The Giving Keys

Last November, I was looking for a key necklace (as I've always secretly wanted one and I had some spare money). And then I found The Giving Keys. It's a website with quite a beautiful idea. In a nutshell, you get a necklace with a word on it. You wear that word around your neck. You grow into that word and embrace it. That word becomes tattooed upon your heart. And when the time comes, Jesus puts someone on your radar to give it to and to pass it along to: the best friend you've known for years, a child of God whom you've never seen walking on the street. Whomever. In God's time, you pass it along.

I loved the idea and immediately got one for myself that said "loved." Good Good Father had become my anthem during that season and I wanted nothing more than to be reminded that I was loved by Him.

Three days after I'd gotten the necklace, I got to see a friend who had just gotten out of a rehab-like facility, and who was about to go back. As we had lunch and caught up, the Holy Spirit tugged on my heartstrings. I could see right past her fake smile and laughter. I could see the brokenness in her eyes. I wanted her to know too, that she was loved. In seconds, the necklace came off my neck and was on hers. I haven't been allowed to talk to her since, but I pray that "loved" becomes her identity and becomes written on her soul.

On my birthday this weekend, I was watching a sermon by Louie Giglio. He mentioned The Giving Keys. How it was a picture of the Gospel. God touches your shattered world and you're wearing the reality of what He's done. At some point, it's time to give that possibility to someone else. God had freely given me unconditional love. I wore that as a reminder around my neck. Yet God's assignment to me on that day was to then freely give what I had been given. To remind someone else what her true name was.

After that sermon, I got myself another Giving Key. This one says "GRACE". I lived years and years feeling unworthy of grace, rejecting the cross and holding on to shame because "I wasn't worthy of it." Thankfully God has broken that off, and now I choose to believe that I am worthy of grace, although it is a daily choice and daily surrender.

On the night of my birthday however, after being celebrated by people who mean the world to me, and receiving countless tear jerking messages, I began to cry because I didn't think I was worthy of so much grace. I compared my life just 6 months ago to what it is now. Why had God poured out so much grace over my life? I didn't deserve it. Lyrics came to my mind: "There's nothing too dirty that you can't make worthy." Truth is, alone I am not worthy on my own. But Jesus is. And He died to make me worthy. He died to make US worthy. Worthy of abundant life and freedom and a continual flood of grace poured out over our lives.

As I wear this key, I am excited to be reminded of this message. Grace has always been my middle name; now it's time to continue to live that out. And at some point (hopefully more than three days from now :P ), I am excited to remind someone else that they are worthy of God's continual flood and overabundance of grace.

Through Waters Uncharted

"There are two great days in a person's life. The day we are born and the day we discover why."

I stumbled upon this while looking for an inspirational caption for my attempt at being artsy. It made the cut for my high quotation standards, because it is absolutely true. Being born is a wonderful thing. I am celebrating 18 years of birth today by sitting by the fire with a cup of tea, waiting for this so called snow storm (instead of being on a plane on the way to Ohio right now), and am so grateful that my wonderful friends have been born as well. I am so blessed to be alive when all of you are alive. Yet being alive is perhaps not such a good thing, when we don't know what our purpose is. Without purpose, life can get pretty empty, dry, shallow, and hopeless.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe that our purpose is to simply follow Him through waters uncharted. Through the pain and through the pleasure, all we should aim to do is to follow Him.

Pain is awful. My heart breaks for dear friends of mine who are deep in the valley of the shadow of death. Yet pain has a purpose. Without the valleys, we could not have mountains. Kings in Biblical times had to be anointed with oil. Yet in order to get that oil, the olives had to be crushed first. In order to be anointed, crushing has to happen first. And it is sometimes in the crushing and in the pain, that we find our purpose. To keep following Jesus.

If we keep following Jesus, despite the fact that things are dark, eventually, He will lead us out of the pain and into the pleasure. I am experiencing that now, as months of pain are beginning to turn into reaping of the seeds that were sown in these past long months. I can officially call myself a second semester senior. I love all my classes this semester. Every conversation I've had recently, has been about dreaming. Dreaming about the things on our senior bucket list and how to make them happen. Dreaming about the perfect summer. Dreaming about college and our futures. Yet even in the pleasure, our one purpose is to follow Jesus.

I know that I can so often assume that my plans are God's plans, yet He reminds me time and time again that it is indeed the opposite. That His plans should really become my plans. For it is in His plans that we find our purpose, and not our own. It's not a bad thing to dream--infact I believe that the passions God places on our hearts are from Him and are meant to be pursued. However I also believe that God orchestrates and God redeems, and that it is through pain and pleasure, where we find our purpose.

By following Jesus through every high, and every stormy gale, we will find the glorious unfolding that Jesus has for our lives. Each one of us is on an individual journey to pursue His plan, and it's a beautiful thing when it comes to us piece by piece, and we discover the JOY and HOPE and FULLNESS we are offered by Jesus, in this adventure called life.

Vulnerability

As most of you know, I am going to Cedarville University in the fall of 2016. We already have multiple group chats going and I'm starting to feel popular for the first time in my life (as I set my phone down for an hour and returned to over 3,000 new messages). I feel like I've known these people all my life. We've never seen each other face to face yet somehow, we can (accurately) guess what each other's voices sound like. My lovely piers already feel like family and I don't know how I survived life this far without them, their bedtime stories, and inside jokes.

What shocks me however, is how vulnerable we've been with each other. Many of us have shared things with each other that we'd never shared with anybody else (and note, we haven't even physically met). We've shared testimonies together, cried together, laughed together. And the simple reason behind our vulnerability is one thing: trust.  

Vulnerability is something I'm grateful for. For many years, I wore masks and pretended like life was peachy and beautiful (which it most of the time still is, but sometimes it's not). My biggest fear about entering college was that I would be surrounded by those same kinds of people and feel like I couldn't keep that mask off. 

That fear has been more than shattered. Earlier this afternoon, lots of us girls opened up about our life struggles. I opened up about my recent struggles, and other girls were vulnerable and shared how they struggle with similar issues. Each situation was immediately met with prayer and encouragement and love. No judgement. Just love. I am so grateful that I can walk into an environment where vulnerability is the norm and it is most often met with only love and Jesus. 

Vulnerability takes away shame. When you hear other people talk about vulnerable things, it makes you feel safe to share as well. It makes you realize that they aren't ashamed of what happened to them in the past, because God was (and still is) there, so neither should you be. Vulnerability heals. The devil tries so hard to convince us that we are all alone in our struggles. Yet as soon as we are vulnerable, we realize the lie that is. As all of my piers and I have been vulnerable, I've met at least half a dozen people who struggle with the same things I do. Our fears about college have eased as we know we already have a huge support system walking into it. 

Vulnerability heals but only if we decide to open our hearts to let God (and others in).

"When I began to name things, it turns out that God, He already knows. It was less like denial and more like healing" (Sara Groves). 

The Constancy of His Presence

If you read my previous blog post, my word for 2016 is Presence. That was given and shown to me entirely by God and He is already teaching me so many lessons about His presence.

This week has been full of good things and bad things. Of events that made me excited and events that made my heart break inside.  Yet in the good and bad this week, His presence (which is HOPE) has been so constant. In the midst of all the tempests and the bliss, I’ve seen Jesus. His arms holding it all and creating more peace than I could ever imagine.

God has not spoken to me in a fiery roar this week. Yet just this week, I’ve felt His presence a lot more than I’ve felt in a while. I’ve seen His presence. It came in a coffee date yesterday with my good friends, where all we did is laugh. It came in a deep conversation with my friend over Messenger while she happened to be reading a book. At one point, the sentence she happened to be reading exactly matched up to what I was talking to her about. It came in a hug from a friend when I wasn’t expecting it. It came from a group chat with my Cedarville piers next year….from the inside jokes we’ve already created, the Disney memes, the encouragement we’re giving each other, the kindred spirits. It came in going to Starbucks for a chai tea latte, only to have a barista announce that he was in training and had just made a bunch of drinks that were now free samples for anyone who wanted them. It was playing with 7 six week old puppies for 2 hours before school. It was watching those puppies flock toward me when they heard my voice. It was all the beautiful sunrises and sunsets I took pictures of this week. It was the end result of the painting I did. It was the feeling of my warm favorite mug, filled with my favorite tea, when my hands were ice cold.

All of these things were God’s presence to me this week. These things used to be trivial, ordinary everyday life happenings. Yet this week I’ve seen them as God surprising me with things that make my heart sing, and sweeping me off my feet with hope.

God’s presence is constant. It’s always there. We just have to decide to look for it. We have to lay down the “everything that happens is just a coincidence” idea. In the good news and the bad news, God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. In the dark times and the beautiful times, this Presence, this Hope, is constant. Always and forever.

 

 

 

A Word for 2016

According to the internet, 45% of Americans make New Years Resolutions. Only 10% of those who make them are successful at keeping them, and 1 in 3 people ditch them by the end of January. That used to be me. I used to make a list of a million things I wanted to change about myself, my life, and my relationship with God. After the list of "kept" ones grew smaller and smaller as the days (hours) went on, I'd simply resolve that I had failed for this year, and that I could try again come next January.

After a conversation with a friend about always striving to new and better things, and after finally admitting that I'd never be able to keep 20 resolutions, I decided to jump on a different bandwagon. This 2016 I have simply decided on a word to pray through and meditate on.

About a week ago, I sat down to write my newest song lyrics in my bible, when I happened to flip to the passage I'm currently memorizing with a friend. Realizing it had been days since I'd looked at it, I began to read it. One verse...specifically one word, jumped out at me: "we also believe and we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and bring us with you into His presence." Chills ran up and down my spine as my eyes landed on that last word, and suddenly I knew that God had given me my word for 2016.

A bunch of thoughts came into my brain about Presence. They came so fast that I could barely write them down before I was bombarded with more.  First of all, God's Presence is HOPE. When we struggle, we can put our hope in the fact that it will all be over in Heaven, in His eternal presence, where He will wipe the tears from our eyes.  Secondly, I thought of a certain line in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." Aka, bring some of heaven, some of God's Presence, down to earth. I realized that some of God's heavenly presence is here and available to us. We just need to ask. Matthew 7 says "Ask and it will be given to you." I believe if we ask for His presence...if we watch for it and wait expectantly for it, we will be amazed.

We were made for God's presence. When God created Adam and Eve, they walked and lived in the Presence of God. Like the lyrics of "Holy Spirit" say, God's presence is our living hope. In it, our hearts become free and shame is undone. Our hearts long simply to be overcome by His presence.

This 2016, I will be watching, waiting, and praying for Presence. Whether it's in the quiet moments (like sitting in a hammock while coloring and watching a rainstorm, which I did this past vacation), or the loud and bustling ones, we can encounter His presence anywhere, and that changes everything.