Today's post was written by BH member, Grace Thornton. Grace Thornton is the author of the book I Don't Wait Anymore. She blogs at gracefortheroad.com. Come hear Grace share more about her story and her book at the BH Women Authors' Night on Thursday, November 10, at 7pm in the Student Building.

I felt her pain.

She said she felt like she and God weren’t really on the same page, and she felt cracked and a little broken on the inside. Things hadn’t really worked out the way she’d expected. She found herself in a place where she didn’t really want to be.

I’d been there.

She sat down beside me on the hearth, grabbed my hand, and waited for me to say something back to her.

And I realized there was just one thing I wanted her to know.

It’s real.

I know that sounds overly simple…but when I was in a dry, cracked, broken place, that was the only thing that had a prayer of making me do something different.

I needed to know it was real.

That it could be had.

And that it was worth the effort.

I wanted a magic bullet.

At that point in life, I really just wanted somebody to tell me what to do. I wanted somebody to tell me how to get from point A to point B, for things to feel better, for me to feel more content, more centered.

I really wanted a magic bullet.

And I’ll be real — people telling me that Jesus could be the answer hadn’t really done much for me. It’s because up until that point, the way in which I’d known Jesus hadn’t been one that really changed anything about the way I felt or dealt with the unmet desires I had.

It wasn’t until I saw what it looked like in somebody else’s life when they loved Jesus with everything they had that I thought — maybe Jesus actually can be enough.

What they had couldn’t have looked more different than the way I felt.

They had peace, actual real peace.

And I didn’t. I had faith. I had belief.

But I didn’t have peace.

And if what they had was real, and that’s what it really was meant to look like…I wanted it.

I didn’t really want to read it. I just wanted what they had.

Seeing that their peace was real and different was the only thing that made me sit down and crack open my Bible with even a reasonable amount of determination that morning in my mid 20s, the first morning I’d really even tried to pick it up in a long time.

It wasn’t because I wanted to read it.

It wasn’t because I really even felt a passion to know what it said.

I just knew Jesus had to be all or nothing, and I was choosing all because I was desperate for Him, and I wanted what they had.

It wasn’t a lightning bolt.

It was getting up every morning, opening the Word, asking God to show me who He was, telling Him I wanted to want Him more than anything else.

Over time, it changed my heart.

And more than anything…I want others to know that it’s real…and they can know Him too.

Chasing Him changed me.

That’s the thing that made I Don’t Wait Anymore happen. It’s just one woman to another saying, “I’m a mess, but Jesus really is enough.”

Chasing Him changed me.

And that’s the thing that’s hopefully captured in the book-the story of the chase. The story in the book is messy, just like it is in real life. It’s all over the place and filled with real stories.

But it’s something I hope He can use to speak truth into brokenness, to breathe life into a place of dead dreams, to just say, "Come on. Run this way. It’s worth it."

Because I have nothing.

He has everything.

That, my friends, is real life.

And it’s there for the taking.

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