To give your life away

When God shows up, things happen, when God meets you, things change.

I used to dream in shades of self-protection. I used to dream of a white picket fence and a safe little home and community.

I used to dream of making MY life the very best it could be. All of my concerns were about MY safety, MY comfort, MY desires. In a lot of ways this is how we as Americans are taught to live, with a self-focus.

It isn’t wrong to want those things; it only becomes a problem when you refuse to accept from God anything other than those things. To make demands of God and get grumpy when He fails to deliver in the way that you think He should. I still have those dreams but now I’m making room for some new ones too. I’m becoming okay with my plan not happening the way I want it to.

Its not that I won't still have a family and a house in suburbia. Maybe I will, but for the first time I'm okay with not having that.

I'm unclenching my fists.

 Now I am okay if God has a different plan for me. This wasn't an easy thing to come to; I wrestled with God until I couldn't wrestle anymore. I know that whatever His plan is, it is SO much better than anything I can think up.

I no longer have a death grip on my dreams; the only thing I want to have a death grip on is Jesus.

Before, I only determined to keep myself happy and desensitized to pain but now I long to dive into the wreckage with others and bring them the hope that is Jesus. Whether that be in Cambodia or in a counseling office in the United States, there is pain and need and wreckage everywhere. I'm waiting to hear where He wants to send me or keep me. 

Its not that I won't come back, I just want to go. For a week, a month, a year, whatever He wants.

For the longest time I was too afraid to go anywhere outside of my safe little bubble. What a sad life that is.

Now I dream of Haitian slums, Belizean safe houses, and Cambodian orphanages.

Now I dream of giving my life away.

And that’s all God. Because on my own I am so far from wanting any of those things.

When God shows up and meets you, things change, you change. He met me and I know I will never ever be the same.

I am so thankful, so thankful that He loves me the way I am but won't leave me there.

I have to trust that God will be with me wherever I go and that HE IS ENOUGH. Just Him is enough. He invites me to let His words have the final say. He invites me to a new way of loving that I had never known before. A love that is brave and that when met with opposition loves back even harder and more persistently. The same way that He loves me.

Unclench your fists; He has such beautiful things to drop in your hands.

Matthew 13:44

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field