I Am (Not) Forgotten- Part 1

Today you could look at me with my smile, lined with bold red lips and beads hanging around my neck and a friend dancing next to me as we wooed and yelled at the Mardi Gras floats, and you would never think that this morning when I woke up every insecurity I've every had about being abandoned by my best friend came flooding in as I scrolled through Instagram and saw I had not been invited to what looked like massive fun. You would talk to me and also never know that I completely attacked her in my panic that I was being left behind.

Though this moment was horrifying and I was indeed called out, I have had quite the revolutionary day because of it.

You see, like many other Christians (or maybe not, I don't know) I have felt hurt by the very people that are supposed to be my community-- my spiritual family. I have felt secluded and left out over and over. In fact, the church I went to before I moved home may have scarred me the most. I was part of a small group that was specifically for discipleship, but when I moved, there was very little done to keep in touch with me. I get it, it's hard once you move to keep in touch with people, but people that you had spent over a year pouring out your soul to? That hurts, and it opened up a wound that, little did I know, was getting infected.

Flash forward two years and that infection has grown past antibiotics and now probably needs surgery (or amputation if we're being real) because a simple, stupid Instagram post sent me attacking my best friend who has never left my corner and if I ever need her would hop a red eye from China to be by my side.

But we have to ask something very important here, and it's not why I'm insecure or why the post made me go postal, but why has the infection grown? Why two years ago was I so confident that I could have a friend say they're moving states away and it would mean nothing because I knew everything would be fine if we were really friends?

I stopped being with God.

I've never been good at reading my Bible, having regular devotional times, or "that kind of stuff." What I have been good at since I accepted Christ was going to church regularly and attending bible studies. What does this tell you (me)? It tells me that for the past eleven years I have relied too much on the Church to provide God instead of allowing God to provide God because as soon as that stopped, I stopped pursuing him.

I am honestly sitting here letting those words sink in.

 I have relied too much on the Church to provide God instead of allowing God to provide God

That is one of the scariest thoughts I have ever had, but it is SO TRUE. It's also the reason that I have any number of insecurities one of the biggest being, being forgotten. 

Now begins the journey of a thousand journeys. One where I have to learn to re-live with God daily and not just as a vending machine and pop in a few prayers when I need. 

I know God speaks to me. Today he told me that he still knows me, because he's God and he does not miss a thing. That he loves me so much that he willingly died for me, and he would over and over and over again. I KNOW THIS! But yet, I still feel forgotten. 

I think the first and last part of "getting over it" is learning to believe in every part of the pain and the not pain that what God says is true and that he means it and that when you are sad and insecure, he loves you and he sees you and (big breath) he has not forgotten me. 

He has not forgotten me.