It's funny when you're little, you think about all the possibilities, the boys, and things that will happen to you. The guy that will be the infamous One. When you will possibly get married and what your life will look like after that. For me as a child, I thought that a big part of happiness meant to be in relationship. A prince far away, a man that was so massively important I couldn't reason a “foreseeable” person that would fit that mold. I decided I wouldn’t try to make up that expectation of who I would be with to picture in my head; so I just glared into the vast unknown territory yearning with an extent of excited impatience to know what was lying ahead. Wondering who in the world would choose me and be with me for “forever”. Each time I would think about that important person it was like the oddity you feel as a kid when you travel across the country into places you've never been before. The sense of knowing you are really far away from your home, the play set that you enjoy doing kidly things with and everything you know. And like an adult, not really knowing what the next stretch of road is going to look like, just driving all the more.

Life to me when I was young seemed like a car ride that you couldn't turn around. Endlessly driving, passing by each important stop of life until eventually you died and that was it. The mindset of a one-dimensional world made me think really hard about what I was doing. Trying to do each possible moment with everything I thought I was supposed to do, in order to adequately feel and receive everything that everyone else had made it out to be. I wanted to feel and know what everyone else made so much hype about, and thought to myself “I’m never going to get another chance to do all those important things again”, so I needed to do them right. However, feeling so overwhelmed by trying to do it "right" I ended up missing the moments that were precious to be present in because it never seemed to feel like I got it the same as the depiction of people's experiences made me think I would.

As those instances built up over time, and my feelings of those failures heightened, I started to hate myself for the lack of ability to have that perceived of reality. I couldn’t figure out how I could achieve or get better at what seemed in reach for every person around me. Wisps of lies made me feel so inadequate because of how hard it was to “do it right”, the idea of Sarah coinciding with the same value as everyone else's seemingly normal lives diminished increasingly. I got so frustrated about myself I didn’t understand why God would make me have to endure this kind of life if this is what it was all about. Why was I placed in such a hard situation of reality and why couldn’t I get it? The feeling of being defected even from a perceived reaffirmation from my father that I was inadequate, just like my mother, made me even angrier. Why was I given a shorthanded parent that gave me something I couldn’t help having, unlike everyone else's perfectly amazing parents?

In time since, God has shown me that He has created more than a stop-in-go or drive by kinda journey. He didn’t make your life to be something that looks like you're passing all the stuff you were meant to be at, a million miles an hour selfishly hurrying to try to get to the next place that you think somehow will have your all time happiness and fulfillment. That place of "perfection" does not, unfortunately, exist in the realm of your own power and will. But when you think it will, you end up like a someone who is eternally starving. Everything you could possibly want or need is there but you cannot see it because the meal you were hoping for has caused you to pass it by in order to receive what you thought was perfect. And when the false fulfillment you expected in that dish you sought after finally arrives at your table, perhaps possibly the most exciting thing in the world, until you cut it open only to be revealed that the inside is moldy, rotten and unfulfilling. Disappointing in every possible way.

Lies and whispers that cycled through that unmet expectations infer to you a perpetuating singular notion that "you", in all that encompasses who you are, was never good enough. In all of your trying and wanting recognition. In all your searching, that you were bad creation and you should give up. There is no hope of being what everyone else has shown they could do. But how do you stop if you don’t think God can possibly be “it” in your heart of hearts. The perpetuate cycles of those lies make you really believe you don't really exist the same way that everyone does. Why is it that it’s only you? Angry because you feel compressed in every direction you turn feeling isolated by seemingly never getting out of the problem. Why or what did God wanted to do with you? Angry because it felt like your father confirmed what you feared about yourself, and in return not wanting to believe in the God that your were introduced to because of how you felt about your father. How could a God like that make me be put into something like this? How is He really for my good? Or quite possibly even: how could the God of the Christians really being the sole purpose for humanity. "the end", forever. There has got to be something more to God, in question...But what?

Over the past several years through many things happening in my life, and an increase of understanding who God is, God has shown me that people are just like me. There is not a mystical person out there that is somehow the key to everything you need or ever wanted, only Jesus. It's not your boyfriend, it's not your best friend, its not the people you think might have something better than you, that holds the key to what you've been searching for. It's not even your pets or the food that you eat/ don't eat... It's God's presence. The all-consuming wholeness that God offers. He is not a old man who's wearing a suit thrusting a bible at you with all intensity but no solid backing behind him that really makes an impact in what you think and feel.

God is love. Someone that I love very much told me that one day when I was 19. In all my years of life, I never knew that until that very moment. I never knew the connection between the love of God and who He was. My God in whom won me over by His very presence showing me where I was going one day when I was 10 years old. The God of the Jews and Gentiles. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God that parted the Red Sea and shut the mouths of lions. The Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead. He wasn't just a mighty powerful and triumphant God. He wasn't just there for you in your trials and tribulations like what was said a bunch of times in church places. But that He is love. That He loved you the whole time, all the while with complete wholeness despite what you did or ever thought about Him.

Who are we to think that we are so inadequate that we are nothing but hopelessly here to be alive on this planet searching, wondering why we exist and why we can’t be something else or somewhere else? What will fill me up this time? Where is my prince? Where is my house? Where are my cars and my two kids with a nice little family? Is this going to completely satisfy me this time? To reject something God made so completely and utterly beautiful. You. He made you completely in His image. Every sing detail of you perfectly formed by the Creator of the universe who knew your name before you were even born. We are not trash people. God did not make a mistake by putting you on this planet. No matter who you are or what you grew up in, what you chose for your life or however tangled your life seems. God intentionally created you to fulfill a purpose beyond the realm of everything you've ever known or expected. He wanted you to be here to be a light in the darkness, and pillar in the face of a dying and desperate world. You were created to fulfill something intentional, that God made just for you to be able to do and be that is unlike anyone else’s purpose in this world, now and forever.

God is our first love because He loved us first. And because He loved us first, we can love. Because He is Love