The Journey That Has Brought Me Here...

I am just beginning my journey.

I realize, as I sit here a month away from 27, that I’m no spring chicken. I look young, but I have an old soul. There have been times when I felt much older than my age and times when age was as foreign a concept as time itself.

I have been called out on saying that age is just a number by people who just don’t get it—but for me, it really is. I have found, the older I have gotten, the more I can relate to just about anyone. The women I hung out with a year ago when I was working as a first grade teacher were all older women: I enjoyed their wisdom, but most of all I loved their spunky, hilarious personalities and the ways we could laugh through anything. Currently, most of my closest friends are my age—but it’s only because they’re the ones I went to college with. In this last season all my friends were younger than me, sometimes by eight years. Two of my best friends from that time, more like sisters, were eighteen when we started. I could have cared less how old they were—I loved being with them! We had fun!

It doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered!

I find that experience—what we’ve been through—and the heart—how we let our experiences shape, change and develop us and what we choose to care for—are all much more important indicators of who a person is. I know—beyond a doubt—that God gave me more years before I started stepping into this crazy life called missions because I had a lot to work through: things that would have been ugly on the mission field. He kept me back—even though I longed to and even fought to move forward. He was faithful to block me, even when it caused me pain, from those things that were not right at the present time, in order to give me something grand at the right time. It was right in me to have that desire, but without the timing…you have nothing. He’s taught me that, over and over, in so many areas of my life.

It’s this thing called ‘holiness’ isn’t it? I have become quite obsessed—no, it’s just come more and more to the forefront for me, just how important this little word is, with all its implications. Holiness invites you to believe in the other, to see the world through another’s lens and believe that what He says is true and good for you. Holiness holds within itself an element of timing: of doing things fittingly, in the right time and place. In trusting the timing of another, holiness invites you beyond yourself into the unknown, the other, to trust what you cannot see so that you can move forward fully. To believe and walk in holiness means to abdicate all other gods who would take the throne of your heart so that you may see clearly and move forward when the Father calls you.

It’s easy to let go of holiness. I was so close to doing it this last season, only seconds and words barely unspoken away from pushing into what was not mine yet. I had to abdicate—and the loss felt just like that, such a loss—but I can see clearly now.

I see where I am headed and the work that the Lord has done to get me here—to this Promised Land. All of my broken, trying years created this refining and hope in me that go beyond human expectation. They created in me resilience, an ability to look beyond present pain into what is coming, the gift of the future. I know how to endure loss, criticism and judgment from others in a way that honors those around me and keeps me moving forward. In the middle of the arena, with the fight going on all around, I have learned to stand still and hear my Father’s voice—to live and move from that perspective and not what my natural ears and eyes perceive.  I have learned, especially in this last season, that love is made to be audible, shared, and that the love of the Father makes all worthy. I have learned to let love grow in me, so that others may be known and seen and comforted. I have learned to speak when it may be unpopular and that my voice is worth being known and heard.

And in all this, I am very much still learning and in process—but He sees gold in me. He put it there. This last season was the last of digging out the choking weeds and dust of death so that life, true life from the Father of life, could be found in me. I am becoming—always in process—a piece of heaven on earth, where the dwelling place of God has been made with man.

Heaven on earth…

It’s strange, to live in the yet and the not yet: we spent a whole year while I was in college talking through this concept in my school’s chapel. Our campus pastor, Travis Osborne, took apart the Kingdom of God, its implications and all that Jesus and the rest of the Bible said about it—and in the end, we were left with “it’s-here-but-not-yet”. Tension…

Tension…

We all live in the tension, in many ways. So much of it is earthly, full of unfulfilled longing: “I want healing…, I want a child…, I want a new Mercedes…, I want that perfect job…,” You can be centered on your earthly tensions for the rest of your life and find that nothing else matters, because you can’t even think of anything else anymore: you’re so consumed with what you don’t have. It’s a fruitless pursuit: letting earthly tension take you over.

The Kingdom of God is not like that. It’s the place of tension, but it’s the best kind, the kind that brings life. When your life is centered around this Kingdom, all the rest comes to you as a matter of course, just part of the ride as you gaze at Him. Kingdom living—which is others centered—accidentally on purpose propels you forward into all you ever dreamed of because you have chosen to live for the King and He has chosen—and is now able to, because of your relinquishment—to take care of all that concerns you. You live with such a different hope and focus from this place: you know that the Lord is coming and your life is about building into His kingdom, even if you can’t see it yet. It’s a tension that gives life!

Here’s how it works: as you become more and more obsessed with this Kingdom, giving up more and more of what you thought was your real life to be a part of it (and this could look different in every life, as each of us has different struggles and dreams that we must relinquish control of) as you make this choice, it changes you. The further in you get, the more it will cost you: but, if you let it, the refining will bring you further into all He created you to be. Sure, you lost your car and you’re still single, but wowie! do you know how to love on and connect with people who you thought were so different from you! As He asks for more of who you are and who you thought you would be—often a very painful process--you are able to walk forward fully into all He has for you. In all your choices to trust His holiness and timing, you have created a place where you are able to behold Him truly and in that place, you see yourself truly and recognize that nothing holds you back from fully walking out the life He promised you. As you encountered the tension—and let it change you—all of a sudden it created in you what He had wanted there all along—and isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it great to be one of His own?

Tension is a part of life. We will never escape it: but when we choose to embrace the Kingdom of God as our own, the tension allows beauty to be found in us. A musical instrument will not function without tension. Any good story must have its share of tension to be worth being told. All the good love stories, dramas, thrillers—all accept and are able to move forward because of and in tension. You can run from it—or embrace it, allowing it to do the work in you.

I love the tension of knowing that my King is coming and yet not being able to see Him yet. I love—although I also feel the pain of—the various places in my life that are living in tension: marriage, ministry to Haiti, going back to Ireland. It is in the tension that life is created and holiness is felt: because at the right time, with the right amount of disappointment and hope, beauty and pain, suffering and glory, our lives on earth are being built. And yet, we are more: we are part of a Kingdom that goes on eternally. This life—the one you’re living—matters more than you have ever given it credit for. And you, who you are right now, the choices you are making, affect generations to come. So though you may have tension—hurts and worries that won’t leave you alone, struggles that seem to go on and on—know that these are part of a beautiful story that, if you chose to let your Creator in to co-create with you, will show Him and His glory off in the end.

1 Peter 1:6-9 says it best: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.”

No matter what state your life is in, I guarantee He wants it—to show off Himself. And I guarantee that when you are fully given over to Him, He will make beauty out of your pain and allow your story of redemption and hope—Jesus in His Kingdom at work—to shatter the lies of the enemy in other people. He loves to take what the enemy meant for evil and fill it to overflowing with good—and He’s powerful enough to do it, every time. You are not beyond redeeming, beyond Hope because we all know: Resurrection is here. It’s not a concept to be grasped, but a life to be lived, fully out of Him, in whatever broken places you have to offer.

The Kingdom has come—and is coming. Enjoy that tension with Him. It’s a beautiful story.

As for me, my journey, just beginning, is leading me to Northern Ireland for the next few years. A grace to my parents (sending out your single daughter isn't easy) and a delight to me: I will be working with students just like me as well as locals, bringing all forward into deeper encounters with the Lord and His radiant Kingdom. The people who were missionaries all over the world now need missionaries of their own: and I am delighted to be part of their journey! Pray for me!

Journeying Deeper into Dependence

This blog is unique in that it was started while I was still in Ireland and is being finished now, my second full day in the US of A:

The journey is nearly over...

As we've come to the end, we have been discussing our beginnings, our first impressions and who we were--vastly different from who we are now. We've been warned for several weeks now that "re-entry" will not be easy: and I don't expect it to be. I am going home to no vehicle, living at my parents house (about 45 minutes from my former community) and not many friends. I have to start over completely, in every way.

But for every loss, I have gained so much more that actually builds into my future: the eternal future. The deeper understanding and confidence I have in who I am and what I am made for I would never trade or give to any other. He's done work in me that takes me far beyond where I thought I would ever be. So though my future looks doubtful and small at home, I am still excited. For when I offer my small life to Him over and over again, He makes something beautiful, even of the pain and panic.

I am learning--over and over again--to look at my life and the relationships therein from His blindingly bold and big perspective. He's not afraid of me or where my heart goes or the hurt that may come to me. He knows how to put me to rights every time, which means I am free to love: something I had never known until these six months spent close to Him.

India was not a long fun fest of amazing moments: it was a gradual breaking down of everything in me that kept me from complete dependence on Him: a process I had gone through before, but which was enhanced by the circumstances I was in and had a deeper filling in of Him being more than just the God I prayed to, but a God who was near. When I was sick--feeling worse than I ever had in my life--and went to hospital for treatment and only felt sicker, He was my only Comforter. He was the only One who could: those around you can never known the depth of pain you feel, only He can truly known the pain in our bodies and souls.

There was an intimacy that was created during this trip--my struggles and fears all came to light in ways that I never would have orchestrated...I was so embarrassingly broken before all my friends. I had nowhere to run and no one to turn to--and He let me just be close. I didn't have to fix myself or figure it out or have the right words to say to explain myself: He just wanted me with Him, wanted me close.

Ironically, I know the sweetness of love more through this trip than I was ever planning on. I could feel it on my face as I went down the street in India: sometimes all we could do was pray and pray I did and in this small, very dependent act the Lord changed my heart incredibly. The piece and part of the world that seemed the most strange and far from my experience as I studied it in college became suddenly very dear and precious. Even now, I look at pictures and sigh: there's a grandeur and mystery to India not found in other places. It is a unique and exciting place, full of sights and sounds beyond explaining: a smell and feeling and movement that is its own. You'll never be hassled like you are in India, never see as many colors, never taste food quite so potent--and yet the honking horns and blessed noise and feeling of a city on a move come to feel like home. Because every step was taken with my Beloved by my side, leaning into my heart and speaking out His love over them, until I looked at them and was quite overtaken by the deep love He wanted so desperately to pour over the people just walking through these streets, caught in mindsets and world systems but made to be set free and loved well into full life.

And we got to show off that love: working all over that massive nation, showing the children there the deep love the Father had for them: feeding them, bathing them, laughing with them, playing soccer and braiding their hair. Our teams went two different places and worked in very different ministries but in every place, we saw kids and His people at work reaching out to these destitute ones. That was the most beautiful part for me, the one I didn't even realize I was in until our trip was almost over: God had let me see a legacy of love centered around the children of India, rescuing them, caring for them, taking care of their needs. I was literally walking in the footsteps of Amy Carmichael, who's writings I found at 18 and went absolutely nuts over, and God was speaking to me about my ministry to come.

Home now in California...

I have been praying about and for street kids for many years, since I spent the year devouring Amy Carmichael and went to Haiti. There are many promises and things to grow into connected to this call. I always knew my life would look very different from the norm--but it's becoming increasingly glaringly obvious that this will be no ordinary life. I always knew deep in me that certain things were never meant for me--and yet I wanted to know them--but the Lord has always held me back. This latest trial has shown me clearly that I am meant to live alone, but never alone: I will always be closely connected with many people. A piece of me resists giving in to this, really letting go, but another piece knows that she has been willing all along, and though it is a fight, is still willing, to let go of what seems to be my happiness to let my life be poured out fully for others. There are certain things that just don't fit into all the wholeness of me that will be required to give my life away for Haiti. It's not that my sacrifice is any grander or of more worth than another person's sacrifice, it's just what is required of me. And I get to give in--or resist--and this piece of my life, fully in His hands, is now His to do with as He wishes.

I am fully dependent on Him, in every area of my life.

And He could very well do a miracle and turn it all around--He's God, isn't He?--but for now, this is laid on the altar and it's very well to do so.

I urge you to take a look at your little life, your ordinary, putzing around the yard life and ask God where He wants to blow you out of the water, where He wants to do things you could never dream with you, because you're finally given over to Him. My little sister was saying today--in the middle of stating all her troubles--that she knows that God is real and has been protecting her. She's very aware of His Presence and safety in her life--and she's not even following Him! I think we all, as human beings, are aware that we are being taken care of, are dependent. We're even aware, as I am, of what is required of us to live out this life fully that He promised to us. You probably know exactly what you are required to lay down that you may follow Him fully with your life. I urge you to give in. The exciting adventure that is your life, that is my life, cannot even have beginnings to discuss with fellow journeyers if we never let it all go and let Him move through us to begin with. What is the thing keeping you from moving past your front door? Give it over to the Lord...you never know what He'll do with it.

Remember, He's good. And good doesn't mean "gives you what you want" but rather "always gives what's best for you." Trust Him and let go...

Loving this song, as it helps see me through this season...

be loved

I'm back from India and a brief hiatus from the writing world. Northern Ireland is home again--beloved home. But while I was gone, India was home and I was reminded of my other home, Haiti. It seems that I am destined to fall in love and lose myself to all the places I travel, as well as the people I travel with.

I am proud to have this heart, this heart that feels so deeply and wants so much. At times it has frightened me in its intensity and overwhelmed me in its depth: it seemed strange, no one else seemed to react the way I did to certain situations. But the Lord has been showing me the beauty in this depth, the privilege of being His and reflecting Him even in how I react to the world around me. I walk into places and see and hear with Him, the beauty and the pain reflected in my tears and my laughter.
   
It doesn't come without cost, this choosing to be all His. You have to learn to leave certain things behind, steward it in ways you didn't know were needed--I'm on the journey of figuring out how I operate--the beauty of it--and how to live out this silly, spontaneous, overwhelming life alongside Him. I feel so deeply--and I often don't know what to do with that. Is there a purpose in all of these tears?

God has been speaking to me about the depths in my heart and how He will use my wide awake heart (it's been so healed in these last few months, so much more able to show concern and reach out to those who are different from me and in need--and we are all in need, whether physically, spiritually or emotionally) to awaken the Western world to a heart in them that's grown tired and dead. Not that they don't want to be found full alive in Him, but they didn't even know it was possible and without being shown, wouldn't be able to come fully alive in all the ways He made for them.

There's a brokenness in love not fully expressed--I am becoming more and more aware of this and moving away from the dead way I used to operate. The gorgeous contrast of love fully expressed against what lives only in your heart was broken open to me when we spent time in New Delhi. My friends joined some other friends who had spent all their time in India working with the same group of street kids. We went out to a fancy restaurant that night and the kids were in the marketplace, they lived not far from there. They sat outside in the dar, staring at us through the plate glass windows of the restaurant. I felt horrified--these street kids were staring at us as we gorged ourselves...for me, a nightmare. I had to go to the bathroom to cry and try to understand what the heck was going on...all of my insecurities and striving and judgment and how wrong the world was rose up in me in this overwhelming torrent. I was no better than them but everything about the situation showed just how different we were, how far apart we were. It felt so broken.

I dreaded leaving that restaurant...tell you how it went in a moment...

I have started to realize and be able to put words to the fear in me that keeps me from love. A part of me so dreads the exposing and tearing and utter desperation of putting all of yourself out there to be seen that I have often rejected being loved before it could ever happen. I had no words, no conscious understanding of this part of my self and the lies I was living out of...but there it was. So much has been uncovered in this DTS--a fear of acceptance in me that literally kept me believing no one would ever fully want to know me, lies that told me I was all alone and had to take care of myself, so many vulnerabilities that I would never disclose until recently, when heartache showed me how far I had come.

I was told something recently that tore at the heart of me: I had been in this situation before and found myself in the same pain again...but the outcome was different, as the Lord had been promising me it would be. He had even anticipated, giving me a picture of my heart all shattered to pieces--which it became the next day--and how though it was in pieces, an electrical force held it all together, kept it suspended and connected. The idea and thought, the truth that I have found out as I have gone through this is that my heart is now so intimately connected with Him--I am His Bride--that no piece is held back and so even if the worst thing (considering my history) happened to me, I was actually okay. I fought against being in the situation I was put into, asking God to keep me from that pain, but he didn't answer. And yet He did: I saw the depth we have come to in our relationship now. I see the trust, the way our hearts are interlocked. When we went through this before, parts of my heart died or were harden, parts that only came into being recently, these last few months as I let Him massage out the wounds and come back to life. It was wild to realize how much of me had been cut off because of past wounds. Then, the same situation, almost exactly, came around and I was so afraid--but then he met me so completely. I realized His love that much deeper and the situation is setting me free to love in ways I never could have imagined.

Because perfect love really does cast out fear...and to be fully loved is worth every risk...and no matter what happens to me, my heart really is held. I can truly do anything in His strength, in His arms--and He will never let me fall.

It's not easy right now--I have to remind myself constantly of these truths as my heart continues to heal and attempt to move forward--but I am not afraid of this process and I know He will see me all the way through and He has good big plans for me--far more than I could ever ask or imagine. And I am not alone, I have all of you! I give you permission to speak life, to show off love to me, to remind me of truth--and I pray I can do the same for all of you.

When we left that restaurant, the kids came running to us. I've never seen anything like the smiles on their faces: they were well loved and they knew it. I didn't even know these 7, 8 and 9 year olds but they swooped me up into their embrace as well. If I was with their friends, I was one of them and worthy of love. The grace they showed, the joy in just being with those they loved and knew loved them back was beyond my small judgmental mind. I was floored and delighted to be embraced fully into the Kingdom, with no thought of who I was and what I was about: I was just worthy to be loved, because that was what they knew.

I want to know and express love like that. He is changing, shaping and forming me. I am well loved and as part of His Kingdom, you are as well. Let's express that deep embrace of love, that pulling into intimacy, today.

be loved. Beloved. That's just who you are as His kid.