The Hardest Weeks.

For those of you who don't know, at my new church I joined a "Freedom Group". It's a little group made up of around eight adult women.

Relationship with Jesus = Freedom, and our group is essentially on the pursuit of Freedom.

Amazingly enough we are already 10 weeks in. Lives are changing, we're all making the choices on a DAILY basis to love and forgive; and from this, relationships have been restored!
I personally, have found beauty in authenticity. I used to think I was a pretty open person, but I guess I was just open about the more "shallow" less boat-rocking things. My decision to be vulnerable and authentic with those around me has been a great one; I wouldn't change it for the world.

It's been an emotional, exhausting, and incredible 10 weeks so far.

In just a little over two weeks we have an all-campus wide Freedom retreat coming up. Our leaders have told us that it's such a powerful weekend, which makes me excited and yet slightly nervous. I always get a little nervous when it comes to the unknown...

And now, to the heavy stuff. In our last session, we studied demons.
1) Demons are real.
2) Demons want to destroy you.
3) Demons respond to a higher authority.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,
but against the rulers,
against the authorities,
against the powers of this dark world
and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
{Ephesians 6:10-12}

The more we KNOW about how the devil wants nothing more than to devour us and help us make choices that will ruin our lives, the more aware we are of the spiritual battle that is going on all around us. And the more we know about the battle, the harder it all becomes.

Our leaders told us yesterday that the weeks from now up until the retreat are probably going to be the hardest. They say this because God is doing such incredible things through us and because we are so deep in the Word, the devil hates that and schemes even harder because of it.
Our group meets every Tuesday and all of us can attest that Tuesdays have not been our finest days and we can absolutely see the devil trying to convince us to stay home and miss a session of growing in our relationship with Christ.

As for the statement about the next weeks being the toughest, I thought in reply of "hmm...we'll see."

That was yesterday.
And as for today? Today has been pretty crappy {excuse my French}. No, not pretty crappy. I take that back. It's been SO crappy.

I went from having one of the most awesome weekends spent up in New Jersey with friends, a great evening at Freedom group, to today: a day of heartbreak, stress, tears, worry, and utter hopelessness.

As soon as I got home I went straight to my bed and laid in that dark room for an hour; it was a long hour of heart racing, tears falling, and Jesus calling. {That's something I've learned in Freedom Group, when you simply don't know what to pray, just say Jesus' name over and over again. Non-believers may say it casually or even mockingly, but believers say it with power. We say it victoriously.}

And then, for some odd reason I picked myself up out of bed, retreated from that dark room and baked 84 mini and 12 standard-sized banana chocolate chip oat muffins. Where did that energy come from?
And here I am now, sitting at the kitchen island blogging and asking myself, "do I really want to hit the Publish button"?

Yes, yes I do. I kind of have to, right? Especially after that entire spiel about being authentic.

Anyway, I apologize if this post seemed a little heavy on the doom-and-gloom side of the scale. I just I just wanted to be honest and real. <3