Whatever you're doing inside of me

I have 4 more weeks of grad school and I cannot tell you how excited that makes me feel.  For lots of reasons....less stress; no more studying; freedom to read for fun and attack the mounds of books I’ve been waiting to read, but can’t muster up the motivation on top of the hours I spend for schoolwork; more free time to delve into God and join Him in what He’s doing around me; free time to spend with people around me whom I love and feel like I have such little time to offer them; and time to get prepared for this next season.  Speaking of the next season, I feel like once again I’m in a season of transition as grad school is finishing up and I’m looking forward to what God has for me next.  And in this, I know it’s going to bring something new in me and for me through Him.  The song below has been playing in my head on repeat and I swear it’s on the radio every time I get in the car, but I feel like every single word of it has been my life over the last 6 months or so and will continue to be in this transition period.  I love that every day is new with Him and that He is constantly changing me, drawing me closer to Him.  It’s a continual process and won’t stop until the moment I take my last breath.  God is always doing something in my life, perfecting me into the likeness of His image.  These days, it’s just in a super concentrated amount as He’s helping me shed the old and put on the new and it’s exciting (and chaotic) to wait on Him and watch Him work.

It's time for healing time to move on 

It's time to fix what's been broken too long

Time make right what has been wrong 

It's time to find my way to where I belong

There's a wave that's crashing over me 

All I can do is surrender

Whatever you're doing inside of me 

It feels like chaos somehow there's peace

It's hard to surrender to what I can't see 

But I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone

Time to begin again

Reevaluate who I really am

Am I doing everything to follow your will

Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills

So show me what it is you want from me

I give everything I surrender

To whatever you're doing inside of me

 It feels like chaos somehow there's peace

Though It's hard to surrender to what I can't see

But I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time to face up

Clean this old house

Time to breathe in and let everything out

That I've wanted to say for so many years

Time to release all my held back tears

Whatever you're doing inside of me 

It feels like chaos but I believe

You're up to something bigger than me 

Larger than life something heavenly

Whatever you're doing inside of me 

It feels like chaos but now I can see 

This is something bigger than me 

Larger than life something heavenly

Something heavenly

It's time to face up

Clean this old house 

Time to breathe in and let everything out

-Sanctus Real

Our pastor said this during his sermon this morning….”Faith is not what you believe about God, but the things you do because of what you believe about God.”  Simply put, it’s our belief in action.  Is it really faith that those things you say you believe are true if you can’t or don’t put them into action?  It always takes an extraordinary amount of faith for me to surrender to the things I know He’s doing in my life, allow Him to do the work, prune away, and wait on Him for my next step.  To allow myself to believe that despite the fact that it feels chaotic and doesn’t make sense, and is completely contrary to the world, that it is worth it, is completely the best for me, and is going to be so amazingly good.  To allow Him to lead and for me to simply follow the path He has laid out for me.  Pushing down my “self” daily and keeping my eyes fully on Him.  And I know that not only this transition season but the next chapter too is going to stretch that.

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos but I believe

You're up to something bigger than me 

Larger than life something heavenly

Navarre Beach Week

 

This past week I got to spend 7 days with most of my immediate and a big portion of my extended family. And it was such a blessing.  After spending so much time away and missing out on times like this as well as holidays and family events, it is just simply so nice to be blessed with the time to spend with my family.  Most of them I hadn’t seen in almost 7 months because even though I’m back in the States, my schedule with school and work have kept me pretty close to Nashville.  But this is what I always missed the most when I was living in Mozambique.   

I love these guys!  Oh yeah, and the beach was pretty nice too!

Shifting Passions

This particular post is going to share 2 purposes.  I want to begin sharing with ya'll where God is leading me as He makes it more clear to me.  And for those of you who know me best, you know I work things out and make sense of things by processing either verbally or in some written form and so here's some of the process.

Over the last 3 weeks I have started to sense God urging me to let go of some things and refocus back on Him and the new things He has for me in this next season of my life...after all, I feel like I've been waiting for forever (or just the last year) to know where He wants me and what this next season will look like and yet, I found myself being scared (again) to let Him show me what that looked like in the off chance (or the very likely chance) that it will look different than my limited earthly view of visions and dreams I'm holding on to.  So I started spending some very concentrated time with the Lord reflecting on the places He has brought me out of, how He has led me, where I am now, who I am as the woman He has created me to be, and where He is taking me.  Last Monday, I posted after a day of spending time doing just that and it led me to start pushing doors I believe God is opening for me (which I will share as I have more information and clearer vision).  But during that time He revealed things that I want to share with you here as I continue to work through them as well.

In Feb I posted about clinging to the cross and how often times I get something stuck in my head and heart (not always seemingly bad and sometimes even something God has promised or revealed to me) and then I hold tight to it with the grubby fat fingers of a two year old that believes if they let go they will lose it forever so focused on what is in the palm of their hand and the moment they are living in.  Blinders fully on to the eternalness of God.  And at that time I KNEW that God was trying to tell me I was clinging on to some vision He had once given me and since that time I had taken it, treasured it up in my heart, and then greedily wrapped by 2 year old fingers around it, making a fist, scared to let go, grab hold of Him, and let Him make that vision a reality.  Monday, God pointed me back to that post to remind me He had been working that out in my heart and getting me to a place where when I sat in the church pew a month ago yesterday I could utter a prayer and fully let GO and let GOD.  In fact, I had even forgotten about that prayer until Monday.  And God brought it to mind as I wrestled with the reality that God was doing something new and I was the one who had finally given Him permission to do it a month ago when I knelt before Him and said I want your vision, your dream, your ministry to be fulfilled in me so my life can point others to Christ no matter WHAT that looks like EVEN IF it means sacrificing and letting go of the visions and dreams I have been treasuring up in my heart.  My past experiences with God have told me time and time again that He is good and will come through on all these things that He has given me but only if I let Him and only in His time and only in the ways He has planned to best glorify Him and bless me in the process....which rarely looks like what my two year old mind can conjour up because honestly....I have such a small, 5 ft in front of me, earlthy, noncreative view of the work He is doing and He says there are no limits or bounds to how He can bless and what He can do....Why would I choose to stifle that?  While I'll never understand that, I'll definately never understand how He can be so patient with me while I continously act like that 2 year old who should know better after all these years.  He never stop pursuing me, waiting on me, calling me, using me, and blessing me.  And for that I am face to the ground thankful.  So as I sat in church that day, I gave it all over (again) to Christ and asked Him to guide my next steps and show me the plan He had as I was ready to serve Him and follow Him even if it looked completely contrary to what I had been envisioning.

And He did.  And after I wrote that post acknowledging that I was going to begin pushing those doors and inviting you to pray with me, He led me to go back and read my post from Jan where I revisited Dino death at the one year mark.  And in that post, the pain was still real and the passion He has placed in my heart that had led me to Mozambique and Iris Ministries was apparent to me.  I remember still daily struggling with feeling my heart divided between that passion and the preperation phase I was in for serving Him again in that way.  And a funny thing happened.  As I sat there reading that post.....I felt like I was reading something someone else had written.  I could remember having all of those feelings and how real they had been, but as I sat there, I didn't have the same passions or feelings and I knew God had moved me from that spot to the spot where I was sitting reading that post and I hadn't even noticed.  So I spent this week knowing that God had removed the passion He had placed in my heart that led me to serve Him those 2 years because He was replacing it with a NEW passion....but I desired to know what that new passion would be and how He was asking me to use it to serve Him in this next season.  So I pressed in and spent this week asking Him to show me.

Tonight as I was in prayer and worship time, I felt God showing me, making it clearer, what He's been revealing to me over the past 2 months or so.  The shift in my passions.  While I was in Moz my passion had been to LOVE the children and Mozambicans and missionaries He placed in my life with the love He had given me so I could see individual  lives TRANSFORMED by Him.  He brought to mind so many images of the children and people I served who were dead inside and out when I first met them....there was no life or light in their eyes and they were spiritually, physically, or emotionally (or all 3) ill.  Through prayer, maybe a little medicine, and a lot of Godly LOVE these people and tiny lives entrusted into my hands for a period had been transformed....their mourning being replaced with dancing; their ashes replaced by a crown.  And when Meghann sends me pictures of these beautiful children and kids a year after I have left I know the sacrifices I made during that period and all God poured into me and I poured out onto them was WELL worth it.  I see their smiles and LIFE and love and light pouring out of their lives and I know so many individual lives have been transformed.  But while I was there, I remember starting to have a change in that passion near the end....a passion to see COMMUNITIES TRANSFORMED in the same way He was transforming these tiny lives and I wanted to be a part of that.  It was one of the reasons I came home in the first place.  To recieve more education to be able to help participate in that.

And now, I feel Him ushering in a new passion (well a renewal of what was started as I was leaving Moz...but like I said, I've been clinging to the old)....one to see communities and countries transformed by Him.  And in that, He's been reminding me of one of the things I missed the most when I was in Moz....walking life and mentoring other women....pouring into people as they found their footing in God and sought to serve Him and attempted to walk with Him while still in the chaos of this fallen world we live in.  I miss sharing those struggles and those joys...the heartache and the tears as well as the celebration and thanksgiving as we would watch God work everything out for good...in fact better than we had imagined it and better than we could have asked for.  And so now I'm seeking Him and watching Him meld those two things, those 2 passions together....walking alongside others and helping them seek to serve God while helping be a part of community transformation in countries that do not have hope or see the light of God because they are daily confronted with heartache and pain and death and cannot imagine a life or even one single day that could be better than the moment they are in.  And I am asking ya'll to come alongside of me in prayer as I seek how God is going to use me to serve Him with these passions He is placing in my heart which are growing daily.  That I will keep laying down those things I had treasured up which pale in comparison to the things of God so that He can fully use me as I cling to Him instead.  I'm praying and seeking through a ministry door I believe God is opening and I cannot wait to share it with you when the time is right and God gives me more clarity on it, as for now, it is just in the beginning stages, but I'm excited to see the next mission field He is opening for me!  Thanks for walking with me!

Getting you (and me) up to speed....

First, I wanna say yesterday marked 1 full year since I left Mozambique and I have to say that some days it seems like a blink and more and more days now, it seems like a whole other lifetime.  But as I look back over this year at where I've been and who I was when I first arrived back to where God's brought me and who I am now....I see God's hand all over it.  His provisions, His blessings, sweet moments and people He's brought into my life, such restoration, and just deeper relationship with Him.  And most days, I feel like I have no clue where He's leading me....nothing new here I guess, but I have immense peace in that.  As I can't remember a time He told me to trust Him and follow Him or made promises that He didn't fulfill....and so even though I expected to only be home for 6 months, which turned into 1 yr and I know will be more (at least Jan as I've mentioned previously)....I cannot wait to see what's next.  And I know it will be good.

Second, I can't believe it's been 4 months since I last updated....hmmm...time has a way of escaping me.  For those of you who don't get my (less than monthly at the moment) updates, you're out of the loop a bit and I'll try to catch you up in about 30 seconds or less.  Here goes.....

Winter was cold.  Very cold.  I hate winter.  And somehow I managed to fly south for the last 4 winters and my body was NOT happy with me this year.  Alas, winter has come and gone and I'm now excited summer and the heat is back!  I finished my second semester at UAB (in March) and first semester at UNC (end of April) and I'm still convinced my professors have simply quit reading my papers....I'm not sure why they still keep giving me A's.  Though I will not complain.  I applied for a scholarship through UAB's Global Outreach center to attend a 14 day World Hunger and Malnutrition training program at SIFAT (Servants in Faith and Technology) in Lineville, AL and got it!  I had one week off at the beginning of May and then all 4 of my classes (UNC and UAB combined) started right back up again.  Ah school.  So I just got back (Saturday) from those 2 weeks of learning insanely wonderful skills like solar cooking, drying leaves to make leaf powder, how to build (and use) fuel efficient cook stoves, urban gardening, and the list goes on.  All the while working on school work after 12 hr long days.  I might be crazy (though that's not really new to many of you).  While there I met some incredible people, had some really amazing conversations and prayer time and spent the day today praying through a bunch of things I feel like God has just started revealing to me over the past month or so (but possibly and more likely, longer since I'm pretty stubborn and hard headed).  I would LOVE to share (and you know I will) but only after I gain a bit more insight and clarity from God and see a bit more direction....but I have to admit, I'm kinda excited about what this next chapter might hold for me (I'll finish up both graduate certificate programs the first week in August-Praise the LORD!).

Join me in praying for a peace as I sit and wait on God to reveal my next step in serving Him, to let Him open doors, to fully trust in something I think might not look anything like I had planned (though that's not really new to me either), for discernment as I pray through options and start conversations with organizations I believe He's leading me to start exploring, and for the strength to simply say YES in the places I feel Him urging me to say yes in even when it makes absolutely no logical sense to me at all!  I am so blessed to have each of you in my life and love that ya'll give me such grace when I go silent for whole months at a time!  You know how much your prayers and emails and words mean to me!  Keep them coming and I hope to be able to share more with you in the coming weeks to months as God reveals more!  So that was probably an African version of 30 seconds....forgive me.  How bout some (I mean lots) pics from the last 2 weeks and all I learned at SIFAT.

Yeah....we ate bugs.  Apparently, they are nutritious.  And tasty??

We built a solar dryer to dry leaves on.....

 Then we learned how to pick, clean, and dry the leaves....

process them and make leaf cookies (which are suprisingly yummy)

 and then we started on the pasta....

which was amazing.

 I helped make a garden in a swimming pool

yup...we used cans under that blanket....

I think there is still red clay under my nails from that....

and before I left on Sat...we had beans sprouting which is pretty amazing since I physically touched those seeds before they went into the ground...me and my black thumb.  I don't give them another wk of life.  Sad.

 We also used tires.....

and gutters.

Next we made solar cookers.

 I know what you're thinking...no way that cardboard and tinfoil is going to cook anything....

Same thing I thought....so the next day we tried rice and chicken.....

 and after 3 hrs.....

Yeah-It was delicious.  ;) 

We mixed up clay to make bricks

There may have been a clay fight.....

But in the end we built a stove...a fuel efficient stove that WORKED.  

and it was virtually smokeless.

And then our Guatamalan cook showed us how to make Tortillas by hand

 And I made a slightly less perfect version.....we cooked it on our stoves 

and it still tasted just as yummy!

It was such a blessing to be with these men and women for 14 days, share life and talks and coffee (lots of coffee) and talk missions while learning some incredible life changing, community building skills!  I can't wait to use them....just as soon as God tells me how and when!

Clinging

I love that God beats me over the head with stuff.  Ok, love's not the right word.  So you know those times when God keeps speaking to you about the same thing through every different capacity possible?.....maybe not?  maybe you were a bit wiser in listening the first time?  I've come to the conclusion that I'm doomed by genetics to be hard headed in a bazillion areas of my life (and yes, blaming it on genetics makes me feel better about it) and well.....God doesn't give up so that's good for both of us.

Over the last 2 weeks it has been on the topic of clinging.  There's this song that I've loved for a long time, but most recently I feel like God keeps reminding me of it and it keeps coming up in my worship time-corporately and privately and thus the words keep spinning over and over again in my head.  The lyrics that I can't get out of my head are "Simply to the cross I cling, letting go of all earthly things, I'm clinging to the cross.  Mercy's found a way for me.  Hope is here as I am free.  Jesus, you are all I need.  I'm clinging to the cross."  So I wasn't sure why or what I needed this message for and then....enter Beth Moore.

I love this woman as much as you can love someone you have never met or personally communicated with.  If you have never done one of her Bible Studies....you should.  This woman cracks me up, challenges me, encourages me, and simply put, brings a little Church into every session.  Anyway, I'm studying Revelation with a group of girls from my church (and Beth of course) and last night she said something that I completely know and believe and dealt with before, but still somehow shook me.  Now I get the joy of processing and praying through it and deciphering why God keeps beating me over the head with this.  She said something along the lines of you will either hang onto (insert whatever it is emotion/physical thing/dream/fear here) or you will hang onto your first love (God) but you CANNOT hang on to BOTH.  You have to let go of (insert whatever it is here) in order to cling to Him/the cross.

Ok, so now what the heck does this mean for me??  Since I don't have a clear answer on this one yet, I'm just guessing that I'm either a-not listening hard enough or b-(gasp) not wanting to hear the answer (doesn't sound a bit like me at all, huh?).  Hmmmm..........so I'll be praying about this in the next days and weeks to come (aka as long as it takes for God to get through to me) and hoping a few of you will join me.  I'm putting this on here, cause I'm hoping it will keep me accountable to doing just that.