Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust

I've been chewing on a thought for a while now and I think it's time to share it with you my friends.  In Song of Solomon it says that "He has brought me to His banqueting table and His banner over me is love" and in Psalm "He prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies, He anoints my head with oil, my cup overflows".  But to be honest, I don't always feel like I'm at a banqueting table, a lot of times I just feel hungry.  As I pondered this phenomenon one day, I remembered a picture of another banquet table.  In the movie Hook, after Peter has had a long hard day of  trying to remember how to be Peter Pan, he sits down at a huge banqueting table, but to his dismay it is covered from end to end with empty dishes.  Like Peter we are often brought to the banqueting table but see nothing but emptiness.  It is only when we begin to believe in the truths God has spoken, when we begin to trust that He will fill us, when we choose to live in joy and love in the moment in which we are, that we, like Peter, suddenly see a table filled with every delight imaginable, a table filled with enough for everyone at the table with more to spare for whoever we could desire to invite.  And every time we believe, we hear that same sweet voice in our hearts that says proudly "You're doing it, child!"  So don't wait to see the feast set before you to dig in today, take a huge bite of that ribeye or cake or donut and you will find that it is indeed there and that it will fill both your need and your desire.  Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!  A good practical step to start with?  Pray this, "Lord I thank You that Jesus Christ came to be the bread of life, I thank You that He gave His life that I might be filled with the goodness of God.  I believe that You are more than enough for my every need.  I believe that You are good and that You give good gifts to Your children.  I believe that You provide for me and I place myself in alignment with Your word that whoever hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be satisfied and that whoever believes in You and eats Your words will never hunger, and I say that I am hungry for You and Your words and Your righteousness."  Dig in.  This is the best meal you'll ever have.

Two are better

For my first post-wedding blog, I think it is only fitting for me to talk about a lesson learned from marriage.  You see, I haven't been willing to write for a while because I've felt like such a mess.  For the past 5 months or so I've been slowly picking up the pieces of my heart that have fallen around me due to various circumstances and each time I can't help but wonder how I got to a place that circumstances could break me like that.  I consider myself a strong person.  I consider myself a grounded person.  But the past two years have felt like a crushing weight to my soul.  So much loss.  So much fear.  So much loneliness.  So much that didn't go according to plan.
And then I got married.  You see there's this little thing in marriage called proximity.  If you get overwhelmed or peopled-out during the day, you still get to sleep next to a person.  You're around this person 24/7, and the funny thing is you care about them so you don't really want to give them crap just because you feel like crap. The first few months we were married, I was about to be done with myself.  I was trying so hard not to let all these negative emotions out on my husband and my feeble attempts failed.  I tried to deal with everything at once; again fail.  But little by little, day by day, my anguish was washing away.  Each time, I saw where these hurts came from and I asked myself, how did it get so far?  How did I fall like that?
And to be honest, I started to get a little scared.  If I could fall like that once, what was to keep me from falling like that again?  And to be honest, it could happen.  But God is faithful to pick me up and brush me off and set me back on the path of righteousness.  Along with that though, God spoke to me again one of the passages from our wedding vows, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.  But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 ESV).  I have found it a lot harder to fall now that I have Josh.  First off, he calls me out when I have something against someone, and I may not acknowledge his call out at first but I do end up dealing with it.  Second, it is a lot easier to tell when something in me is off when I'm constantly around another person and when isolation for the sake of isolation is so glaringly obvious.  Third, I love Josh too much to let him take the brunt of my bad moods because I need to deal with something, so I just deal with it.  Yes, it's a lot more work than I may have bargained for.  But oh yes, two are definitely better than one!

Enough of Enough

One question has seemed to plague my mind since my arrival back from Zambia.  In fact, it is the question that has plagued me for quite a while: Am I enough?  I have no doubt that we have all asked this question in one form or another.  Am I good enough?  Was that kind enough?  Did I do enough?  We complete an assignment and we ask if we tried hard enough.  A relationship fails and we ask if we loved enough.  Someone rejects us and, if we are insecure, we ask if we are good enough.  When I returned to the States I found myself asking if I had done enough while I was gone.  I quickly dismissed this since I knew that I had given my whole heart while away.  But then another was raised, am I doing enough now?  In fact, is who I am good enough?  Do I somehow have to prove my worth by what I do or say or how I love? It is easy for me to dismiss this question with the ingrained truth: of course I don’t have to prove anything.  But still, in the depths of me it nagged, pulling at my heartstrings incessantly.  Do I love people enough?  Do I love God enough?  Am I enough?  Then one night I heard that gentle voice (oh I love that voice!) whispering a variation of the ever popular phrase “enough is enough!”  Instead He said, “Enough of enough.”  Enough asking if I am or ever could be enough.  Enough saying the words not enough or more than enough.  Instead speak the word: complete.  Full.  Scripture says that in Him we have been made complete.  Have you ever noticed that if something is complete there is simultaneously no lack and no space for addition?  It is not more than enough, nor is it not enough; it simply is complete.  In Him I am complete, lacking nothing, full; take your pick; I’ll take any of those any day of the week.  But the awesome part is that I am all of those, every day of the week!  There is rest for me in completion.  It takes the work out of, well, everything.   I pray that you also find rest in the completion/fullness Christ gave you through His work on the cross.  And with that, dear friends, I do believe this post is…well…complete.  ;)

Grace and Peace

More to Come

Even though I graduated from college four years ago I still remember that day clearly.  We all sat in the gym which they had converted that day to be a sort of a stage for us and we listened to the president of the SGA quote Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"  I still remember the atmosphere filling with a slightly sarcastic air; we were graduating from community college, what places would we go?  We were from a tiny town in rural Maryland, what things would we see?  To be honest, not many of us had grand aspirations, most were just there to get a slightly better job and live a quiet life, not a bad thing, but really what people would we meet?  Even then her proclamation stayed with me, "Oh, the places you'll go!"  I've thought of her words many times recently, of how right she was.  Who would have expected the beauty or the wonder of the places God has graced me to go or the people he has honored me to meet?  Oh, the places I've gone!  The urban center of Cape Town with the beauty of Table Mountain and the bright blue ocean always in view.  The breathtaking Zambezi flood plain, painted in hues of blue and green and wrapped in the golden light of the rouge setting sun.  The pulsing city of Belgrade with its amazing Eastern European vibe.  Oh, the people I've met!  What an honor to meet such and amazing and eclectic group of people all over the world with a heart to see God's Kingdom come no matter the cost to themselves!  The Van Collers who gave up their lives in South Africa to speak the gospel to the hurting and unreached in Zambia.  The teachers at the VOH school in Mongu who lay down their lives everyday to see the most vulnerable children in Zambia protected and taken care of.  The pastors and members of New Horizons Church in Belgrade who fight the spiritual battle everyday for their city and their nation, who seek out the most hurting and addicted in their community rather than shying away from the pain they know that it could bring to their own lives.  The leaders at my own church in Christiansburg and all those around them who willingly lay down their lives to help anyone who asks them.  These are the people I've been privileged and honored to meet; and that's just been in the four years since I graduated from college.  And my question in this is always, "God how could you be so good?"  His answer comes softly every time I look at the words carefully pasted on my journal: But my child, just wait, there's still "More to Come."

Hope and Humility

I once heard humility defined as seeing oneself in proper perspective to God and man.  To me that fits.  What could be more humbling than knowing how desperately you need God or how much you need your fellow man?  When I see in proper perspective I see how utterly hopeless my life 
would be if it was not for God's moment by moment intervention.  This revelation brings me to my knees, sometimes it puts me on my face in tears.  But it does not end at how hopeless I would be without God; no, this perspective carries on to how much hope my life contains because God is in my life.  He has said, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."  As I look at the situations and circumstances in my life, my need for grace is so apparent.  The sadness of leaving my friends and students in Zambia; the strange circumstances I found upon my return; and now the search for a job, not knowing what direction to look.  Yes, grace is what I need in this moment.  But here is my hope, that God's grace is sufficient for my every need.  That I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  That He will give me the grace I need even as I humble myself to ask for it.  That though I cannot carry on in Zambia, there is no gap left by my absence because God cares for those He loves.  Those are the thoughts that cause an inadvertent smile to begin to form on my lips even as I ponder the decisions and paths before me as well as the things that I have left behind.  And so I hope in humility that God's plans and purposes in this time will prevail.  And I hope and pray that you too find hope in whatever circumstances you find yourself in today.  God is faithful.  His love will never end.  Selah.

The Wonders of the World

As many of you may have already heard, the past two weeks I’ve been on a sort of expedition or adventure.  At the suggestion of one of the head missionaries at the Zambia Project, I left Mongu for a couple weeks for a time of refreshment and rest in Cape Town, South Africa.  During this time, I was to attend a women’s conference put on by Hillsong and to do my very best to rest up for the rest of my journey in Mongu.  On April 8^th, I and three other missionaries embarked on what turned out to be a five day drive to Cape Town from Mongu.  We had some unexpected occurrences, including but not limited to: four tire changes (or maybe it was five, I honestly lost count), three elephants crossing the road while we drove at night, a stop by Victoria Falls in Livingstone, and some awesome Afrikaans folk in Southern Namibia.  To say that it was an adventure would be an understatement.  But the adventures did not stop there as we arrived Cape Town and we had a daily view of the beautiful Table Mountain, named last year as one of the ten natural wonders of the world.  I also had a glimpse of the culture shock which many missionaries endure when crossing from a place of such desolate poverty into a place which sometimes has such posh lifestyles.  Even amidst all this beauty and strange emotion, I encountered yet another wonder: the soothing and gentle whisper of God, reassuring me of who I am.  Reassuring me of who He is.  Reminding me of His heart for the orphan and the widow.  Reminding me of my purpose and my value.  This truly was a wonder to my dry heart; as streams in a desert, His words watered my soul daily, bringing peace in what seemed to be a world of chaos.  His gentle voice began to wash away the hardness that had begun to develop in my heart, not hardness against those in need, but hardness against the attacks the enemy has waged against me since I arrived in Zambia.  So many days in Cape Town I sat…just sat…in wonder.  In wonder of His love.  In wonder of His grace.  In wonder of Him.  His Presence is the greatest wonder that I could encounter on this journey and the one which brings me the most peace.  And so I drank in the beauty and refreshment that He sweetly lavished on me.  As I return to Mongu this week it is my deep desire and hope that the wonder I have experienced in His presence will not be a fleeting moment as when one looks at a natural wonder, you see and then it is gone when you walk away, but instead that these wonders would carry with me as one who lives at the foot of Table Mountain, drinking in its wonder day by day never loosing that sense of awe.  

Welcome to My Day

It’s still dark when my alarm goes off.  I quickly hit it to make that obnoxious noise stop.  Then, as I do every day, I lie in bed and think about my day.  What will happen at school today?  Do I have what it takes to teach these kids?  At VOH school we take our roles as educators very seriously.  Young Katongo tells us that he has no one to talk to at home so school is the place where he has an outlet to speak his mind.  Mubila has positive affirmation and two guaranteed meals a day at school, which is not something that is necessarily always true at home.  Little Joseph feeds on every word we say to him, nourishing his mind on each morsel of information he can grab a hold of.  Naomi is learning how to receive adult interaction not only on a regular basis but also without being the center of our attention at all times that she is with us.  Each day at school is vitally important.  And each morning that weighs heavy on my mind, keeping me in bed all the longer.  When I finally roll out of bed and get ready I make the trek up our immense hill to school.  Immediately I am met by children wanting to talk or to get a high five.  I go and talk to my fellow teachers about what is going on in Mongu or about the children or about our weekends, whatever is the most interesting that day.  After we spend some time together, it’s off to work.  We spend the day playing games, singing songs, and teaching the children everything we think they need to learn.  It’s loud and chaotic and fun and wonderful.  At the end of the day, I leave school exhausted, hoping that I find enough energy to complete whatever evening activities lay before me.  I collapse onto my bed, waiting for the noise in my head to stop before moving on to my evening activities.  I look forward to my times in the evenings with the other medium term missionaries and catching up with people over Skype.   Then I prepare myself to start again tomorrow.