Today was my first official day of CGA!! Last week I arrived and I was at a retreat of sorts with everyone else in the program, really just to get to know each other ad have God time. It was an awesome 4 days!! Thursday through Sunday we had another retreat, but this time with other alumni from around the world at the AIM campus, and man did God move in big ways!! Thank you so much for your prayers and support, I am so excited for this next season!!
God is really starting to show me my identity in him. Its so hard to actually walk out and live being able to fully recognize my worth. When I say this though it is not in a way that I am not doing it. Over the course of the race God really started to break this and my last blog post I mentioned about this. This last week God showed me in even more depth about what I need to do…
I am in a season of being able to battle my inner demons if you will…and God showed me that I need to start trying to believe how he sees me and not just say it. I need to actually take the compliments that come my way, and when I look into the mirror I need to think positively. This seems like it would be a normal thing, but for me this is actually pretty difficult. Now that I am starting to try and work through this, I have been at a more vulnerable spot that I thin I ever have been.
Sunday I went to church and it was going pretty well. let me preface this for a second though…having tourette syndrome is annoying and rough sometimes…when you go into places where there is silence and you twitch and a loud noise comes out, you tend to be disruptive without wanting to be…this has been my reality my whole life and honestly it doesn’t bother me…well to continue church was going pretty well and my tourettes decided to flare up on me. After about 15 minutes some teenagers in front of me laughed then turned around after a while and asked for me to stop..They didn’t know that I had tourettes and a friend of mine actually stood up for me which was actually really awesome and meant a lot!! After church a lady talked to my friend and said how cool it was he stood up for me, but the whole time just sort of looked at me and didn’t really acknowledge me. Other people also just sort of stared (like I said this stuff is normal and I’m so used to it I normally just ignore it and move on)…
This day though it really got to me. I think it has to do with the fact that I am starting to actually battle my self image problems. Having Tourettes has been difficult and even though I am used to it, some days it just sucks you know…Its funny how when you go into battle you end up getting wounded and then healed…with this it has been a huge wound that I am having to reopen once again for it to get uninfected and actually deal with. I don’t think I have actually really given God my feelings towards my tourettes now that I think about it. I think that I just shut off my whole life and stopped allowing myself to feel, and now that I have started to battle this, it just sort of popped up.
This whole growing process is rough haha, but leaning on God is the best place for me to be. I am tired of not feeling and tired of seeing myself in the negative light. This is a hard battle for me, and I could use the prayer, but I know through God I have the victory, and I will come out on the other side a better man, and a better me!!
