over my life from Scranton, PA, to live in the Seattle-Tacoma area, which was a place I wasn't familiar with at all. When I moved across the country, I packed my 2001 Toyota Corolla (that I still own to this day) with all that I could fit inside and left my hometown and any support I had in hopes to find the healing I needed, a job where I can support myself, and a place to live.
I didn't think I'd actually make it and almost returned home when things got super tough, but I still trusted God to give me the strength and wisdom to find the job, housing, and support I needed to get to this point in my life. This is the first anniversary of this life change decision where I truly see the fruits of this decision, and I've only seen it in the last six months. It took me almost 3 years to get to this point.The past three years have been far from easy. My life now is a stark difference than it was three years ago. Three years ago I was very much not in a good healthy state of mind when I first moved across the country. I couldn't support myself financially immediately and still had a $21,000 of debt to my name. I left the only support I had and needed to find a new support system. I left PA with a very toxic and damaging relationship, which made me feel that I wasn't deserving of love and took me a year and a half to remove myself from without help.
Looking at my life now, I feel far more blessed than I ever thought I would feel. Through counseling and removing myself from that toxic relationship, I don't feel that cloud of depression I've dealt with for almost 10 years. I am technically debt-free but don't plan to pay the last $6,000 off until a couple weeks before interest kicks back in, and I have been able to financially support myself for a couple years now. I also have a far better relationship with my family than what I had before I moved across the country. And now I'm in a relationship with someone who treats me with Christ-like love and has helped me truly understand that I am worth loving because Christ loved me so much that He died on the cross for me so that I would have life instead of death. It's been the best six months of my life despite Covid restricting a lot of normal everyday life.
"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." - Romans 5:1-5
"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds." - James 1:2
"We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf." - Hebrews 6:19
