I Know I'm Not Strong Enough

This semester has been a challenge for me. Like, the biggest challenge I've had so far. From feeling like a complete musical failure to being completely unsure in my relationship to questioning my living situation. Nothing has really been easy for me. Which is the biggest surprise of my life. After last year living with a hard to handle roommate, officially becoming a music major, going through my first year of long distance with Hunter and losing friends left and right I didn't think it could get much harder. I thought that I had learned "so much" and was such a bigger and better person than I was previously. And just when I started to get a big head about thinking I'm so mature, God really had a way to knock the sense right into me. 

I've been simply struggling to survive. I feel like everything that I'm touching is just failing to thrive. My hands don't want to play the pieces I've been given, there's been more arguments between my boyfriend and I than there has been in all the previous years put together, and I never feel as if I'm able to do anything right in my apartment. I've felt sort of like a walking zombie, going through the motions of being alive, but never actually living. I go from class to class. Test to test. And sure, I'm getting by, but I barely ever do exceptionally well. I forget to practice until the night before my lesson and my fingers cramp up because of 2 continual hours of practicing. I've drank more coffee in these past two months than I even care to fully admit, just trying to stay awake and alive. 

While this feeling of heaviness, and "zombie-ness" is completely real in my life currently, I've discovered a lot of it is my own damn fault (am I allowed to say that? darn just doesn't seem to convey the right message). I'm letting myself be consumed by my discontentedness rather than change what's going on. And that simply is not how to live a joy filled, amazing, wonderful, crazy, awesome life. I am not just someone who should be "getting by". I have the Spirit of Christ in me, and I am a new creation! I don't have to be bound by my discouraging, life quenching ways. I don't have to walk around feeling like a failure, because I'm not. Do I do the wrong thing 80% of the time? Sure, that might even be generous. But I'm not failure. I am determined to be the best Hannah Byard the world has ever seen. Not the best student, or the best pianist, or the best Bible reader, aiming for those things will always bring disappointment. But I can be the best, most radical, most Hannah Byard there has ever been and ever will be. 

"Throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your nature, created to be like God- truly righteous and holy!" Ephesians 4:22-24