Christ is LOVE

Gosh, guys. The last few weeks have been HARD.

Over the Christmas break and through the beginning of January I knit so much that I gave myself knitters wrist, or tendonitis of the wrist. It’s been about a month since I’ve picked up a crochet hook or my knitting needles and it’s driving me bonkers. Knitting has always been something that’s helped me to unwind, to relax after a long day at home with the kids. It helps to center me; helps me to take a few deep breaths; helps to calm my mind enough to pray and ask the Lord to align my thoughts with His and to help me parent the rest of the day with grace. On my bad days, I could literally feel the weights lifting off my shoulders as I sat down to knit and turned my thoughts away from my current troubles and onto something else. Two hours of knitting can help me to recharge my soul in a way that nothing else can.

So it’s not like knitting was ever a bad thing for me, but since I haven’t been able to knit, I’ve seen my reliance on it, my dependence on it, and I’ve come to see the idol that it had become in my life. I was starting to use knitting as my crutch instead of just turning to the Father and letting Him right my thoughts and align them to His.

I’ve been wrestling with the Lord in the last couple weeks, not really sure where He was taking me and not really sure what He was asking of me. I was becoming fearful I’d never be able to knit again and this business that I’ve built over the last 6 years would just turn to dust. I was questioning everything.

Finally, I realized that the best way to center myself was to go back to what the Lord’s spoken to me in the past. To align my heart with Him again. So I went back to my journal notes from last year when I realized I needed to rebrand DIY Daydreams to Awaken Koselig. I read through all that the Lord spoke to me during those moments. And you know what I found?

I found not one sentence about knitting. Not one thought about crafting or selling any physical goods. All of it was about aligning my heart with the Lord, learning to rest in Him, and how the idea of koselig mirrored His call in my life to find contentment in my everyday.

It wasn’t about what products I’d offer, it wasn’t about grand business plans for the future and how much I wanted to grow. It was simply learning how to find God’s small graces and joys in my everyday life; finding my cozy contentment in the Lord.

Once I was reminded of this, it was easy to see where the Lord was taking me. He was trying to make me see that it didn’t matter what I sold; it didn’t matter what craft I did; it didn’t even matter how successful this business is. Everything that I do with Awaken Koselig is meant to glorify the Lord. It’s meant to bring honor to His name and to tell others of His love for them. It’s meant to help you guys find contentment in the Lord in the same way that He’s teaching me. And once I focused on all of these aspects, then all the other things would just work themselves out in the Lord’s timing.

Today, on Valentine’s Day, I believe the Lord finally pushed me out of my funk to share this with you:

I believe that the enemy has been so crafty and has skewed our perception of what real love is because we won’t be able to notice true love if our idea of what love is and what it looks like has been so clouded by the world. So then when the Lord tells us of the love He offers us, we don’t believe it; we question it because it’s so outside of our learned understanding of what love is and what it looks like.

But the Lord wants to tell you today that He loves you wholly and purely and nothing that you do can ever change that. He didn’t want to be in heaven without you. YOU! He doesn’t want to be in eternity without you, so He died so that you’d have an opportunity to join Him in eternity. HE CHOSE YOU! And He’ll continue to choose you every second of every day. And not because you love Him back, but simply because of the way that He loves you.

Listen, I know life throws some heavy curveballs and it’s easy to get bogged down with the struggles. We often feel lonely, less-than, scared about what the future holds. I felt all of those feelings just in the past week. But today, on Valentine’s Day, please know that there is Someone who loves you deeply, with an unwavering, unending love, and all that He desires is that you come to Him to find His peace and His joy. He CHOSE YOU to spend eternity with and He wants you to trust that He has your best intentions in mind. He wants you to trust that He has your best intentions in mind and for you to give Him your future, your worries, and your pain.