A Day in the Life...

Wow. What a day.



This morning I met Carrie at the Way Station, where she volunteers every Friday morning. This morning was my third time volunteering, and I had a great time. Tammy put me to work right away, slicing cake, and then Carrie and I made sandwiches for all the people who came to hear the Bible study and have lunch. It is so fun working& volunteering with her-- she makes me laugh SO hard, and helps work not seem like work!
After we served lunch, we handed out food bags and prayed for people. It is so freeing to pray for people, knowing that the Holy Spirit is directing our words. Seriously, when someone says, “Pray for my sister” and gives no specifics, I don’t know about you, but my mind usually goes blank. But today the Holy Spirit Himself was interceding and putting specific needs to pray for in my mind.
I also had a conversation with another volunteer, who wants her daughter to get plugged into youth group. Since I’m a youth leader, I told her I’d love to meet her daughter and hopefully give her an interest in coming so that we can introduce her to some of the other kids. Both this woman [Connie] and another woman spoke into my life in such encouraging ways—one of them even left me speechless. It’s a little too special to share with an unknown audience, but I am confident that God has a very strong grip on my life and my heart… I am in His hands and He won’t let me go. I have so many ideas, ambitions, goals, and passions, and I believe that God wants to use them—no matter how significant or seemingly insignificant they are, and defying what common sense tells me is possible. I believe He wants to do something in & through my life, not because I am any more capable than anyone else, but because He has equipped me for a very specific work in which He wants to use me personally. And He does the same thing for each and every person, as long as we are willing to exist for Him with our entire being. And man, am I willing!
I don’t care where it is, I don’t care what I’m doing, I don’t care when it is—all I know is that I want to be with Jesus wherever He is, to be doing anything and everything He wants me to do, wherever on this planet that may be, and for however long He purposes.

If He will go with me, I will go anywhere.

If He will give me the strength, resilience, ability, and LOVE, I will do anything He asks. My endeavor is to know Him more deeply than I ever thought possible, to love Him and be loved by Him in a life-changing way, to be with Him always, and to love people and share the truth of His hope& mercy. I want to know nothing more than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, to communicate that with others, and to live a life that resembles Him.
Easier said than done, but I serve a God who can accomplish the impossible.

Anyway, after the Way Station I ran some errands, came home, and packed/cleaned the day away. Goodness gracious, that was an experience in itself. So, I keep a prayer journal that I write in sometimes daily, but at least a few times a week. I started my first prayer journal sometime in the fall of 2005, and I’ve kept one ever since.

It was interesting, eye-opening, and comforting to read through some of those. I went through one of the most difficult times in my life in the winter of 2005 until sometime in 2006. During that time, I didn’t keep a prayer journal. If I did, I can’t find it.
But it was so awesome to read my writings from directly after that period, to see how God redeemed that time and used it to kickstart a deepening of my faith and a very necessary, very long refining & healing process. There are things I wrote about that bothered me which are now a non-issue. There were unknown plans, undecided steps, and unanswered prayers that have long since been answered and some even completed. Through every season in my life, God held me tight, and He lifted me up. I see that now. In the difficult times when all I could see was darkness as I was wrapped up in feelings of inadequacy and depression, He revived my heart, He spoke words of hope, and He reminded me that His worth is in me and I mustn’t look to anyone else for my worth or purpose, because it is only found in Him.
People can talk about it all they want, or give sweet little anecdotes of how God is there in every stage, but Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul-type stories and other people's experiences don't offer the kind of hope& strength that personal experience provides.
I KNOW that God wants to prove Himself strong on behalf of every single person, and that He wants to prove the fact that He does protect, strengthen, and sustain us, even in the darkness.


Also, I forgot how difficult my 3 years in Spain were until I re-read my prayer journals.

Don’t get me wrong: I had an absolutely FANTASTIC time in Spain and would give nearly anything to go back to that time for a day, a couple weeks, or a month, to just relive it a little.
Yet I had some very challenging times as well. I wasn’t homesick for the first two years I was there, but when homesickness struck at the end of the 2nd year, it hit me hard and was nearly debilitating. I was unsure of my purpose at times, wondering if I was actually helping anything or just being a nuisance. I wondered if I would ever be able to call Mallorca my home, and if I would be able to acclimate to the Spanish culture. I didn’t know anyone whom I was going to be serving alongside [the other 5 staff members], and I wondered if I’d ever really get to know them and be comfortable with them, since I used to be an extremely private, closed-up person who didn’t want to let anyone in.

My family wanted me back in California, but I knew that my time in Spain was not finished… and that was hard to deal with, too. It was hard to feel as though I was abandoning my family for my “new family”, and to worry that maybe they were right and I was wrong about what I believed God was calling me to. It was hard traveling home for 2 short weeks at a time, which never seemed like a long enough trip to spend with my family. It was hard feeling as though I was always living from semester to semester, from suitcase to suitcase; having no hard goals for my future and being unable to see more than a couple months down the road.



But God did unbelievable things out there!!!!! He strengthened me to be in Mallorca, He put me in specific jobs where He used my talents, and He put me in situations where I thought I was absolutely incapable, only to show me that He had been preparing me to stand and act in those situations. He gave me such a deep love for my fellow staff members and for the church body. He helped me build such strong relationships with the people there so that I now absolutely consider them my family and am homesick for them now. He broke down MANY, MANY walls and barriers that I had so meticulously built in my heart, mind, and life… He showed me that He does not want me being a lone ranger, doing life on my own... Rather, He wants me to have healthy relationships, to be able and willing to trust people and to let them in, and to share my life and experiences with others as well as to listen to and learn from theirs. He taught me to get out of my comfort zone, to be flexible, and to roll with the punches. I will not break just because my plans are changed. He showed me that, while my family’s opinion matters to me greatly, their voices cannot rise above His. His words are what matter, and if someone is saying, “No.” but He is saying, “Yes.” then the answer is undoubtedly “YES.”


I also used to become annoyed by some of the most insignificant things that it made me laugh to realize I was ever bothered by that—and relieved to know that I don’t even give them a second thought anymore. I know that God has done great things in my life, and has answered prayers time and time and time again. There are some things I had prayed for years ago and completely forgotten, but then reading through my journals, I realized He answered even those—some even as recently as a year ago! We can never fool ourselves into believing that He doesn’t care or remember, or that our words fall on deaf ears. He definitely does remember, and He is so concerned with the tiniest details of our lives, that even after we’ve forgotten them, He is still working them together for a very specific, perfectly timed outcome. He never fails. Sometimes we can’t see Him, and we can feel like He’s not around, and we can fool ourselves into thinking He doesn’t see us, care for us, or listen to us.

But the truth is: He loves us. He has engraved us on the palms of His hands.

He cares about us perfectly; completely. He is always working, moving, aligning—causing things to work together for GOOD. These are not empty words. They are His promises. And He cannot lie, so we can trust them wholeheartedly, more than we’ve ever trusted before.