When the going gets tough

I admit it.  The last few weeks have been an insanely big struggle.

Today I feel like a defeated teenager who’s just come home from her day at school crying because the cute, popular boy doesn’t like her…or her girlfriends didn’t invite her to sit at the ‘cool table’…or she’s not even sure why, but life...just…sucks.

Day-after-day since the middle of February (when work on the feature film began) I’ve been confronted with the same few issues:
- emotional eating
- desiring a relationship (marriage)
- striving or performance-based worth
- unhappiness of where I’m at in life

They are all things I’ve struggled with in the past, but for one reason or another they are extremely amplified right now. It’s almost as though I’m in the middle of a battle…sometimes I feel like I’m fighting, other times like I’m the one being fought over. I guess that’s ultimately what spiritual warfare boils down to.

Disappointedly so, I’ve been playing into the enemy’s tactics. The negative thoughts grow louder than the positive ones more often than not. Because I’ve been so busy with the feature film my times with God each day are more hurried, less sincere, or vague and unfocused.

I wanted working on this film to be a chance to learn how to ‘work’ and keep up a consistent spiritual life. But, it’s tough. I’ve been spared many distractions while being in the YWAM community. Stepping foot into a more regular work environment – in fact similar in feel to a television news room – has forced me to take a hard look at myself. 

When the going gets tough, I don’t necessarily like what I find in myself. I really hope that’s the point: difficult circumstances make me realize how much I need God, need Christ, to be what pour out of me and carry me. Perhaps this whole film experience has been God's way of perfecting the character in me that He wants...cutting off the attitudes or thinking that aren't of Him. I can only hope.

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He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  John 15:2 (NIV)