Redirection

A lot has been happening in my life as of late. A lot has been on my mind. I feel like I'm in the middle of so many changes that I can barely keep up with them, let alone how I feel about them. They're mostly happy, sometimes stressful. (Hello ... not knowing if we're going to be charged anything for the old rental unit or not.)

RubyRed has gone through so many life stages since I began writing. Part of me wants to write it all out and learn from it. The other part of me just wants to move on and start something new. I don't know which part will win out. I've not exactly updated this blog regularly in the past few months.

Something that has been really on my mind a lot of late is fixing up our new home and making truly OUR home. We are blessed to have a landlord who is okay with us painting rooms and landscaping our little patio, so we have a lot of leeway to make our mark. I've been hunting down decorations, and furniture, and DIY solutions to our small-space organizational needs. It's invigorating, and something that I heard in a sermon at the church we've been attending lately woke me up even more to the fact that our home ... our little sanctuary from the world ... can be something we use to glorify God and to allow Him to work his grace in our lives. I don't feel guilty for focusing on my husband, our marriage, and our home. In fact, I think that's exactly where God wants me to be. That is amazing to me--the very things I most love doing, namely, finding pretty things, decorating, planning home improvement projects, learning new cooking techniques, and focusing on reaching out to friends and family, are the very things God wants me to do, provided I put Him above them all.

I still want to write; I still want to have a business. I still even want to blog. My direction and importance on these things has simply shifted, and I find myself at yet another crossroads. I'm not sure where it leads, but I know I want to take the road that God guides me toward. I want to grow. I want to fall deeper in love with Him. I want to strip my mind bare of the distractions and press toward the goal. Like Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis, I have come face to face lately with just how ugly my sins and self-reliance are, and how they can trap me in their scaly green points. I want to tear away at them, but only Aslan can truly tear the flesh off and make me new. And that hurts. Deeply. Becoming new is painful, terrible, and terrifying. But it is worth it.

I am already His. And now, I am His all the more.

I don't even know what this will mean for the blog or my life, and I know this may not all make sense to anyone other than me, but I am stepping out into the future. I am willing to be used. I am so excited to be who I am and have my talents be used for something big.

Bring on the claws.

I'm ready to be molded, Lord.