My bedroom carpet has been soaked with tears more times than I can count; but lately the only water that has reached the floor is the rain that trickled in through my bedroom window yesterday as I joyfully watched a spring rainstorm. I think I’m glad to leave this house and live no longer in walls that remind me of the past. I am thankful for the chance to live under a roof of new beginnings. As I’m moving out, I’m simplifying–giving away material possessions that I don’t need, and surprising myself with how little I actually do need. It’s not much. A place to lay my head, a few simple pairs of clothes, and books to keep my soul alive. What I do need is the people–the friends who have seen more of me even than these walls have–and the presence of God. Really, I’m finding, that’s all.

This isn’t the first night in my life that I’ve let myself be overwhelmed by selfish emotions; it’s a place where I’m most broken and most in need of the Lord’s grace. It’s also a place I’ve seen incredible transformation, not because of myself but because of God’s work in me.

So tonight, when I’m already vulnerable and I begin believing the enemy’s lies, everything within my flesh tells me to run away because suddenly things aren’t easy. It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s like when I was twelve years old and would run away from home and spend the night in the laundromat whenever my parents would fight. It’s like every relationship I’ve ever known: run away when things get hard because if I don’t leave first, they will.

So tonight I left. I walked out through his back door without saying goodbye and sped away in my car with him standing under the porch light, a scenario I’ve felt a hundred times. I felt like I was ten years old, locking myself in my bedroom closet, buried under a pile of blankets and pillows so I can’t hear the fighting. Except that tonight, for the first time in my life, running away didn’t feel right anymore. I only made it down the block before I felt the pull on my heart: turn the car around, go back inside, and admit you’re wrong.

Where I expected to find anger, I found gentle and patient love. I heard Let’s talk about it instead of silence. I felt the Lord beginning to unravel the patterns I’ve always known to make something new, something healthy and beautiful.

So this is my way of saying thank you to you, Drew. Thank you for showing me gentleness and so much love, even though I’m weak and so often wrong. I’m so blessed to have you in my life. God teaches me so much through you.

I got a letter in the mail today from the people I’ll be working for at the Mayo Clinic for my internship this summer. I had told them that I would work on absolutely any unit; just the chance to work at Mayo was enough for me! I’ve also been praying ridiculous amounts about this internship; praying that God would set up divine appointments with patients and other nurses and doctors so that He can minister to them through me. I’ve been praying that, throughout this entire summer, nothing would be about me, but that it would all be about bringing Him glory and seeing people healed in miraculous ways because of His goodness.

If you know me, you know that when I was fourteen I spent a couple of months in a mental hospital healing from anorexia nervosa, and was later re-hospitalized after a suicide attempt. I’m not ashamed of this part of my past because God healed me completely from both my eating disorder and depression and it’s by His grace that I’m here today. He has used this–the weakest and most shameful part of my life–to show His goodness to other people, and so I’m not ashamed of it today because it brings healing to others.

I told the Mayo Clinic staff that I would work anywhere, and I told them nothing about my past. Today I got a letter in the mail from them: I’ll be working on the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit. Of all the places in the largest research hospital in the world to work, I am working on this unit.

Tell me that’s not the hand of God.

Thank you, Father, for your incredible goodness. The ways you work are beyond our understanding.

But praise God anyways because I know he’s up to something.