God

I promise this isn't going to be as cheesy as the title probably makes it sound.

I'm back at Campbell tonight, and I'm very happy about that.  I like breaks from school, but I do not like being in my family's house.

Aside from Tuesday, every day of my break included at least one spurt of me being everyone's verbal punching bag, and today my grandmother joined in.  And I am very, very tired of it.

That's why God is the center of my post today.  Because I need to focus on Him.  And because after all the awful things that were said to me over the past several days, I am that much more grateful for God.

Because I know how much God loves me, more than any person I know could ever love me, I have the ability to find my identity in being a daughter of the King, and not all the names I hear from people around me.

Because He loves me so well, I can rest assured that He has already forgiven me for the mistakes I made this week, even though I struggle to forgive myself, and even though I wonder if they ever will.

Because He knows my heart and knows my hurt.  And better yet, because He understands it.

Because He is here, alive, now, so I am never alone, even when I sometimes feel like it.

Because His is the only opinion I really care about, and it's really the only one I SHOULD care about, and I know that when He looks at me, He sees the perfection of Jesus, pure, clean, and whole.

Because even through all the darkness and pain and anger, I've seen God moving this week in ways I never expected.  And in that, there's a reminder of something to hold on to.

I serve a God who has more than made up for all the brokenness of my biological family by surrounding me with a family of my own.  God hasn't given up on me - quite the contrary, He fought to win me - so I'm not going to give up on God.  I don't know how I made it as far in life as I did without having His grace to fall on.

God, You really are everything.  The greatest blessing I have in life is to call myself Your child.