I love the way God’s plans are always far better than ours!! Recently, I have been really struggling with accepting possible directions to which I feel God has been leading me. I felt that, as soon as I accepted anything God challenged me with, and began to get excited for it, He closed the door. Missions has been something I have been considering for a while and this past year my passion for missions really began to become a huge desire for me. This was only further excited as I began the application process to a mission’s organization in hopes of going to Ethiopia with a close friend of mine whose parents have served, and continue to serve as missionaries there. Only, as I continued to pray about this I no longer felt as though this was something God was calling me to, at least not at this time in my life. Not only was another dream getting the door shut on it, but the one God seemed to be opening was not one I wanted to go through.

 I kept being challenged by the questions of isn’t there a huge need here in the States? And who is going to stay and serve here? I knew it was a terrible attitude to have, and the questions were valid, but staying here just seemed like a more frustrating mission and I wanted to help those who knew they needed help. My reasons for not wanting to stay here kept multiplying, but the more I fought God on this, the less and less I had a peace about going overseas. I soon gave in, but not with a joyful heart, in fact I began to get pretty negative, and the passion I once had for the future had been taken from me. I couldn’t cheer myself up. So that’s where I’ve been for a bit. In this funk of knowing God is good, and trying to live my life for Him, but not completely living this out since I still held some resentment towards Him.

 Then today I went on a school visit to Zeeland Christian. A school visit that I actually prayed I wouldn’t have to go on. I was hoping they would get a snow day and I would get to sleep in. Thank goodness God doesn’t say yes to these selfish prayers of mine!! Anyway, I arrived and I was just blown away by this school. We meet with the principal, and his passion for God, the children, the school, and his job was just so evident. This school is the most impressive elementary school I’ve ever seen, and as I listened to all of his stories of how different programs can be, it was clear that this school had God’s handiwork all over it. The principal has been a principal there for 27 years, and he centers everything he does around God. The giant leaps of faith he made because he felt God’s nudges, and calls, and chose to listen, are just inspiring. Everything that they do there has a reason, and the outcomes are just beautiful. From the giant rock pillar at the entrance to remind them of what God has done (like how the Israelites would mark places where God did amazing things as reminders) to the faces of the children in other countries that they sponsor, to the classrooms of full Spanish and Mandarin emersion, or inclusion, to the mission’s trips they go on, to just the evident love that can’t go unnoticed, God’s fingerprints are everywhere. I’ve never seen a place like it. As I listened to the stories that the principal, and other teachers shared with me, I found my passion for the future returning. At the end I asked the principal what advice he would give to a person like me who wants to go back home to a public school where I won’t be in a community where God is at the center of everything and where I won’t have the power to make the kind of transformations in a school as he has. It was at this response that I couldn’t help but smile, because I knew it was God’s way of reminding me that His plans for me are far better than mine, and that I just need to trust Him. The principal gave advice about being salt and light wherever I am, and not being scared to take a stance, but then he briefly shared of how God brought him here. He didn’t want to get into education, he had given up on it and he had wanted to do missions!! Go figure! But God had other plans for him, so he listened and became a teacher, and loved it, but then God wanted him in administration, and even though he would still love to be in the classrooms, he followed God, became a principal and God has clearly been using him to do amazing things ever since!! At the end he simply said; don’t be afraid to just go where God leads you, because he was a way of taking you places you would never imagine you would end up! I still don’t know for sure what plans God has for me, but today I was reminded of how they will always be better than what I could plan for myself, and that when I trust Him and take leaps of faith that this Christian leader and other great men and women do, God will do amazing things. Amazing things that I will get to be a part of! God will do amazing things; it’s up to us if we are going to let God use us in them when he presents us with the opportunities. I once again am reminded of one of my favorite Bible heroes, Esther, who knew that God would bring salvation to her people, but she had to decide if she was going to let God use her, or if she was going to pass the chance up and watch as God used someone else. This principal is that modern day Esther, running through the doors of God’s opportunities and choosing to let God use him! I hope I can do the same!

I love the way a child can love. Have you ever noticed the way some children can just love? It’s unlike God’s love because it is often very naïve, but it’s one of closest things to unconditional love I’ve ever seen. I remember the way in which I loved my parents, and showed it to them. I remember when my dad would leave for work and running to the end of the block and waving to him as long as I could until his car disappeared over the hill. Then when I got a little older I would run to the end of the block, climb up the road sign and wave clinging to the top, just because I thought it would help me be able to see him for a little longer. I remember being restless on Friday’s for him to come home so that we could start family fun night! I remember one day being so impatient that I took out every game we owned and set them up so that the moment he came home we could start whatever game he choose. Last year the band Brilliance came to our school, and the lead singer shared a story about his little girl. One day she was looking sad and so his wife asked her what was wrong, and she said that she just missed her dad. She asked her if she missed him every time he went away on a trip, and she responded with these words, “I just miss him every time he’s out of my sight.” This story made me smile so much, and it really is true. As a kid, you have this amazing ability of loving so strongly. As we grow older, and encounter disappointments we begin to build up walls, and keep our hearts safe. Children however, if they love you, then they really love you!! God is a God not of love, but that is love, and He will never disappoint us. His love for us can be trusted, and so there is no need for us to keep our hearts safe from Him, and yet I’ve noticed that we are unable to just love Him. Why is that? Have you ever questioned this? What is keeping me from full out loving God? When will we live out the words, “I’m running to your arms, I’m running to Your arms, the riches of Your love will always be enough, nothing compares to your embrace.” When will we run into the loving arms of our heavenly father the way a child runs into the arms of their father? As a child I had total trust and confidence in my father, he was a superhero, one of the really fast ones! When will I let myself become a child of God, and let him be my superhero? What will it take for me to put the trust and confidence in Him so that I can love Him like no other? When will I be able to say, I just miss Him every time He’s out of my sight? Could you imagine a world where the children of God, really loved Him the way they should? Where they had unquestioning trust and confidence in Him. Where they became saddened any time they couldn’t see Him, and so were saddened by all the things of this world that He wasn’t seen in. Who restlessly awaited His return, and ran to the end of the block so that they could catch the last possible glimpse of Him, thus spending even a second more of time with Him. I think a love like this would affect are lives more than we could ever imagine, and yet it is something so simple even a child can do it with their father. When will we let loose the love for our Father? 

I love the glimpses of God’s glory and beauty that He at times blesses us with. I just love when He, as
Brandon Heath’s song asks of, gives me His eyes so I can see. I mean it is literally all inspiring when the glasses of His goodness are put on my eyes so that I am no longer stuck in the blurred confusion of this world, but see in the clarity of His will at work. I wish I kept these glasses on so I could see the world like that all the time. I mean that isn’t even a good analogy, the Bible really says it best, I was blind, but now I see (John 9:25)!! Life without Him isn’t just blurred, it’s completely dark!
This desire to see reminded me of this Bollywood movie I saw with my mom. In the movie there is this
great boxer who is so good that he can win even with a blind fold on, and this girl who dreams of making it out of her poor home in India by becoming a famous dancer, but gets hit by a car and becomes blind. This boxer, not wanting the girl to lose her dream, offers to teach her how to see without her eyes. She agrees, and so he takes her to this place where they come to this pool of water, and while they are splashing water on their faces he shoves her head under the water as if to drown her. He finally lets her up and she is grasping for breath and freaking out because she thinks he just tried to kill her. He then responds, saying, “Lesson number one, never forget those thirty seconds under the water where the only thing you wanted was air. If you want to see as much as you want to breathe, than nothing can stop you, you will be so possessed that you will be unstoppable.” What if we took on this challenge? What if we fought to see God’s will and though His eyes as much as we fight to breathe? What if His vision was our greatest desire? I mean this would mean that above all else we would seek to see the world as He sees it, and to see His will in our life as well as in those around us. This would mean that when we offered up the words, “Your will be done” they wouldn’t just be a request of please let me be okay with Your will, or please make it so that Your will is (insert whatever your request is), but rather what you genuinely wanted. What if you sought to have your will come align with His will? Maybe then we would become so possessed with Him that we truly would be unstoppable. Jesus sought to see His father’s will, He desired this above all else, including His life (which includes breathing!!) and as we now know, He was unstoppable. Even death couldn’t conquer Him! Let’s follow His example. Let’s pray that God would heal our blindness, give us His sight, and then let’s fight to keep this sight until we are so possessed with Him, that nothing of this world can stop us! Let us no longer stumble around this world, but proclaim the glory of how we were once blind but we now see!!

Give me your eyes for just one second

Give me your eyes so I can see

Everything that I keep missing

Give me your love for humanity

Give me your arms for the broken hearted

Ones that are far beyond my reach.

Give me your heart for the ones forgotten

Give me your eyes so I can see

I love the rainbows God makes out of our lives. I’ve been reading this book Desiring God, by John Piper, and in it he writes how, “We were made to be prisms refracting the light of God’s glory into all of life.” Isn’t that an awesome analogy to our lives! I mean what a privilege it is that God would chose our broken lives to display His magnificent glory. To use our lives in such a way that bends his already brilliant glory into something of unique beauty. In 8^th grade, for my science fair project I did this experiment where I compared how different light bulbs affected a prism. In order to control the variables it ended up becoming basically what one light did to a single prism suspended alone in darkness. It wasn’t the coolest science fair experiment, but it was still neat to see how the brightest lights reflected these bold rainbows onto the walls of the box the prism was suspended in.  My life is far from a lone prism in complete darkness. Yes there is a ton of darkness in this world, but God has blessed me and surrounded me with the lights and lives of many strong Christian friends and leaders. Nonetheless, when I read this quote I was reminded of this project and soon found myself smiling at the thought of how beautiful and bold the rainbow that came from the light of God’s glory would be; especially since there would be multiple prisms refracting His glory together. I mean imagine with me a world where Christians weren’t just lights but rainbows. They didn’t just share of God’s glory, they let His glory be refracted through their lives in such a way that rainbows danced about them. I remember how when I was little I loved dancing around in the living room. I particularly loved playing dress ups and dancing around as a princess. I had this one dress that had silver sequins and while it wasn’t my favorite (my Cinderella dress was my favorite!) I loved wearing it in the afternoon, because when the sun came through our big living room window and I was wearing it, rainbows would dance all around me as I spun! What if that’s what our Christian lives looked like? What then is keeping us from shining for God in this way? His glory is bright enough, so it has to be something on our part. My theory is that our prisms of life have fallen into the mud of sin and we won’t let Him wipe it off so that His light can get through (and refracted out!). My prayer now becomes that He would daily wipe away the muck on my prism so that His glory will not only be able to enter into my life, but also be refracted out in a way that displays the brilliant and bold rainbows of His glory!! I don’t want to just see His glory, I want to let His glory be seen in my life, and since for some mysterious reason He wants to use our lives in that way too, I say, let’s put an end to letting muck keep us from dancing in rainbows!!

I love the new years. I love the idea of a new beginning. I am a dreamer and so I always have such hopes for each year, as well as reflect on all the amazing and wonderful things that happened throughout the past year. This past year has been amazing, I have learned so much and have just seen the way God works in such amazing and beautiful ways. Each life really is a masterpiece in His hands and seeing it in this way is truly beautiful. But as I begin this New Year, and start back at school, I can’t help but set goals for how I want to begin living more fully. As this past year came to a close I really struggled with God’s love and what it means to love Him back, so as I begin this new year, I want to make this my mission, and so far it seems as if God had everything already set up. My church is doing this read the bible in one year, and my interim class is called “Praying like Jesus,” and so naturally I am super excited to embark on this journey of getting to know my savior more deeply. I think the only way I can truly live my life is out of pure love for Him. I can’t live it without Him, or even out of gratitude to Him. I can’t live it in terms of what would Jesus do, or what does it look like to truly live a Christian life. These are all questions that are based in what should I do, not what do I  want to do, and so they must become questions of the past. I want to want and desire God. I mean I think it’s what He wants of us too. He wants us to choose Him above all, not pick Him because we should. And so my new questions are, first, what is preventing me from truly loving my savior, and then next is what can I do to change that. As I reflect on all that I truly love, it’s the people closest to me that come to mind, and I think this is because I spend so much time with them. So I believe the key to falling in love with God is by spending a lot of time with Him. Then, after I come to this place I will begin letting my life flow from that love. I will begin living for Him not because I should, but because I want to.

 When I first started out with this love fearlessly idea, I had a different picture of love, but now this phrase takes on a whole new meaning. There really is no fear in love. I guess love is blinding in a way, you can’t see clearly since you are so consumed in your feelings for the other. Maybe that’s why “radical Christians” can do such extreme things in our eyes. From the outside they look crazy, but really they are just in love. Maybe not, but at any rate, that is what I want for my life. And so my new goal is to learn more about my savior, and spend more time with Him, in hopes of falling for Him. I want a life so consumed by my love for Him that nothing else really matters. I have no clue what this new year will bring, but if it results in getting even a little closer to my savior, and opening my heart up to Him even just a tad more, I know it will be just wonderful!!

I love being home. I love being surrounded by all the familiar of all that I grew up in. But most of all I love being surrounded by those I love most, my family. I came home and there was a welcome banner, and almost all of my siblings, and I was just so happy. I love just spending time with them and laughing with them. I love being able to just flop down beside them and laugh about whatever nonsense there is. I love the crazy amount of food my mother is always making, and all the random movies I get to watch with her is subtitles! I love seeing old friends, and best friends, and just getting to catch up with them. Coming home, while it doesn’t have all the activity of college life, is still so refreshing and lovely. I love my friends at college, but there is something about spending time with those you’ve known for years, and grown up with. While I’m surrounded by my family, and yet still on my quest to understand love better, I find myself in constant search to better understand what it truly means to love. I’ve been reading Crazy Love and in it Francis Chan asks whether a heaven with all the things we could want, but no God, would be okay with us. And as I looked at the list I really wasn’t sure. If my family and friends were with me and there was no pain, suffering, emotional distress etcetera. That would be pretty good. I think I would be content, and yet it would be without God, so how can I say that I love Him if I would be okay with a place without Him? This has led me to really seek to find what it is about Him that I really love, and whether or not I really love Him. Do I love Him, or just all that He gives me? I could go on with these questions I’ve be stuck on, but where this connects is when I consider the fact that I am surround by people I say I love, and yet am uncertain of why or whether I love God. I mean how can I love sinners, those who are selfish like me, and who will let me down, but not God, the one who has sacrificed and given me everything! So once again I am stuck with the question of what love is. I know I need to live my life in it and so this break, while I am surrounded by those I love, I want to also spend time with the one who loves me the most, as I hope to truly fall in love with Him.

(* I wrote this a week or so ago, but I forgot to put it up until now!!)