More Than a Conqueror

A Conqueror. That’s what we were. LAHS Conquerors. My high school mascot. I never thought more than a decade later I would be thinking about high school or our mascot or what being a conqueror means…Well, I take that back. I think about high school a lot. But I don’t think about it in ways I thought I would –– you know, like most people my age would –– missing and longing for those carefree days of staying up late texting on a 2004 Motorola phone and taking drives in a friend’s old van.

Yeah, sometimes I miss high school. But mostly, I don’t.

I don’t miss it because well, I feel a bit gross thinking about the things I did, how I acted, who I hung around with, the friends who became enemies…

The other day my dad came to visit and as he was holding our baby he said to me, “I’m proud of you. You’ve really taken on your role as a mother. It’s so different from that spoiled brat you were in high school.”

I laughed.

Because I was indeed, a brat. A “typical” teenage brat. The ones you see in those awful teen movies and shows on Netflix. The ones who are driven by selfishness and sensual pleasures.

Yeah. That was me.

And I’m telling you, I get disgusted thinking about it.

Even though I’m nearing my thirties, I still feel the weight (guilt) of my teenage/young adult choices.

I really wish I could go back and change things.

But that’s not really the main point of my post.

What I really what to talk about is how equipped I was to handle those teenage scenarios I faced.

I wasn’t equipped.

Even though for all of my life I felt the need to know God, I didn’t really “know” much of anything. Thinking about it now I wonder what “knowing” God actually meant to me back then.

I know now that I needed more than whatever it was I “knew.” I needed more. I still need more.

Even though I made really bad choices, I know now that God has promised to make me more than what I was then….more than a conqueror.

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

Romans 8:37

And that is always what I have to remember.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Sometimes I get overwhelmed thinking about how dreadful, dark, and dreary a state our world is in ––– how impossible it sometimes feels to overcome division and hostility…to stand up for principle… to hold on to beliefs when a lot of the world finds those beliefs foolish…

But it’s great knowing I’ve become more…

And knowing that I –– and we –– all can become

more.

xx