The News We've All Been Waiting For

So far in life I've had to make very few big decisions that were going to greatly alter the course of my life in any significant way. And I know that statements not actually true, cause it was all the small little decisions that made up my life and whatever, insert charming poster slogan here.
The point is, I've been able to rather discretely make most of my decisions based on "gut feelings" without anyone really noticing that many times there was very little logic or pragmatism behind my moves. And I've written before about how theres been some confusion in that for me as to whats the Holy Spirit directing and whats just me being selfish. And I will say that God has been so gracious in that. And he HAS been faithful to lead me.

But.

Before I started paying attention to any of that.
-The decision to leave high school a year early and do college? Just felt like what I should do.
-The decisions to miss LOTS of class and not worry about failing? Just always felt like it was gonna be fine. And it was.
-The decision to not purchase any text books for the classes I had signed up for my previous semester (even though I was several weeks in)? Just felt something telling me I wouldn't need them. It wasn't till later that I walked into cosmetology school only to find that their course was starting in two weeks and it was the last one that would offer the ROP discount (which i needed)
-The decision to drop all my classes (thank goodness I hadn't bought the books) and start cosmo school? Felt like it was just where I needed to be to minister.
-About three months till graduating cosmo school, I started leaning towards the decision to use my new skills to do missions work. Totally just a desire the lord put on my heart. Didn't make any practical sense whatsoever.
-Decision to attend the missions conference at rcf instead of traveling to see family? Just felt like it was where I needed to be that weekend.
-Decision to sit next to the CEO of Greater Europe Missions and his wife? Just felt like a good place to sit.
-Decision to go back and find an old email the other morning, five minutes before I needed to leave for my meeting with the missions pastor? Just felt like an important thing to do, even though I was probably gonna be late.

So there I was going back to find that old email when I saw one I had missed that had been sitting in my inbox for over 10 days. And it was an email from the missions organization I had applied with, Greater Europe Missions. It was the first I'd heard from them since a few weeks ago when they had written to say it looked like all the options they thought would be good for me, didn't look like they were really going to work out. I knew that wasn't a no, but I had also put a lot less stock in the European Missions front after that.

So then I see this little gem. The one that had been there for almost two weeks unnoticed. It was an email letting me know that a family who has been serving in Kosovo for a long time contacted GEM with a long list of ways they could use cosmetology where they're serving. As well as a bunch of other ways in which I could be of use. The family wants me to come and live with them for a year and help out by doing a whole list of different things there with them in Kosovo. One of the poorest nations in Europe, with a 90% muslim population (and a reputation for no electricity many times)

excitement
surprise
uncertainty
excitement
curiosity
nervousness
fear
excitement

I've been feeling all those things for the last week since I got this news. So much to think about. So many possibilities to weigh. If I go that will mean A, B, and C. If I don't go, thats going to mean D, E, and F.

The point is on this one, theres just too many feelings involved and I can't possibly begin to think that I can make this decision based on any one of them. And so the great consolation to all of this is that I can rest knowing that its God's job to stear my heart and that I will let him peel away all the feelings so that I can have assurance in what He's wanting from me here. And I especially keep coming back to the need for his peace and assurance because I know that if I am to go, there are probably going to be days where qutting and coming home are going to look very enticing (especially if theres no electricity). And unless I start with a rock solid certainty that Christ has placed me there for a purpose, I know its going to be far too tempting to convince myself on those days that I must have made the wrong decision. That I must have felt this one out wrong. That God wants me back home with my family and hot water.

So I need you to pray for me to get assurance. Whether thats assurance to go or stay. I need you to beg God to give me unwavoring clarity in this decision. So please pray for that for me. I need it.

And pray quickly if you wouldn't mind, cause I'm not gonna get such excellent air fare rates if I wait too much longer ;)

Finding Joy in Sadness

Sometimes blogging for an audience is hard for me because as much as I want to share things that are true and meaningful, I am deathly afraid to share things that are true and meaningful. Which is dumb and its a fear driven mostly by pride which makes it even dumber. Because its easy to write the stuff that makes me sound smart and discerning and well put together and focused. Its an entirely different thing to write the stuff that reveals where I'm awkward and broken and scared. But its not fair for me to only share the one side. Its not fair and its certainly not helpful. The people I can really relate to and who've helped me the most are the people who haven't tried to hide their broken pieces from me but have rather shared them in an attempt to help me with my own.

So I'll share my messes with you knowing theres a possibility you will no longer think that I'm perfect and you may even start to wonder if I've actually got serious issues and you may decide I'm too much of a mess and you're not really interested in being friends anymore. In the name of transparency, I'll take the risk.

The last few days I've struggled with feelings that I can only describe as a sort of depression. If we've spent time together in the last few days you may or may not have noticed it depending on how I felt at that particular moment. Some of you noticed because I came over to your house and cried, and others of you didn't notice at all and are probably wondering what else I've successfully faked in my life. Sorry.

I'm wondering at this point if it isn't some kind of spiritual warfare because early monday morning at exactly 3am I felt what must have been the lord, wake me up and give me some very specific things to pray for and then certain scriptures that I needed to read. It was weird and I can say that something like that has only happened to me maybe one or two other times. And I don't even remember all the things I prayed for or all of the verses I read but I do know that the two that stuck with me and that I woke up four hours later remembering was a line about speaking truth to your heart and then Psalm 16:9-10

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption

Which is both very strange and very encouraging because ever since that morning when I woke was when I felt a really deep sadness for no real reason that I could figure out. But that whole day I was constantly reminded to "speak truth to my heart" regardless of my feelings and also I was reminded that the Lord would not abandon my soul, despite the fact that my soul felt very dark.


So thats been this week so far. My prayer is that it is a passing thing and I won't have those feelings anymore come tomorrow. Because thats just not me.

Ok but...

In the last 3 days the best way I can describe how my feelings toward the lord have been, is that I felt as though I had to fight through all the sadness in order to cling to Jesus. I've felt especially broken and in need of Christ's rescue to bring me joy these past three days more than I probably ever have. I've felt totally incapable of being able to bring myself any comfort at all apart from time in scripture and prayer. And when the distractions were gone, I felt completely dependant on Jesus to keep me from melting down right there in my car or wherever.

In other words... I've been a hopeless sinner in need of the gospel.
In short, I've been a human this week.

And while I'm praying this is just some short lived thing and these emotions won't stay long in my heart, I'm thankful for the ways they have helped me to see where my normal every day living is not as dependant on Christ as it should be. These last 3 days I've "felt" totally incapable of bringing myself any real comfort, but the truth is I actually AM totally incapable of bringing myself any real comfort. Any comfort thats going to last that is.

Because I can say out of my head knowledge, that yeah I'm in a desperate state and completely hopeless without Jesus. But I often have days where I dont feel like im in a desperate state at all. In fact there are days when I think I'm doing pretty awesome and I'm getting so much work done and my life is in order and my friends all think I'm awesome and by golly people like me! And on those days its really easy to skip God and worship myself because eh, I'm not really THAT in need of Christ. Not on a day when everything is going super awesome.

Ok so don't get me wrong. God's main purpose is his glory and our joy. God is all about our having joy. Real, lasting, awesome joy. I don't believe that its God's desire for all of his children to live their lives in a weird emotional sadness. But I will say that I think these last three days have shown me quite a bit about the errors in my heart and how I actually need to feel that level of dependancy on Christ every day, not just the days when I'm emotionally sad.

Its been a good reminder that my hope is never found in my personality or my abilities or my accomplishments but rather its found in the un-relenting grace of my savior regardless of how I am "feeling". Because how can I truly celebrate his grace if I can't even acknowledge how broken and in need of it I really am?

So I'll leave you with these two quotes that really hit home for me on this.

"There remains a tendency in all of us to swindle ourselves into believing that we've grown beyond the need for moment by moment grace."

"Living by faith=I live like I believe my condition is as desperate as God says it is and his grace is as powerful as he declares it to be."

Thats all I got.

Suffocated by Anxiety

There are some days when I just feel so off-kilter and so out of touch that I find myself actually begging for the promises of God to be true. Which sounds silly because God is God and he doesnt break his promises regardless of whether I ask him to keep his word or not. Thank goodness he is not a human!
So today when I read the words “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8), I found myself begging God to please please let that be true for me.
And of course it is. I'm his child. His kid. All of his promises are true for me.

But sometimes it feels like they're not.

Sometimes I let myself fall away from scripture and reminders of his promises to the point that I forget they are even there. Sad. But true.

Confession; lately I have felt very anxious, very distracted and very unsettled. Bigger confession, I sometimes struggle with remembering that God is good. Confession number three, I sometimes treat prayer as if it doesn't work. This presents itself in my not praying or thanking God but rather worrying and meditating on possible solutions to my problems instead.

Its a vicious cycle. And its not how it needs to be.

And so I read the words of Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
And I'll read them over and over again hoping that by reading them enough times I will start to feel peaceful. And sometimes that works and its great for a while until something else creeps back up, and sometimes that doesn't work and I get frustrated because it feels like I'm begging God for peace and he's just not answering.

But the peace of God is more than a flimsy feeling of peace. It is a knowing, and a settled confidence in the sovereign goodness of God that will guard against all anxious feelings. Its when I really believe that God's promises are true, and he will guide me, and he does have things covered, that I can start to experience real peace.

And so when I am thanking God for his promises, and reading them and constantly repeating them to myself is when my trust in God begins to deepen and real peace starts to set in. But its when I'm not thanking God and I'm not thinking about his promises and I'm instead thinking about all that I dont have, and all that I need to do, and all that I want for myself that I lose my trust in God and eventually slip into a very self-focused anxiety and depression. And thats the thing that I'm constantly struggling against. An obsession with self vs. a peace in God. And every day I am faced with a choice to follow God or myself, and even as obvious as the answer to that question may be, it is still never easy. Prayer, is not always easy for me. Wanting to read my bible is still not always easy for me. Running to God with my problems is still not always easy for me.

But thats why Paul tells Timothy that its a struggle and we have to train ourselves into godliness. It doesn't just show up, and it isn't easy. Something about Paul saying that being godly isn't easy, that makes me feel a lot better about how much I struggle with it. But we do still work after it. Because Paul also reminds us that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. So its not a pointless struggling and God promises that we will grow in it. He's not just gonna leave us to it on our own to see how quickly we can hang ourselves.

Which is a really beautiful thing to remember on days like today when I feel completely wretched and unable to think straight because of all the anxiety building up in my thoughts. I wont get left in that. And more often than not I have to speak truth to my emotions. Perception is not always reality and just because I'm a girl doesn't mean my feelings always get to win.

Amen

Why I Dont Vote, but Will Next Time

Today was voting day and I did not vote. To be honest I probably would have voted had I been registered. But the fact that I've had two years to register and still didn't get it done is really nobody's fault but mine. Especially when my friend Andrea works at the county office and once picked up a voter registration card for me to fill out at my leisure. I think I left it in her car though. My bad again.

But you make time for the things you value.

So It's only fair that we call a spade a spade and just confess, I don't vote because I don't see it as that important. And by that important I mean, I've made special trips to town just to get milk cause we were out of it, but I wont take the ten minutes to register. Ah its true that apathy is alive and well in the young people!

But let me just stop and preface all of what I'm about to say with this simple truth. After today I have every intention of registering and voting in any and all following elections. Our last president was voted in the november before I turned 18 in December and so in my ignorance I went about my life thinking I had another four years before I had to worry about voting. This little election really snuck up on me. #uneducated voter

That being said, I had conversations today with a few different people on why I wasn't voting and basically my initial feeling on it was why do I want to put any amount of time and resources into merely working to patch the symptoms of a greater core issue? To me it all looks very bleak. And I know that's like the classic tagline for my generation. But I look at the candidates and just say, none of them seem to have hearts that I would want running anything of mine, let alone my state. Like some of those candidates I wouldn't even want to housesit for me.

And I get it. I get both sides. Just because you dont agree with everything about a candidate doesnt mean you should just be irreresonsible and ignore the whole thing. Dont throw the baby out with the bathwater. I get it.

But from everything I can gather, if we just boil it down to its most basic, a lot of voting is taking either uneducated guesses, educated guesses, or just picking the lesser of two evils. Which from a christian standpoint, when is it ever a good idea to pick any kind of evil, regardless of whether its the lesser one?

For a lot of people the issue of whether to vote or not is super black and white, its our civic right and duty and we need to be responsible citizens and even responsible christians and exercise that right or we have no business complaining about the state of things.

But I hardly ever complain about the state of things. The state of things is no surprise to me. We live in a fallen world with a fallen economy led by fallen people. And so for me the issue of whether to vote or not is very muddy. And in the end, the percentage of Calvinist in me goes Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

So God institutes the authorities that he sees fit, mostly through the willing actions of people, i.e. voters.

So heres my little take on voting for what its worth.
I think its good. I love that God has blessed me to live in a country where I feel safe and I am given a choice about things. I am unbelievably thankful that I'm not under African government or Chinese government or some other tyrannical form of government. I am. I appreciate American freedoms. But in the end, its not the most important thing. And as a follower of Jesus I'm more interested in living in a way that says to those outside the church, we actually have another way of living if you're tired of what this empire has to offer. Yes this economy is screwed, yes people want the right to do drugs whenever they'd like, yes our legal system is flawed, but none of those things should actually change anything about the way I intend to live. Because as much as I am given many freedoms through my American citizenship, I'm given a thousand times more freedom through my citizenship in Christ. And that freedom is irrevocable. And my American citizenship, and my government leaders and the amount of money that I'll have to pay in taxes does not define me. In fact if anything, Christians should be able to find joy in the fact that even if nothing we voted for goes our way, all that money and taxes are to us just silly and temporary and the real importance lies in eternity.

So we can vote sure, but we vote lovingly, in a way that is concerned about what will bring about the greatest potential for eternal well-being for our fellow citizens and if we're followers of Christ living as we should be, then like Paul, we can in any and every circumstance learn to be content.