me as introspective as I was. Every page contains depth that I somehow trusted God with.

At my worst, I still asked Him to correct my heart and bless me.

Granted, I was horridly foolish, but foolish with an honest, God-fearing heart.

And yet He was faithful! Prayers that I don't remember ever praying are recorded in the pages of this simple book - prayers for the husband that sleeps next to me, for the shaping of my heart, for perseverance in music, for peace.

Eleven years. How did they go by so quickly? How does each phase seem as if it were another life? I somehow went from 14 to nearly 25 and feel as if I've lived five lifetimes in the blink of an eye.

I'm so grateful for the roles that different people have played in my spiritual development over the years. As I read, the names flooded me and I felt the overwhelming desire to track each of them down to express my gratitude. Unfortunately, this would likely be impossible, especially as I'm called to be faithful in the life that God has blessed me with at the present time, but how much I still love them! How blessed I was to know them!

Somehow, I've also reached 300 posts on this ol' blog. 300 posts in five years. Some years have been a little more wordy than others, I suppose, but they're all here - and each one reflects a place in my life where Christ was living and active.

And I am so grateful for that.

In reading through my prayer journal tonight, I was struck by my faithfulness and diligence in seeking God through writing during those years. I wrote constantly. I prayed constantly. I relied on Christ day-in and day-out. God's faithfulness to me over the years calls me to remain faithful, and I am learning what that means in my daily life - all over again.

Life looks so much different at 24 than it did at 14, both in obvious and subtle ways. But there is one thing that remains the same - I am still human and I still desperately need a Savior.

Hallelujah! No kinder Savior waits for me than Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.