Psalm 126 says,

"When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy..The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad..Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him."

Last new year, I had no clue what the next 365 days would hold. Good thing I didn't. I would've tried to cop ot. I think we all would have.

2017 was a trip around the sun during which this rock seemed to spin faster, to whip up bitter winds and malicious fires and drive water over land, destroying homes, destroying people, breaking hopes, dividing relationships, changing plans.

But what hopes, what sweetness there was in the darkness, in the terror of speed. People living sacrificially, reaching out to their neighbors, climbing outside of self and into the other, into the sunshine. So many made the best of the time they were given and rose to meet the challenge. These heroes twinkled brighter in the shadowed midnight sky of our secular culture that seeks to snuff out our wonder and innocence with its despair.

It smells so strongly like my memories,

of my nights at home this last semester where I would sit on golden grass near the porch, when I would lay on silver grass lit by moonlight as I listened to Clair de Lune and the silver-lit horses munching on grass, the curves of their furry backs reflecting starshine. I had never really looked at old man moon before my loneliness.

I used to not like night at all. Now I wait for clear nights in anticipation and point out the familiar constellations with wonder, the same ones the pilgrims sailed underneath, the same ones named in the very Word of God, these milky stars so many vast miles away.

The stars shine brighter in the sky, sweeter in my memory, the darker the darkness that surrounds them.

I hope I understood a little better how many gifts God gives us. How sunrises, moonrises, a laughing baby, a soaring pine tree, an unexpected hug — all words in Jesus' endless love letter to His children.

If I could pick one word that has defined my life and actions up until this point, it is

Fear.

Pretty short word isn't it? A fourth four-letter word to my name. Erin Kate Powe Fear. The brevity hardly captures the mighty grip that this word has held over me.

And this fear stemmed from pride

I never risk with people because people have been my idol and my enemy. Only recently have I realized how much this darkness has shaped me. But God followed me like the Hound of Heaven he is, though I fled him and his love "down the days and down the years."

Auburn (without a doubt) has been the hardest season of my life. That place holds more pain and more tears for me than any other dot on the map. It wasn't because I didn't have friends or that school was going badly. Outwardly, I looked pretty normal. I can't blame Auburn. It was simply the refining fire God plopped me in.

I was the matter. I am still the matter. We have to step out of God's way so He can breathe the winds of beauty and love into our lives.

I have held on to so much self and selfishness and arrogance. It was high time for a good bonfire.

Thank God. Maybe you'll understand why when I show you some slightly? subconscious thoughts of mine while I was (am) clinging to my own strength. These were humbling to realize in the least. It was like looking at a movie of my life and seeing that a slimy, crawling evil creature had been hanging on my back the whole time, like in C.S. Lewis' stories.

And I loved it. It whispered nice things. Except on my lightest, brightest mountaintops with God, I was blind to its real nature, blind to its evil part of my soul. What other blindnesses do I have? Lord, deliver us from evil. No one thinks I figured this stuff out by myself. The Holy Spirit was kind enough to lift the curtain.

My whole life, I have been my favorite person... not only that but I thought I was secretly a superior person to my peers.

#stoopid. But I was not even aware of this for the most part. It was all in my deep thoughts and actions. To be twisted up in self like that is a prison, a living hell. I was my own fear machine.

I want to apologize to all the people I desperately thought I was better than in order to handle pain and rejection without God's help.

How had I lived... how do I live so many times still?

Protecting self above all else?

Never ever risking being seen as less than?

Never sharing my deep self with anyone,

for fear of a deadly rejection?

Life is so much bigger than I thought, trapped in an icicle of fear and dragging my pride around in a padded case.

This breathtaking ugliness, this shriveled creature that is my soul, that Christ could love even me! Woo-hoo!

Life is worth living because He lives, because He loves me!

How sad though, what could my life, my relationships have been like.. so many of us live in a room of illusion, a room of bent mirrors when the brilliant open air and mountain landscape is waiting.

And yet, C. S. Lewis writes that He will "turn even agonies into glories." He is redeeming everything.