I reread “Carry On” today. October 2020. 4:47 in the morning. The same night I cooked ribs and Kathy and Alexandra made banana bread. Normal evening. Then that.

I don’t remember writing it.

It circles. Doesn’t resolve. Fall, cry out, reach for God, question whether He’s real, worship anyway, doubt again, worship again. That’s what was happening.

And God answered. Every one of those cries. He carried me through hard seasons. He held me when I broke. He gave me rest I didn’t know existed. He showed me I was His — not because I earned it, but because He chose me. He gave me language through Nee and Tozer for what I’d been living for twenty years. He gave me peace. He gave me Sabbath.

Look at the growth. Look at the fruit. Six years between that prayer and today.

He was faithful.

And yet.

“Lord I do not want to change / Lord help me want to change”

I prayed that in high school. At thirty when the business collapsed. The night I wrote this. I am still praying it. The words change. The prayer doesn’t.

I still struggle. Still carry doubt alongside faith. Still feel the weight in my stomach. Still retreat too far inward. Still resist the music that would break the loop. Still want to be strong when God is asking me to be empty.

Six years of growth, and He is still calling me back to the well.

Not because I haven’t grown. Because there is always more to surrender. The walls keep getting higher. The surrender keeps getting deeper. And the prayer at the bottom is always the same:

“I cannot do it. It is all up to you.”

My faith was real then. My relationship with God was real. I wasn’t performing. But I was still carrying the weight of it. Still trying to be strong in my faith instead of resting in His.

What changed isn’t that I believe more. I stopped fighting to hold on and found out He was already holding me. The love I feel now — this sense that I belong to God, that He knows exactly who I am and wants me anyway — I didn’t have that then. I had faith. Now I have rest. Not the rest of stopping. The rest of no longer needing to be anything other than His.

God wasn’t watching me fall apart that night. He was answering. The breaking, the sleepless nights, the quiet rebuilding, the words I’m finally putting on this site — all of it was the answer to that 4:47am prayer.

And He’s still not done.

And yet I still doubt.

And He is still amazing.