Thanks Self

I was watching "The Time Traveler's Wife" on TV the other night. If you haven't seen the movie, the premise is that a man travels through time. It's the story of how his time travel impacts his family etc.  Sometimes he travels forwards or backwards, meeting himself and other people in his life at different stages of past or future. One thing that stuck out in the movie is the way the protagonist teaches himself lessons and gives himself advice to get through whatever he knows is ahead. 

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to meet myself in 10 years. What would I tell me? Or to go back to middle school. What words would I give myself if I had 3 minutes to lay it all out there? 

I've been blogging and/or journaling for a long time. I started wayyy back in the day when xanga webjournals were all the rage (well, not really-but they were for me! Want to meet high school Anna? http://cheshiregl0w.xanga.com/). Other than that, pen and paper prayer journaling has been an on again off again trend since early college. I'm not a daily "dear diary" girl, by any means. I write down prayers/lyrics. I take sermon notes. I just try to keep it all in one place so I can know where to look back if I wrote something down. I decided to pull out my journals last night and read through some of the old entries. It's like time traveling, only through letters and prayers. Suddenly my 19 year old self is speaking gently to my heart. My desperate cries of surrender and wrestling with my idol of self sound so familiar. 

As I read the words that poured from the depths of my deepest pain and height of my soaring victories, I found myself amazed. How easily I forget that this isn't the first time God has taught me these lessons. He gently reminds me through myself that my independence is a precious gift, but can be an idol as well. That learning to surrender is a battle that I need to wage daily. That I am precious.

Thanks self.

I needed your wisdom today. I needed to pray with you. I needed to hear your authentic cries for help. I needed to learn your humility. I needed to rest quietly in God's presence with you.