Her Name Means Wild

It was the place I called home for a good part of my 20s, or the second half mainly I guess. I find sentiment in everything, so of course as I say goodbye to this place I called home, I can’t help but feel a bit sad. I loved everything about my apartment.

I was such a mess when I moved in. Just great inner turmoil, insecure, and quiet. But the very first day I laid eyes on my front door, I noticed the apartment number…316.

Everything has a meaning right? As I thought about what those number could stand for, I was on my way to work when a truck passed by me. In huge print, so I couldn’t miss it, it read “John 3:16, ‘for God so loved the world, he gave his only son that whoever shall believe in Him will have eternal life’“. Maybe it was a coincidence.

However. That day, in that season, those words sounded the same as the first thousand times I’ve heard it. As months turned into years, my belief in God transformed. God wasn’t just an invisible figure floating somewhere in the clouds or someone walking around with a wand magically making all my problems disappear. He spoke to me through scriptures. He never took my problems away, but he helped me problem solve; he refined me by showing me how to grow through my circumstances. He made me stronger. How easy it would have been for my problems to disappear.

But in that place of brokenness, I experienced restoration and refinement. Joy would be mine again. “He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and lips with shouts of joy”. The transformation wasn’t overnight.

I closed that door again for the last time. Saying good bye was hard, knowing I would not be back. I was no longer that same girl that moved in. A part of me wanted to be angry at God, that he didn’t give me the life I asked for, the life every church portrays Christians should have or the life my culture says I should live, I’m slowly realizing that He gave me a far more better life. He made me for more than I thought.

Looking back, those words were a promise to me. I was offered eternal life, despite my sinful nature. God was making my heart beautiful for this world, he was orchestrating a heart for people so that I could love them like He loves them. Maybe the world doesn’t know Him or believe in Him, but I would like to think they can catch a glimpse of His love through my love for them. In the place I called home I learned how to open my doors for others, laugh with them and cry with them, cook meals for them with one pan. We laughed, threw parties, we drank mimosas and sang karaoke. They came from different walks of life but God managed to make our lives intertwine, for a purpose that we don’t fully understand just yet. A life I would never trade in.

I fully don’t understand it all. Maybe some day I will, or maybe I won’t in this life. Today I am a strong daughter, a strong woman. Why did He pick me? He took this chaos and made it beautiful.

So, don’t ask me why I love you, I just do for so many reasons you can not understand just yet. ❤️