Here is some background about me before we entered this pandemic. I am a busy person. I love being busy! I love having full days either serving our faithful Lord with amazing people or spending quality time with new and old friends on a coffee or lunch date. I love going to bed late after being out at half apps with my friends knowing I have to be up early to serve or have an 8 am coffee date with someone. While I am tired most of the time, I wouldn't have traded that for anything. I am learning a lot through all of this. I want to share what I am learning in hopes that others can see this as encouragement through all of this.

Now, almost one month into having forced alone time. I have learned a lot about myself. There is so much I am discovering that never would have happened if kept my normal schedule. Before all of this, I couldn't be alone for longer than a day. I was so afraid of my anxiety that it would set a fear in me of being alone. That has caused so much wasted alone time trying to find anything to do to not be alone. All that led to a challenging first week being alone. I was afraid of the tears that would come. I was afraid of the anxiety being too much to handle that I would just break more and more until I had nothing left. As I walked through that first week, I tried to keep the tears from falling and the anxiety from being released. I didn't let myself fully feel the affect of it all. After that week of complete pain and anxiety, I stopped what I was doing abruptly and asked myself why I wasn't letting myself feel it. Why did I feel ashamed and embarrassed of feeling the weight of this massive situation? I am learning that it is okay to feel what I feel. I am only human and this big of a situation causes us to be on an emotional rollercoaster. So when I feel it the sadness of missing my people or the anxiety of the unknowns, I just let myself feel it. In doing that, I see how the panic attacks have shortened and I can find more peaceful moments than unsettling ones.

I am someone who will not share what I need. I will always be ready at any hour of the day to listen and support other people in what they are going through but rarely ask for it myself. I will confide in a few people once I hit my breaking point. I don't want to be a burden on other people who also are feeling all of this too. I tried to do it on my own and obviously I failed. In the beginning of this, I even stopped going to God because it just felt too hard. He already knew what I was feeling and I didn't want to reiterate it. I completely held it in. But that first week God knew what I really needed by having people text me and call me to see how I am doing. God knows me perfectly and knows that if enough people ask, I will eventually be honest. I finally let people into how I was feeling and it was so freeing. Now I have called people I trust fully crying and saying more that I could use prayer or support through this because I am not doing well. That is something that has been so hard for me to do. Absolutely no one responds in a way that makes me feel like a burden. Everyone responds with love, grace, and compassion. Things God knew I needed to be filled up with. I am learning to ask for help and for support when I need it. This is a big step for me that I am super proud of.

I am learning more about how God made me so uniquely. Something I have always struggled with is intense insecurities in many areas of my life. For years this has been a constant battle that only few deeply know about. This time has given me the opportunity to feel each little insecurity. In the past, I wanted to call it out and feel it in the shortest amount of time possible because I was afraid of it. Sometimes, it would be a temporary fix but always came back. Through this, God is giving me immense strength to call out and finally be able to see and truly believe that these are all lies. I know this doesn't mean that they will be gone forever, while that might be true for some, there will be moments and experiences that can bring them back. But I see that the Lord is preparing me for those moments to identify what insecurity is trying to take me down, feel what I need to, and move on because it doesn't have power over me anymore. If you would have asked me a month ago to write down how I was feeling to share publicly, I would have shot that down so fast. I was too insecure to share how insecure I was. I am learning to see myself how God sees me. He sees me as a confident, strong, beautiful child of His who loves Him and others so deeply and is on a path for greater things. That feels good to say!

God is just so faithful. In this overwhelming time, He never stops working. When we feel defeated or weak, He works to bring us back to our feet. When we feel insecure, He works to fill us with His truth. When we feel alone, God works in us and through others to show He is always with us. God meets us where we are at and sits with us in it and through it. He deserves all the praise we have to give, especially in this season as we celebrate what He did for us on that cross. God sent His only son to pay the ultimate price for all of us. I hear that phrase a lot but rarely just sit in that. God is so good.