Stories

So I have a few stories to tell.
I hope they're interesting.
Maybe they only are to me.
But I figured I would share.

In each story,
I had the choice to complain
or
the choice to be thankful.
I'm not going to lie,
I started each with the attitude of
grumbling and complaining.
I didn't understand
why God would let me go through
that situation.
But after a little bit,
God changed my attitude.
He turned it into one of
thankfulness.
I am so thankful that I've been blessed
to go through each of what I am
going to be telling you about,
because through it all,
God is sanctifying me
and purifying my heart.
He's getting rid of all bitterness,
malice,
rage,
selfish ambition,
jealousy,
and discord.
And He's replacing it with love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and
self-control.
I still have a long way to go,
but He is still moving and working
in my life.

These are stories of
my foolishness,
God's faithfulness,
and
God's provision.
He is good.

The first one happened about
two weeks ago.
I was driving home from
South Carolina,
where I was visiting some friends for the weekend,
when I looked in my rear view mirror
and saw flashing blue lights.
Oh my gosh!
I started freaking out.
Seriously.
Freaking out.
I never get pulled over!
And I had no idea what was wrong!
My speedometer said
I was going 75.
As far as I knew, that wasn't enough to get pulled over.
But, I did what the flashing blue lights recommended,
and I pulled my car over to the side of the road and
stopped.
The cop got out of the car
and ended up telling me that
I had been travelling a whole lot faster than
I originally thought I was.
Not a good thing at all.
I explained what my speedometer said,
and he gave me a lot of grace.
According to the laws in SC,
a person travelling as fast as I was
should have been taken directly to jail
and the car should have been impounded.
But, instead, he just gave me a ticket,
a rather large one at that,
and told me to get my speedometer fixed.
God is so good. 
That day when I got to church,
I was still really shaken up,
and everyone kept trying to tell me that
 it was okay.
I didn't believe them.
And it's taken me a while
to see how God worked in this
situation.
But I'm getting there.
He showed me a lot of grace
that morning.
And He protected me from getting into an
accident.
With how fast I was travelling,
if I had gotten in an accident,
I probably wouldn't have made it.
So, long story short,
God is good.
And my speedometer is broken.
Haha.

Story #2:
Really, this is just a continuation
of story number 1.
But, it's a story in and of itself.
So, because my speedometer is
broken,
I now needed to get it fixed.
I wanted to be able to show
the judge at my court date
(you never would have thought
I would say that)
that I was responsible and
got the thing fixed
so this kind of thing would not happen
in the future.
I took Lucy (my car)
into the local VW dealership on Monday
to get checked out.
One of the technicians
took her out for a spin to
get a better handle on what was wrong
with her.
Well,
he got back and came and talked to me.
He told me that I was not crazy.
Something was very wrong with Lucy.
He said that at a cruising speed of 60
(according to my broken speedometer)
he was actually going about 100.
Lovely.
He thought that it was something
in the transmission that needed to be fixed/replaced,
maybe a bolt that was stripped
or something to that effect.
So, they checked it out.
And sure enough,
it was as he thought.
I will be getting this fixed.
Yay!
I will have a speedometer that works again!
However,
it is costly.
But, God is provider.
And He has already provided for me
in this.
And I am so thankful.
I am having to depend on God
for my needs.
And it's such a great thing.
It's so hard to stay dependent,
but it's something I need to learn.
So I'm glad He's teaching me.

Story #3:
My fundraising letters for
American Samoa
went out last week.
And God has moved in a great way.
He has done
so much more than I thought in
a little more than a week.
There's still a long way to
go before I have all the
funds I need.
But, nonetheless,
God is provider.
He is proving that to me
over and over
this semester.
And it's such a great lesson to learn.
Also, He's teaching me
that when He has His hand in something,
He won't let anything stop it from happening.
His hand is definitely in my
going to American Samoa
this summer.
And I can't wait to see what
He has in store.

Story #4:
I can never seem to find a guy
who's genuinely interested in me.
Ha, this seems so trivial.
But I'm going to tell it anyway.
Here's the general progression
of crushes that I have on guys:
1. Girl sees guy.
2. Girl observes guy to see if he might be someone to be potentially interested.
3. Girl becomes friends with guy.
4. Girl starts to open up to guy.
5. Girl confirms that he is okay to be interested in.
6. Girl patiently waits for him to possibly be interested in girl.
7. Guy starts to flirt with girl.
8. Girl keeps a tight reign on her heart.
9. Girl attempts to flirt back.
10. Guy spots a different girl.
11. Guy pursues other girl, and they end up dating.
12. First girl is left confused and hurting.
This has happened a lot in my life.
And it's happened again.
In the past,
I've always grumbled and complained.
I always blamed God
and told Him that I was so angry
with Him for doing this to me.
But not this time.
I'm not going to give in to that temptation.
It hurts, yes.
But instead of complaining,
I'll be running to my Healer.
I've been crying out to God
for the past couple of weeks
about this.
Because He is the only one
who can take my hurt and pain
and change it into joy and love.
So.
Even in this,
God is teaching me.
He's never left my side.
And He never will.
I trust Him fully and
completely.


Well, that ends the epic stories.
At least for now.
God is good.

Blessings.

The Opportunity

Well,
great excitement
is happening all around me.

But I guess I should start at the
beginning.
Because,
of course,
every good story has a beginning.

Mine starts almost two weeks ago.
I was writing my former supervisor, Larry,
to see if he had a copy of our
performance from last summer.
(I am really curious to see what it
actually looked like,
since I was always in it.)
Anyway, when I sent him the message,
he responded pretty much immediately,
and we got to talking, like friends do,
and he asked me about my plans for the summer.
Always a huge question to ask.
This is one question I never like to answer.
Because I hardly ever know what I'm going to do.
So I told him what I've been planning:
staying in Raleigh, finding a job, and moving into an apartment.
I had looked at different
mission possibilities
with NAMB,
but God never captured my heart with any of them,
and they just kinda fell to the wayside.
Anyway, he asked me to start praying over something.
What's that? You may be wondering.
He told me that he was still in need of a
summer missionary
to come to
American Samoa
for the month of
June
to work VBS's and
with the community to
share the name of Christ with them.
My immediate answer?
Heck yes!
I wanted to go to American Samoa
and serve God!!
That would be awesome!
Here's the catch:
it would be a volunteer position.
Meaning: I have to raise the money
to get out there and back.
So I said I would pray about it.
And that's what I immediately started to do.

So, over the next couple of days,
I went back and forth in prayer about all this.
I didn't want to go,
because I would have to ask people to
support me and help me.
Ultimately, this would mean I would have to
suck up my pride and
ask for help.
Finally, though, God broke through that
barrier in my thinking.
He really showed me that I was being stupid
and that I just needed to trust Him with this.

I also needed to make sure that my
motivations for going on this trip
would be
pure.
You see,
I've always wanted to go on an
overseas missions trip.
It's been a dream of mine since I was a
little girl.
So I didn't want to be thinking that
this was my
big chance.
I only wanted to go if my
heart
was in the right place.
I wanted this trip to be about
serving God,
loving people,
and sharing His love with them.
So after asking God to show me my
motivations
and seeing that they
were aligned with His passions,
I knew that I was to go.

So, the next day,
I emailed Larry.
And I told him that I wanted to come!

I'M GOING TO AMERICAN SAMOA!!!
Ah!
I'm so excited!

I've started,
with my parents' help,
to send out letters asking for help
with money and prayer.
This is such an important task
that God has given me,
and it's not something that I want to take lightly.
I want people to join me in prayer.
I want them to be praying for the people
I will come in contact with this summer.

God is so gracious and good!
I never thought that I would be taking a trip
halfway across the world
to share the Gospel with others.
Especially while this young.
I had always hoped that
one day
God might grant me the privilege
to go serve overseas somewhere.
But I never once presumed that
it would actually happen.

And here begins the journey.
Or should I say,
here continues the journey.
This is just another step in my
walk with Christ.
I don't even know where this step
will lead me,
but I am confident
that He has a magnificent plan.
He will draw me closer to Himself.
He will make Himself known through my life.
And He will receive the glory for it all.

Blessings!

The Greatest Joy of All

Last week in church

my pastor Tony Merida said,

"Our greatest joy comes when

we pursue His glory. 

When we long for His glory

to be made known in our lives, 

we will be fulfilled."

We were going through 

the plagues

in Egypt in church, 

and that small quote kinda stuck with me.

He asked so many questions 

that Sunday too:

"To whom are you looking to provide for your needs?

To whom do you look to for comfort in your trials? 

Who do you trust?

In whom are you trusting for sustaining power?

To whom are you looking to for love, joy, identity, and beauty?

"To whom are you looking to for ultimate healing?

Where do you go for shelter and peace in the face of the storm?

To whom do you look to for daily provision?

Who is your Savior?

[And the biggest question of all:]

WHO IS YOUR GOD?"

So, basically, all of these things

have been running around inside 

this head of mine

all. week. long.

I kept going back to them.

But ultimately, 

I kept going back to 

Him. 

Especially after the week that I had. 

At the beginning of the week

something happened.

And I didn't know how to respond 

really, except for crying.

And cry I did. A lot. 

But even in that, 

I was able to start seeing 

how God was at work in the situation.

I'm not going to lie,

I was hurting and in pain. 

(And I still am to a certain degree.)

But, God is bigger than my pain 

and hurt, and He can use that 

for His glory. 

I wanted to shrink back. 

I wanted to shy away from 

friends that I had begun to get close to.

I wanted to run and hide. 

I didn't want to face the pain or hurt.

Because it was too hard for me.

It's always been too hard for me.

But God had another plan. 

(Just like He always does.)

Instead of running and hiding,

God told me to face the pain, 

to embrace it.

What?!

Everything in me rebelled against

that very idea. 

Embrace the pain?

Embrace the hurt? 

Why on earth would I ever 

want to do something like that?

Because it's through this pain

that God is going to mold me

and shape me 

more into the 

image of Christ. 

And that's precisely

what

I have been asking Him to do. 

I've been asking God to

sanctify me and help me grow. 

Surprise, surprise. 

God actually brought situations into 

my life that would do such things.

That morning, I was reading through the end of 

Hebrews 10. 

Verses 32-39 to be exact. 

"But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. 'For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.' But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul."

The last verse hit me hard. 

God doesn't call me to be one who 

shrinks back.

He wants me to fight.

And fight hard. 

I wrote in my journal that morning after I read this passage:

"Don't shrink back. Don't let the discouragement or trials of this life scare you or beat you down. But, instead, trust God. Keep the faith, knowing God is moving and working. Even in the moments you think you can't keep going, keep trusting. Rest in the Lord. Trust Him for all things. All things are possible for God. Remember WHO you serve. And be confident in Him alone. He is worthy. 

No matter what comes my way, I choose to serve Him and love Him."

After that, 

I don't think I still 

had a grasp of what God was trying to show me.

I was still struggling hard

with what had gone down earlier,

but somehow, 

my faith in God was growing 

stronger.

I knew that He had to have a plan.

Because if He didn't, 

then my life would be pointless.

And I know my life isn't pointless.

Therefore,

He has to have a plan. 

So, this brought me hope.

Even in the pain, 

I still had hope.

Hope that it wouldn't all be 

for naught.

Hope that He would

continue working in me.

Hope that one day

I would actually understand

the situation I'm going through.

And hope that He would 

provide everything I would need 

to make it through each day.

So, each day this week,

I've just been taking it 

step-by-step.

I've been depending on

God for everything.

I still have moments 

when my heart wrenches in 

my chest

and I have to stop and breathe.

It hurts that bad sometimes.

But in the end, 

those are the moments 

that I am starting to treasure.

Because I know that in this pain,

God is at work. 

There were so many times

during the week when I just 

wanted to give up. 

I didn't want to be in leadership.

I didn't want to go to school.

I didn't want to talk to people.

(Maybe a few people more than others.)

I didn't want to try anymore. 

But God always brought me back 

to the foot of the cross. 

He reminded me of my purpose:

to bring Him glory. 

He reminded me that there will

be times when life is going to suck. 

It's not always going to be 

perfect 

[much to this perfectionist's dismay]

or easy.

In fact, 

a good majority of the time,

life is going to be hard,

messy,

and crazy.

But it's in the latter

that God works best.

He shows His power, 

His might, and 

His glory.

Instead of avoiding these times,

I need to start embracing them.

And this is what 

God is teaching me to do

through this time in my life.

My life is messy right now.

But it's right where God wants me.

I may hurt sometimes,

but the God of all comfort

is with me.

I am so confused about the future 

and so many other things right now,

but God has taken hold of my hand

and is guiding me through it all.

I may want to shrink back,

but God is pushing me forward, 

and I will follow Him down this path.

I want to be consumed with the pursuit of God.

Blessings.