For the past couple of months, I have experienced my heart doing a lot of things it has never done before, some good and some bad, but my mind constantly trying to figure out what was going on.

You see, I am not very honest with myself. The only way I know how to describe it, is that I am surface level with my heart, until something comes along and breaks that surface to where I am forced to examine the lower levels. This process is not enjoyable. It’s humbling in the most humiliating way. It’s nauseating like the feeling you get after you know you’ve been caught in a lie. It makes you hang your head much like when you get a deserved lecture. It is relieving because you know that once it is resolved, you are free to a new start, a fresh beginning. Everyone likes new beginnings.

That was the problem, I didn’t know how to break past the surface level, and God wasn’t sending anything to break it for me.

Then I realized that He was. I was almost sad when I realized how melodramatic it was. I didn’t have a car accident. No one died. I didn’t get an eye-opening experience that would make Baptist preachers grab a Kleenex. I simply understood that I was the one who had to move.

I had been struggling with trendiness. Trendiness being, I could not make a decision about what I believed about certain things to save my life. I didn’t want to make a decision that might offend someone. I had literally been walking on eggshells. All in an effort to present myself, not as a person who cared about offending anyone, but as a person who at the baseline, was not brave enough to embrace what I actually believed. As I started to move, I realized that I was a good person, a great person even. Not in a boastful way, but God gave beautiful hearts to everyone, and I was walking around forgetting that I possessed one. I continually forgot that if I disagreed with something that wasn’t “cool” to disagree with, I wouldn’t become some crazed, closed-minded person. I would just know where I stood. I would know how to love people going through the things everyone else is too busy talking about. I would know what to say to them when they hurt or when they just needed a friend.

I had found myself becoming ashamed of Christ. Not in the, I wouldn’t talk about Him kind of way, but rather, I was ashamed to boldly love Him. I was scared that if I was outspoken and crazy about Him the way I was outspoken and crazy about School of Rock or road trips or feminism. I would come across as some crazed, closed-minded, showy, wordy Christian that no one wanted to be around. I never stopped to realize that I’m not like that. That by me becoming crazy and outspoken about Christ, it would be the perfect fit for the passionate heart Christ put in my chest 20 years ago. Why would me becoming like the most loving and beautiful and holy God I know to exist make me anything less than someone people wanted to be around.

The key, the most important lesson, the humbling, nauseating, head-hanging, relieving, deep level of my heart that I had to uncover was this: I had fallen into the trap that I could push away, so far that I didn’t look like a Christian anymore and nothing would happen to me. I thought that by trying so hard to not imitate the Christians that give Christianity a bad name I would somehow find the key to real Christianity. What I didn't think about doing is just skipping the unnecessary steps and just imitating Christ. What I didn’t realize is that I had sacrificed so much. I had tried so hard not to be a person who was known for what they hated, but I was just becoming someone who hated different things.

My relationship with Christ is not a voting ticket. I don’t mark one party and have to agree with everything on the ballot. Jesus wasn’t just joking around when He said that once we are saved, we are no longer slaves. I am not a slave to anything. I am independent, but so unified with Christ. In that independence, I am able to make decisions about issues quietly and the only reason for those decisions is because, without a steady stance, you can’t hold someone up when you're on shaky ground.

I have started moving, I have started being an individual for the first time in what feels like, my entire life. I have started moving back to the place where I have unfairly left God.

To some of you that have had the same feelings, start moving with me. Wake up and choose to move. Closer and closer to love.