Different

I knew it would come.

We came home to the busiest time of year.  Our house became a revolving door to precious friends and family.  There was traveling to do...people to share our newest miracle with.  The celebration of our Savior's birth.  The ringing in of a New Year.  It was a month and a half full of fun, celebrating, and complete craziness...the good kind.

But that is over now and I am here with all this newness...this differentness.

New house, new job, new city, new baby, new church, new schools and the list goes on.

Newness is good.

 I am so thankful for newness.

 I am thankful for mercies that are new every morning and the promise that He is continually making me new.  I am thankful that He gives me a new start each day, each week, each month.

But if I am honest there are parts of me that miss familiar.  And sometimes that missing takes over and I just want to crawl in the bed and pull the covers over my head.  Because finding a new normal is hard and some days I don't even want a new normal.  Because becoming a new creature takes work and involves growing pains.

It would be easy to stay in this place.  Bound in my struggles and my fear of the new.  It would be easy to get wrapped up in my own little life and to just survive each day as it comes.  I could live this new life always comparing it to my old familiar life, always looking for ways that this new life doesn't measure up.  In all honesty I have lived several days like this...it really isn't any fun.

But God...

those are precious words!!

But God in his  sovereignty  used Big Daddy Weave's song "I Am Redeemed" to remind me that I am in fact redeemed.  I AM a new creation and I have been set free.  It is time to shake off these heavy chains.  I am not who I used to be because thankfully He is not finished with me yet.

I may not be able to see exactly what my purpose is here just yet, and I may not have this whole 4 kids thing down to an exact science yet but He has a plan and I want to be a part of it not just from the sidelines.

So today, I am pulling back the covers (even though my flesh would really just rather stay in that warm, comfortable place).  I choose to live in His freedom and to find the wonders in this different newness that is my new life.