2.5 years later...

   In the past few months I've had some of my close friends happen upon my blog. My first thought was "Well, this is embarrassing." Then, to my surprise, I was told that I should start blogging again. That got me thinking "Why has it been two and a half years since the last time I blogged?" After a lot of thought I've come to a conclusion. It would be really easy for me to say that the last time I blogged frequently I was going through a hard time, and I've been doing fine since then. The first part of that is true, but there's been some big transitions like graduating college, finding a job, first year of teaching, second year of teaching (just to name a few). But in all of those things I haven't felt like I needed to voice them here.

   Here's my conclusion: I've been playing the comparison game like a pro. Blogs have become something every twenty-something Christian hipster girl is doing. They all have such wise things to say, beautiful pictures to go with it, and an audience that shares their posts as if they are a new addition to the Bible. Make no mistake, I'm not tearing down those blogs or the effect they have on the readers. I have my favorite blogs that I always read, and look to when I need to hear some general wisdom.

   Throughout the past couple of years, I've been looking at these blogs and thinking "These girls have something to say and know how to say it. There's nothing for me to add here." Any time I've thought about blogging, I've told myself that it's already being said, and by someone whose blog is nicer and more eloquent. Comparing myself to others is nothing new to me. I've been doing this since elementary school. I compared myself to what the other girls in my class were wearing or doing. In middle school this looked like making sure my hair was a straight as other girls and trying to make friends with the "right people". Even in church I looked to compare myself spiritually to where others were. Depending on who I was around, I either felt inferior or superior. I'm sure as you are reading this, it sounds familiar. Even if it doesn't look like my particular examples, I've found that we all look to others to rate ourselves on how well we are doing in life.

   The good news: despite all my failures and shortcomings, I have acceptance from Christ. God knew I would fail to measure up. In fact, he is fully aware of every failure, and every future failure. Even in this knowing, He chose me and delights in me. Ephesians 2:12-13 says "remember that you were at that time separated from Christ alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." If my Creator, who knows all of my flaws, loves and accepts me deeper than any human ever can, then I have the freedom to no longer compare. God has created me intentionally and everything He gives me is what is good for me.

  Even as I typed this novel of a blog post, I questioned God's truth, and needed to look up what God's word actually says about me.

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, no angels nor rulers, nor things present no things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." -Romans 8:38-39

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved"- Ephesians 2:4-5

Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief.

Reflection

A beautiful friend of mine likes to do "reflections" where she goes back into her notes and reflects on what God has been teaching her. So this is mine. Near the beginning of last semester I went through a break up and I've written about it a little here, but in that time I began a new prayer journal/notebook/diary whatever you want to call it. Through the many pages, there are themes. In the first few pages, I'm simply hurt. I remember feeling like someone had stabbed me and wouldn't take the knife out. I was constantly asking God "Why? Why was this necessary? What do you have planned through this? Can you really satisfy me?" If you know me at all you know that music means a lot to me. In this time, I clinged on to a song called "Sovereign Over Us" by Aaron Keyes. Some of the lyrics I have written down include

" Your plans are still to prosper. You have not forgotten us. Faithful forever, perfect in love, You are sovereign over us"

" even in the valley You are faithful, You turn it for our good"

And in this time, these words were not so much praise, but me reminding myself the truth of the Word. That there is hope that God is sovereign. There was hope that He is faithful. For a good while I spoke to the Lord about how worthless I felt and how I felt like no one was supporting me. I even felt like God wasn't supporting me, because I knew that He had grace for Daniel and even when I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to forgive him, God already had. I struggled for awhile realizing that even though I felt like a victim, it wasn't about me. It was about God being glorified, no matter how much my pride was hurt. I just wanted God to be the only thing I needed, you know? I knew that to be true in my head, but in my heart what I needed was for people to want me. I needed people to find me worthy of their attention and love. My heart was looking for something more because I felt like there was no way God could fully and truly satisfy me. For most of what  is written in that journal, I'm asking God to change my heart. It thought this would be immediate. I thought that if I just said "hey. I forgive you." that everything would be fine and dandy and all would be well. It wasn't. But that's okay. Because somewhere between "I feel like I'm going to be sick if I ever see him again" and now, God has changed my heart. It was a slow process and I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but I found it to be more true than ever that His love was all I could ever need. I've become excited about my future with Christ and what that will look like. I no longer view my future as being a wife, but as being the Bride of Christ living on mission wherever He leads me. I would love to say that I no longer desire a relationship or marriage, but I can't. There are so many moments when I see how sweet marriage is and how encouraging it can be, and how much I want someone to have an even bigger passion for missions so he can push me in the areas that make me uncomfortable in efforts to push me toward Christ. But even as I write that, I realize that I can find that in this great little gift God's given us called community. Although I don't think that will stifle my desire to one day have a marriage with a Godly man who loves God's people and who loves me, I do think it reminds me that my true satisfaction is found in Jesus and that anything else is just a blessing I can enjoy. It sounds really lame to just say "yeah, God completely satisfies me and I don't want anything else more than Him." and if I said that I would absolutely be lying. I'm not there yet. But I'm closer now than I was 6 months ago. I look to the future excited for what is to come because I know my Father is right there with me guiding me every step of the way, and He'll never let me go.

So it's taken me a long time to get to this point. I'm still not perfect, but hey who is? His plan is the most wonderful plan. He has grown me closer to Him month by month, conversation by conversation, confession by confession, and I have the rest of my life to continue growing and looking back to see how far I've come. Only by God's great love and grace could I ever be able to look back and see that I have in fact moved closer to Him and not further away. He truly is sovereign. I can say that now as worship and praise because I know it to be true through experience. It's no longer something I want to be real in my life. It's there. It's real. He's there. He's real. Seriously, though, how great is that? ahhhhh. marvelous.

Take a second and think about where God has brought you from. Regardless of whether it's been 10 steps in the past 6 monthes or .25 of a step, God's timing and plan is perfect, and I promise you when His plan is revealed, you'll know it never could have gone any other way. 

Following Christ's lead

Ok so I know I never blog here, and I'm pretty sure that all my blogs start out that way and I'm sorry blah blah blah anyway let's get to it.

So tonight my beautiful friend Maggie and I were on the Horseshoe eno-ing (that's a word, right?) and chatting it up and all of a sudden this guy comes over and asks for our permission to snapchat his friend us hanging out in our enos. Apparently he had been living in a hole because he said something to the effect of "This is so weird, I've never seen anyone do this." So I thought he was going to snapchat his friend and then be on his merry little way, but NO. He stays and talks to us for like an hour and a half. It was so cool though because the conversation flowed like we had always known him and like he had always known us. The conversation at one point went to a similarity between a ritual they do on certain Indian reservations and Christ's death on the Cross. The whole conversation my thought process was "This is so weird. He shouldn't be talking to us. Why is he still here? Does he love Jesus? I don't think he does. I should tell him about Jesus." In that part of the conversation it would have been the perfect time to talk about Jesus and our faith and whatever, but did I do it? NO. And now, I'm sitting here with no way to ever get in touch with him again, feeling like I missed an opportunity, which I totally did. I felt God tugging at my heart to share the Gospel with him, and I didn't. I know that my sinful self cannot and will not change what God has planned, so if Austin (the guy we met) is supposed to have a relationship with Jesus, someone else will come along who is much more faithful than me and point him to Christ. So that leaves me with why I was met with this opportunity to share Christ and failed to do so. Honestly here is what I think, and please tell me if this is unbiblical:

Obviously, mine and Maggie's conversation with Austin was no mistake or accident. God doesn't play those games. Whether or not I shared Christ with him is irrelevant, because God was going to use this situation to teach me something either way. If I had talked to him about Jesus and grace he could have accepted it and began a relationship with Christ which would have been awesome. He also could have said no or gone off and thought about it more, yada yada, many things could have resulted from that conversation. But that conversation did not occur, and in this I'm being taught something. I have this guilt of not following God's lead and realizing that I missed an opportunity to be missional where I am which is something I've been working on and God's been convicting me about. From now on in coversations though, I'll remember this feeling and how being faithful would have resulted in much better things. Although I should have gave him the Good News of the Gospel, God still used that strange conversation to teach me what it looks like to take strange things like that and use them for the glory of God. I feel like in the future I'll be more aware of these things and follow God's lead. But even when I fail and don't, there is grace for me, and God loves me the same in my failure as He does in my successes. Because even though I was unfaithful tonight, He will never be unfaithful, and His plan never fails.

That was mostly be trying to figure out my feelings about tonight and see what God was trying to teach me through it. If it taught you something, awesome. If it didn't teach you anything, that's cool too. I hope it was a good story. Jesus loves you all. I love you all. And maybe one day we'll have that conversation about who Jesus is and how good His always is. Peace out home skillets.  

GRACE

This semester, God has taught me more about Himself than ever before. All of the things He taught me were things I already knew to be true about Him, but it finally clicked why they were such amazing things. One thing He made clear was His never-ending, never-changing, forever-faithful love. As I mentioned in a different blog, I went through a break up this semester. I wish it hadn't affected me the way that it did, but it made me feel very negatively about myself and love in general. It reminded me that people will fail you, and that the things of this earth don't last forever. I realized that unfortunately I had placed some of my identity in this relationship and my hope in his affection for me instead of the love that Christ gives. After everything happened, it became clear to me what it meant for God's love to be unfailing. He will never disappoint me or decide I'm not worth it. His love is not dependent on what I do or do not do, what I look like, or how well I perform whether that is in earthly accomplishments or those of eternal value. He loves me enough that He sent Jesus to die for me so that I might spend eternity with Him. Even if I do find a man to spend my life with on Earth, his love will never be able to compare to Christ's love.

Another huge thing I learned was how amazing God's grace and forgiveness is. As I went through cycles of being "alright" and cycles where I was bitter toward love and figured that I would spend the rest of my life alone with all my cats, I also went through the process of trying to forgive this boy who broke my heart and trust and made me believe things about myself that are not true. Everywhere I looked I was being told to forgive and to give the grace that Christ gives us, and I think I'm finally there, but this is after several months of arguing with myself and trying to make my heart match with what I knew God wanted me to do. As a sinful person, it was so hard for me to give grace and act toward him with love as my brother in Christ. Then I realized, that for God it doesn't take several months. I doesn't even take several hours. Christ's grace showers us immediately and God doesn't love us differently after that, and His feelings towards us are no different. While I was over in my room praying that God would make my flesh forgive him, He already granted me grace and Daniel grace; no questions asked. I think God reminds us of how broken we are to remind us how perfect He is. I can never measure up to how amazing God is, but I can start to show others just a glimpse by giving them the same love and grace that Christ gives me. I'm daily reminded of how amazing God's love is, and how thankful I am that He chose to love a sinner like me.

If any of this confused you, or you have questions, feel free to contact me and we can talk more about it. But the gist is God's love is amazing. The end. 

I never realized how much Christian culture was focused on finding "the one" until I became single. All of these books are about how you can find the right guy and how God has you in this place to prepare you for the man you're supposed to be with. It's all so familiar to me, and freshman year I drank it all up. For some reason, it doesn't make sense right now though. My entire life is not to point me to some guy I'll spend it with. Not everything that happens in my life is related to my relationship status. This may seems super clear to y'all, but up until recently I thought of everything in terms of "who will I be with?" or "who will I serve with?". But in reality I lost sight of who God really is. I don't need to find "the one". JESUS is "the One". If my focus is all on what man I'll spend the rest of my life with, then I'm forgetting that I'm already spending my life with Christ. He is beside me every day, He never fails me, He loves me unconditionally, and He'll never leave me. I need to stop wondering who I'll be with and start focusing on who I'm already with. I need to stop being so concerned about who I'll serve with, and start focusing on who I'm serving! The thought that God has made me single in order to point me toward the guy I'm going to marry or even to prepare me in this time for him is so foolish and selfish. I need to draw closer to Christ and make Him what completes me. I will never be satisfied or fulfilled if I rely on someone other than the Lord. And y'all, this is so refreshing to know! I don't need to be worried about what my relationship status will look like. I can just love on my brothers in Christ as just my brothers in Christ. I can grow in my relationship with the Lord and not be so concerned about what He's going to give me in return for my faithfulness. This is... good. 

Psalm 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

I always thought this verse was kind of "prosperity gospel." For those not familiar with the underground vocabulary of a Tumblr Christian, "prosperity gospel" is when preachers or churches take verses from the Bible and twist them to say "If you love Jesus, good things with happen. If you love Jesus, your life will be easy. If you love Jesus, you will get money. If you love Jesus, your business will succeed, etc." That's not the way Christian life is though. We are not guaranteed an easy life. In fact, we are told in the New Testament that the world will hate us because they hated Jesus. So back to that verse up there. I always read it as something to make people feel good, like "delight in the Lord, and He'll give you all the material and worldly things you want." But here's what's different about this verse. When we delight in the Lord, get our joy from Him, then His desires for us, become the desires of our hearts. We desire love and acceptance, justice, peace, joy, etc. When our delight is in Him, and not in the world, those desires overcome the desires of the world. So when we delight in the Lord, He gives us all of those things, and then some. Galatians 5:22-23 says "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Because these are fruits of the Spirit, when we have the Spirit in charge of our life, this is what will come from us. These will be the things our hearts desire.

So awesome, guys! 

God is so cool, y'all

As an intern, I've had to prepare a lot of devotions and talks that will be done later in the summer. In preparing my talk for last night's youth service, I was basically talking to myself. Everything I said to those students completely applied to my life. As I prepared and read and outlined, God was teaching me without me even realizing it. This happened again as I was preparing devotions for beach camp. Everything I said completely applies to me. When I read back over them, it's like someone else had written them for me to read. I can't even. It's so awesome. And it's just going to keep going. I have three more talks to do and a devotion for a mission trip meeting. God's doing great things, guys.