Returning to My True Nature

I was cleaning my house tonight in preparation for our family Christmas Saturday morning and I came across a tote I haven't looked in for ages. As I was cleaning it out and sorting through the mess I found a bag of notes and cards that people had given me in college. Some of the notes were just saying hi and this and that but a few of the notes were some of the most encouraging words I've ever read. One was from one of my best friends and a couple others were from acquaintances, but they really touched me and made me think.I think I've lost some of the spirit and life that I had in me. I read the words they wrote about me and I just don't feel like that same person. I don't know if it's part of growing up or part of having to face the real world but whatever it is I don't like it. I enjoyed the childlike faith and spirit I had. I had dreams and ambitions and I loved without holding back. Over time I think I've hardened to many things because of rejection, disappointment and just plain fear. I guess I don't like part of who I've become. It kind of goes back to my last post. I've let the world tell me how I should be. The world is so cynical and mean and tells you that dreams rarely come true and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people telling me I can't do that or I shouldn't want this or dream of that. As long as I have God as my main focus I can dream whatever I chose. I am an optimist at my very core and I have let people change that and it breaks my heart. Who cares is people say I'm childish or stupid. I have a Father who adores me for who He made me to be and that's all I need. I don't need the world's approval and honestly if I have it then I am doing something wrong. We are called to be not of this world and that means not being full of all the negativity and hatred that the world throws at us. It means believing in crazy dreams because we know we have a God that loves to prove people wrong. He delights in making the impossible possible and I have to have faith that He will make my desires come true as long as I put Him first.
I feel like I've been rambling again but sometimes you just need to clear your head and here lately writing in this blog is the one thing that helps me to do that.

The Deepest Desires of My Heart

I'm finally in a writing mood again which likely means I'm going to ramble a lot in this post but I just have so much on my mind here lately. I read a post by Brandon Heath today and I haven't stopped thinking about it. He talked about the things we truly desire but for some reason try to hide away. Our true hearts desire. This desire isn't for worldly gain. This is a desire placed in our hearts by God almighty. This is something He has made us passionate about. It's the thing that we dream about and tell people if only I could have enough time, money, courage, ect to do this. He made me really think about how much I've been silencing my heart here lately. I've been doing it for awhile. Mainly because of my lack of faith in God and in myself. I let the world tell me what I should and shouldn't be and that's just not how we were made to be.
   One of my greatest desires is singing. When I sing I feel alive. I love singing to God and about God and it just makes me come alive and feel free. Although I've been singing here and there I haven't been doing it as much as I could or with enough confidence. I let people tell me I'm not good enough and it breaks my spirit. I know that God thinks I'm good enough and that's all that should matter. I've never going to please everyone and I'm going to have to learn how to deal with that. There's are people who won't like me or like how I sound. I won't get chosen for everything but that doesn't mean I can't keep trying and keep singing. If I sing for the audience of one then I'm doing what I should be. When I start to worry about what others will think and if they will like me and how good I might be to them, that's the point where I've truly lost my focus in life. I can't let others hurt my relationship with the one who made me. He gave me the desire to sing and to sing loud. I won't be silenced. I want to sing out for Him and use the talent He gave me. There's something to be said for humility and we all must have it. We have to realize that we are nothing without God. But we also have to realize how much we truly are because of God. There's no good in making myself shrink away and I'm tired of doing that. I want to use what God has given me to the fullest potential and I plan on doing just that.
    My other desire of my heart is the mission field. When I'm on a mission trip I feel like God is using me the most that I've ever felt. I feel at home there. I feel like it's where God truly wants me to be. I haven't fully understood to what extent He wants me there but I know He wants me there in some capacity. It helps me to put all my focus on God and helping His children instead of worrying about me and what the world is doing. I can get so caught up in this insane world but when I'm on the mission field everything just feels right. I can't wait to go back to Haiti. I've thought about it every day since I returned. I think that's one of the reasons I know it's a true desire of my heart because it never leaves.
   I know my heart has other desires. I would love to be married and have a family but I honestly believe that God wants me to work on the other desires first. I think He wants me to put His will first and foremost. There are times I worry that my desires will never come about but what good does that worry really bring? And what good am I doing for the desires of my heart by just sitting around and doing nothing? I think God gives us opportunities to make our desires come to fruition and we just have to make sure we are looking for those chances and jump on them when they come.
   This may all sound crazy and maybe it is a little crazy and weird but maybe that's who I am meant to be. I'm more than alright with not fitting in perfectly with this world. We are not supposed to and when we really start looking like part of the world that's the point where we've lost sight of who we are truly meant to be. So much is running through my mind but I thank God for the insight He gives and the peace He provides. He placed these desires in my heart and I have to truth in Him to bring them about!

Anger: the good, the bad and the ugly!

I am probably not writing this post at a great time considering the phone call I just had to deal with. I think I struggle with anger. I know there's a good anger and a bad anger and somewhere I get twisted in between the two. If you could see me right now you would know that I'm angry, but I actually feel ok with the anger I feel at the moment. I get angry when people don't have compassion, or when people simply care about nothing other than themselves. Sometimes I feel ok with that anger. When people care only about their own agendas and not about people and their lives. I put a lot of emotion into everything that I do. It's something that I've always done. I put emotion into friendships, work, church and so much more and it bothers me when people only put emotion into themselves. I'm not trying to brag about myself but I just had a phone call where basically someone yelled at me because something that highlighted them was pushed back again. It was pushed back because of really tragic reasons and they couldn't see that and only saw that their little spotlight would be delayed. When did we get so focused on only one thing in life: us? When did someones life matter less than a moment of glory? I think these are the types of things we should be angered about. I think the world and churches tell us so often that we shouldn't be angry at things that we forget that God was angry many times in the Bible. The world has forced us into believing that we only need to love everyone and conform to their standards that we so often forget we've already had our standards placed for us. Sin should make us angry. Injustice should make us angry. People dying every day and not knowing Christ should make us angry and yet we stay silent because we fear what others might say or do. I'm not saying that we should go around all the time being angry and I'm not supporting hate. The only thing God hates is sin so we should be the same. What I'm saying is that maybe there are more things out there that should upset us and motivate us to do something or make a change. We shouldn't be so placid in our emotions. We should be stirred by some things.
On the other side there is an anger that can bring us down. I know there are times when I let my not so righteous anger get the best of me. It's so easy to go to anger at times. Being able to truly forgive and turn the other cheek is one of the hardest things I deal with. There are times when I just want to be angry when someone hurts my feelings or doesn't chose me but then I'm reminded that all of those things are usually about how I feel and in the grand scheme of life are nothing. People will hurt us and we will hurt others but if we can't move past that anger and let stuff go then we are no better.
I guess there's a fine line between good anger and bad anger and we still have to focus on love above all else. It all comes down to making sure we are doing everything we can to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. We are called to be imitators of Christ and anything contrary to that, well...should make us angry!

The Art of Taking a Breather

I can't believe it's already October. This year has flown by. It seems only yesterday I was waiting to go to Haiti and now the year's almost over. This has been one crazy year to say the least and this is starting to be one crazy month. It feels as though we haven't stopped going since the summer here at work. It's been one event after another and it's not slowing down any. I guess that's a good thing. I like to keep busy and it does make time fly by but it's also kept me from being able to just stop and breathe in life. We get so caught up in the go, go, go that we often overlook the joy of a moment of peace.
The Bible tells us to "Be still and know that I am God." I think that verse was placed there for people like me. I have a fear of silence. I feel like I'm always going to make a stupid noise or doing something awkward. The quiet scares me because it takes away everything and makes you focus completely. I feel like it's so easy to go and go and do this and that but when it comes to just stopping for a moment it's so hard. I do this in Christian walk to. I get so "involved" in other things that I tend to forget and leave out the most important person. I make time to go to this event and sing here and help here but I don't make that quiet time for God where we can really focus on our relationship. If we look back in Exodus, we can see that God spoke to Moses in a whisper. We look for him in the fire and the fury of all that we do in life when all He wants is for us just to stop for a moment and be with Him. It amazes me how I can find all the time in my day to accomplish or semi-accomplish various tasks but I somehow can't fit in quiet time with the one who made me. I know life would be so less chaotic and stressful if I did that. I mean really did it on a regular basis too. Not just one day here and three days later. I just need to stop and be at peace with God each day.
One of my favorite things to do is to stand outside when the wind is blowing hard. I feel the air moving all around me and for that moment it's like the breathe of God. I need to find a moment each day where I make myself stop and feel the wind. I know God is waiting and wanting me to find that time but He won't make me do it. I have to make the choice and when you look at all that He has done for us should it really be so much to take a little time out of our lives and spend it with Him? Those are my thoughts for the day. Here lately I've been pulled in so many directions that I just had to remind myself to stop and focus on what really matters in life. After all, the rest is rubbish!

Fairy Tales, Real Life and My Happily Ever After

The one thing about going away for trainings is that it gives you plenty of time to be by yourself and think. This can be good and this can be bad. I have this thing called over thinking everything that can be a problem. Patience never was my forte. I like things to be done when I want them done. It's all back to this control issue that takes up so much of my life and thought. I still have yet to break myself of this idea that I have any control anyway. Yes, God has given us free will to chose to love Him or chose to deny Him, but once we chose to love Him part of the love is surrendering our so called control over to Him. This is what I think most of us struggle with. We want to love God and have His love in return but we can't let go of certain things. For some reason we think we can handle our lives better than He can. Maybe we are just too afraid of what He has planned for us or even what He might not have planned for us. Sometimes, the latter is where I get stuck. Part of me thinks it's only natural for a twenty-six year old single female who is still living on her parents property to wonder what her life is going to have in store for her. I remember being a little girl and just knowing I was going to marry a prince. I mean my name even means princess so it only felt natural :) I used to dream that I would ride away into the sunset with the man of my dreams and we would live happily ever after with our four children and beautiful house. All of this of course would have occurred by the time I was 20 because that was so old back then. Slowly life comes in and tells us that fairy tales aren't real. Disney lied to us. It's not all the guy's fault either. Let's be honest, they have a lot to live up to. We expected our prince to be smart, sing, strong, compassionate, manly, love to read but love sports, and most of all to take all of our trouble away. I have no doubt that there are just as many wounded princes out there as there are princesses. It's what this world has conditioned us to be. It shows us the beautiful fiction and then throws us into the facts. No man can live up to the prince's standards and let's face it ladies we aren't all singing, cooking, dancing, daring, size 0 princesses either. We are moody, emotional, distracted and half of the time have no idea what we want. The world tells us to be one thing, which most of the time we can never be. There's an inner longing inside us to be loved and wanted and while we have someone knocking on the door of our hearts we so often listen to what the world says. The world says you're not skinny enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough, you're not funny enough, you're not ENOUGH. When we hear all these voices for so long we start to believe it. We live our life comparing ourselves to others and forgetting what life is truly about. So many times we judge others by what we wish we could be. We don't even give them a chance because we have already determined that they are going to think they are too good for us or that we are too good for them. It's INSANE!!! And yet we do it all the time. I believe this is one of the devil's best ways of attacking us. He convinces us that no one could love us because we will never be enough. The amazing thing that is so hard for us to learn is that we don't have to be enough. That's what grace is for. Jesus comes in and gives the free gift of grace and makes us more than enough through Him. It's such an easy concept to write down but I still have yet to understand why it takes so much work to really apply it to our hearts. I go through spurts where I feel like I'm back in high school thinking everyone is judging me and all those emotions come racing to the forefront. Part of all that lies in selfishness and vanity. Why do I have to prove anything to anyone but God? Why do I let what people think of me direct so many aspects of my life? I've been dealing with this here lately. Struggling alot with who I am and what I'm doing with my life instead of just trying to live for God. It really is that simple. All we have to do is do everything we do (as Steven Curtis Chapman would say) to the glory of God and everything else will fall into place. That's the biggest goal in my life I need to be working on. Focusing on how my heavenly Father sees me instead of how people see me is going to have to be my first thought every morning.
Like I said, when we have trainings I have way too much time on my hands and it makes me think way too much. It is sort of a good thing. It allows me to process all that I've been dealing with. I just have to focus on not over thinking it all and ultimately just turning it all over to Jesus. So back to the whole little girl princess/prince life...the cool thing is that I am a princess. I have someone who treats me as His treasured possession. He is my prince. He came to the earth to rescue me from death. He gave His life for me and He loves me more than I could ever possibly be loved. And the greatest thing...one day He's coming back for me and we are going to ride off into the sunset together and live happily ever after. Beat that Disney!

What I've Learned from that Day

I remember like it was yesterday. It's so funny how we can forget what we did ten minutes ago but yet when you live through a tragic piece of history it's forever ingrained in your mind. I was working on my research paper in my Junior English class at Brownstown Central High School. It was about Dreams and I remember I was having hard time putting ideas together that day. I remember a teacher running into the computer lab and telling Mr. DeHeart to turn the tv on. We were all kind of worried but just thought it wasn't going to be anything too big. When the tv came on we saw that one of the twin towers in New York was on fire. They were talking about how a plane had hit it and we were all thinking a small plane had hit it and really didn't understand how it could happen on such a clear day like that. Then we listened more and realized it was a passenger jet and I remember thinking how that could ever happen. Then as we were watching the fire intensely we saw the second plane hit. I know most of us screamed including myself. We all knew at that moment that something big was happening. We knew this was just not an accident and that our country was under attack. I was scared and remember thinking if anyone would bother to attack our small town of Brownstown and then I thought about what had happened. Since Pearl Harbor our country had not been attacked with a force like this and these were people who just got on a plane that day to go back home or go on a business trip. They had no idea what was going to happen that day. I tried to imagine how scared they might be. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the idea of being on a plane that had been hijacked. Then even more news came in. A plane had hit the Pentagon and we knew at this moment it was war. But who would do this to America? Who would dare harm our country? I remember being mad and scared and anxious and just filled with so many questions. Then the last plane went down in Pennsylvania. At first when I heard it was outside of a small town I was thinking well maybe they are going everywhere. I was thinking of all the planes that fly every day and how many of them out there could be planning the same things. Later when they said they plane was brought down by the passengers I remember being filled with such a sense of awe for those people. To me, the members of United 93 are what the American spirit was all about. They knew that their plane was headed for something large. They realized they were going to die and instead of just sitting back and letting other people perish they risked and ultimately gave up their lives to save some. I think they gave us the first true glimpse of hope in all of the tragedy that was surrounding us. Our school went on lock down and when we finally got to go home I just remember it was so quiet. No one could process what was going on. I remember we cried and had a prayer meeting and cried some more but were left with such an earnesty to do something that really mattered. I remember doing many projects and papers at school about the events of that day. I remember how so many people looked to God after that and how the church started to flourish for a few years.
It's funny how history repeats itself. Whenever people are persecuted and torn down the church grows and so does our faith. When we realize that what we have and what we do doesn't matter if we don't have God our mind changes. It's been ten years since that day and sometimes I wonder if America has really changed. Yes security is tight now and many operations and wars and everything else have occurred but have we changed? Do we still live as if nothing could happen to us and with the sense that we are elite for some reason? Did all of those innocent people give their lives for something we have already lost? My mind is filled with so many emotions but I keep getting taken back to the passengers of United 93. They willingly risked their lives to save people they didn't know. Can we say we would do the same? Are we even willing to risk our reputation to tell people about Jesus? We can save people from eternal death but we let so many things hold us back. I can't help but think if we had an ounce of the courage those people had that day we might be rocking the world with all the things being done for Christ.
I will never forget that day and the impact it has had on my life. The thousands of Americans that lost their life that day to true evil and hate will always be on my heart. But so will the millions of people who are lost without a Savior. I can't do anything to bring the others back but maybe I can start saving lives from this point on.

It's Not Mine Anyway

Today is one of those days where I am having emotional highs followed by emotional lows. Sometimes it makes me nervous. I wonder if it's a problem that needs addressed. I joke sometimes because working for a mental health agency makes you try and diagnose yourself all the time. I guess we all have days where our emotions don't really know where they want to lie so they take us on a rollar coaster ride.
I've been thinking alot about Haiti again. I don't really think I've stopped thinking about Haiti since we left in February. I can't believe it's already September and we go back in like six months. It's time to start fundraising again and it just makes me so excited. I'm listening to JJ Heller today and the song playing now is "Not Mine Anyway." If you haven't heard the song you need to look it up. It's so powerful and it relates to what I've been thinking about here lately. I want to give all I have to God but sometimes we hold on so tight to things that do not matter at all. This song reminds me that nothing is ours anyway. Everything we have and are belongs to God so why not turn it all over to the one who made it all? It seems simple enough and I know that it will make my life so much easier but there's always something that seems to hold me back. That's what I've been working on here lately is to dissect myself and find that little part that won't let go of the control I think I have.
I've been thinking also about how much more I need to be working with the community I live in as well. Our church has an open door and we aren't utilizing it like we should. I've been thinking about this a lot and I hope we can start to change this. I'm hoping we can get together a group that can focus on reaching out to the community and helping them and just showing them the love of Christ. I don't think Jesus intended His church to be focused just on those inside the doors. He came to seek and save that which was lost and sick so we should be doing the same. I'm excited about the possibilities that we might have through this!