Growing Up

28 years old. Just got my first ever kitchen appliance!!!! Watch out, world!!

Isaiah 41:10

"Don't be afraid, for I am with you.
Don't be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
I will hold you up with my victorious right hand." (Isaiah 41:10 NLT)

Sometimes the Word of God is so tangible. This verse sums up this week.

God is amazing.

the day Smith Optics made me smile

this is a shameless, unsolicited plug for my favorite pair of sunglasses.

probably 3 or 4 years ago, I scored a pair of Smith sunglasses (Smith Optics), the Gallegos model with polarized lenses (because in the Keys, polarized is the only legit way to go).  and I mean scored.  as in, I think I paid $20 for them. :) one of the marine stores in town was moving to a new location and so they were selling all their inventory for dirt cheap.

I loved these Smith Gallegos sunglasses.  they accompanied me on many trips all over the US and around the world.  they went out on many boat rides & fishing trips with me.  they helped me win every beach volleyball match I ever played (…hey, this is MY story, I can make up whatever I want!).  ok I haven’t won every match I’ve played.  you got me.  lying is not my forte.

back on track…

but eventually, the lenses became so scratched that it drove my eyes nuts to wear them.

and I was very sad.

I then scored a great pair of Costas that I love as well.  however, they just weren’t like my Smiths.  and every so often I would pull out my Smiths and put them on, hoping the scratches had gone away.

but they never did.

then one day I got smart.  I decided to send them in to Smith Optics to see if the lifetime warranty would cover them.  and since they’re a fixed-lens, they can’t just replace the lenses.  so I sent them in, 1/2 expecting to get a call from customer service asking if I wanted to purchase a replacement pair.  to which I probably would’ve sadly declined because money is also not my forte right now.

alas, within a week, UPS pulls up to my door.  my heart leapt for joy with anticipation of what that great person in brown would deliver.

dog bones for the dogs!!!

NO!  I mean, yes – they did.  but that’s not the point…

my friends, Smith Optics has made my day.  they sent me a brand new pair of the Gallegos sunglasses!!  including a sticker!!  (hey, those of us with sticker-drenched guitar cases get excited about new stickers to add to the conglomeration)

um.  Smith Optics might quite possibly be my most favorite sunglasses brand EVER.

and if you work for Smith, you can pay me now for gaining you tons of business!  :)

I just want to wear my new sunglasses and run around!!!  except…it’s dark out.

“I wear my sunglasses at night…”

(does anyone actually know the rest of that song?  I think not.)

quote of the day

"i just want to go stick my head in a bowl of chocolate and never return" - spoken by one of my friends who shall remain nameless :)

He…overwhelms me.

i.  feel like.  i.  could EXPLODE.

GAAH!

my heart, my spirit is overwhelmed by the hand of God.  the goodness of God.  the patience of God.  the strength of God.  …I am overwhelmed by God.

I feel like if I just start typing, I will verbally spew so much into this post and it will turn into a 20-page, single spaced, size 8 font post.

a year ago today, I was packing up my apartment in the Keys, throwing away tons of yearbooks, pictures, notebooks… downsizing in order to fit everything I owned into my Scion XB (aka Zeva, akaa [also known affectionately as] the Toaster).  I had always thought my friends in the Keys were crazy when they’d talk about moving off the rock – I was determined to stay in the Keys because I love living in the beautiful islands, I love that my family all lives there, I love my friends, I love the culture, I love the weather, I love the landscape…(the list goes on).

the ironic thing is, sometimes God calls us to surrender what we love.  it’s like He says, “wow…I know you love all this, but trust Me – there is SO much more I have for you!”

and it’s up to us to accept His invitation, to take the leap of faith, and trust Him.

so for the past year, I’ve been interning under Continuous Worship ministries.  ok I won’t give minute by minute details.  I realize the average attention span is currently 12.882 seconds and so I want to stick to the point before I lose you.  (and yes, I’m totally making up the average attention span thing – but you totally know it’s true!)

but the past year of my life has possibly been the most amazing, most challenging, most stretching, hardest, best years of my life.  I have never felt more alive in my life.

I now know that even when God calls you to something, He’s not necessarily calling you to something easy.  but there’s such beauty in that – because when we are weak, His strength carries us.  He is shown powerful and through that, His Spirit works in and through us.

2 Corinthians 12:9
”Each time He [the Lord] said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”

I have had so many weak moments during this past year.  so many times I wanted to just curl up in a ball and wait for the task at hand to pass me by.  so many times I saw the mountain in front of me that I needed to climb and just wanted to quit and go back to the Keys where life was relatively easy and comfortable.

I have clung to this passage in 1 Corinthians 2 so much over the past year:

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 – “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ² For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”

I always think of Paul as being this amazing speaker, this guy who never wavered in his faith and was so confident in who he was in Christ that he never feared anything.  don’t get me wrong – he was an amazing follower of Christ.  but he wasn’t perfect.  he had fears.  he had weaknesses.  but he knew the beauty of being willing to operate even in his weakness.

I have experienced God’s faithfulness in so many awesome ways over this past year.  His faithfulness to provide.  His faithfulness to lead me.  His faithfulness to be more than enough strength in my weakness.  His faithfulness to be patient with me.  His faithfulness to love me through the good and the bad.

I have experienced God’s grace in so many awesome ways over this past year.  His grace to forgive me when I doubt Him.  His grace to surround me with friends and family that love me and encourage me (and still love me even on my bad days).  His grace to use me even when I feel so unusable.

today I got the opportunity to lead the entire worship service (well, the music part) at church.  it was completely by God’s strength alone.  leading up to this opportunity, for years upon years, just the thought of being on a worship team made my stomach turn with anxiety, with fear.  so the idea of leading was always out of the question.

until this last time I was asked.

please don’t take this as me boasting about what I’ve done.  it is completely not that, and if it comes across that way, I will probably be physically sick to my stomach.

I say all this because I want you to know we serve a STRONG God.  we serve a BIG God.  we serve the ONLY TRUE God.  all things are possible through His strength when we have our sights on glorifying Him.

how hard do I seek?

I got to have coffee with a good friend of mine tonight.  I love grabbing coffee with Teah because she loves Jesus and she loves Him deeply and our conversation quickly turns toward deeper things than talking about the weather.

we started talking about what it means to truly seek the Lord.

in Jeremiah 29:13 it says:
”You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

the Hebrew word used for “seek” is “darash” and it means to seek with care, to be sought.

in Matthew 7:7, Jesus says:
”“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

the Greek word used in Matt. 7:7 for “seek” is “zēteō” and it means “to crave” or “to seek in order to find”.

I loved Teah’s analogy.  how often do we lose something and are desperate to find it?  when I was home this winter, I was staying at my family’s place.  my 2-year old nephew, Ben, loves car keys.  like, literally – as soon as you turn the car off, he’s on you.  “Keys!  Me want…CAR KEYS!!” and he looks at you with these big, innocent blue eyes and holds out his hand and cocks his head to the side and smiles.  and he has this adorable deep, husky voice because he screamed so much as a baby (true story).  you can’t deny the kid.  so, wanting to be the cool aunt that I am, I gave him my keys and told him not to lose them (hindsight is 20/20).  I went inside and later that night, when it was dark and I needed to leave, I remembered I didn’t have my keys.  and Ben was asleep.  and we all know the cardinal rule – never wake a sleeping toddler once you’ve gotten them to bed.

so we checked his shorts’ pockets.  we checked drawers.  we checked counter tops and tables.  we checked his toy trucks.  we looked everywhere.  then we remembered he was playing outside when I gave him the keys and he had continued playing outside for awhile.  so outside we went, flashlights in hand, scouring the yard around the swing set and anywhere else we thought he may’ve gone.  nothing.

how often do I seek that desperately after God?  how often do I desperately seek to know Him more, to gain wisdom and understanding from His Word?  how often do I earnestly sit in stillness and quiet and wait to hear His voice?

I have to admit, I searched harder for those car keys than I often seek after God.  we live in a “I want it now” culture.  fast food.  fast internet.  everything right at our fingertips with our smart phones.  we are accustomed to getting what we want, when we want it.

I think we’ve lost the art of seeking.  the art of patiently yet earnestly seeking.

I don’t think God responds to us instantly a lot of times.  I know He can and He does.  but I think a lot of times, He desires to refine us, restore us, reveal Himself to us through a process and not with instant answers.  I mean, we’re told to seek.  to search after.  to think, to meditate.  none of that jives with the “I want it now” mentality we’ve come to accept.

and so – may we seek the Lord.  may we truly seek with our whole heart, our whole mind – with everything that is within us.  may we not be satisfied with instant answers but may we continue to search after Truth and wisdom from the Creator of Truth and wisdom.

oh to be a desperate seeker.

Costa Rica Rundown

I had the blessing of getting to go to San Ramon, Costa Rica for a 1-week missions trip last month.  first off, can I just tell you how awesome it was to watch God provide the $$ for me to go on this trip??  I’ve been on a lot of mission trips, but I can only recall 2 of them that I signed up for knowing I did not have enough $$ in my bank account to cover the trip in case I wasn’t able to raise the support.  all the other trips I signed up for knowing that if the money didn’t come in, I could cover the difference (now THAT’S called faith, right?  goodness…please sense the heavy sarcasm there).

what’s kind of funny is that the trips I signed up for knowing I had the money to cover any lacking financial support, I think I always ended up having to pay quite a bit of my own money to go.  however, the trips I signed up for knowing I didn’t have enough money and needed God to provide, those were the trips that were fully paid through generous financial support from family, friends, and random people I didn’t even know.

it’s like the trips I had a “backup” plan for in case “God didn’t come through” (although I would’ve never admitted that was my mindset, but really…it was), God was like, “if you don’t think you need Me, then fine – spend your own money.”  and the trips I needed Him to provide, He delighted in giving and giving generously.

He delights in giving good gifts to His children.  (check out Matthew 7:11)

ugh.  why does coffee get cold so fast?  I just went to finish my cup and spit it out as soon as I realized it was cold already.  sad.

off topic.  coming back…

anyway, I signed up for this trip needing God to provide the funds and He totally did!  and for our entire team!

our entire team of about 24 (I think) split into 5 smaller teams for the week.  4 teams each had a church/community they worked with every day, mainly doing door-to-door evangelism and leading a small group at night (I AM SECOND groups).  the 5th team was the sports team, AKA SportReach, and I was on that team.  we traveled each day to a different church/community and met up with our team that was there.  we did sports camps for kids/youth in the morning and afternoon, teaching them volleyball, basketball, futbol (soccer…although they totally knew more than we did and a lot of us decided it was safer to just give them the ball and we’d stand on the sidelines and cheer – haha), and one day we taught them ultimate frisbee, which was a hit.

every night, our entire team would gather together and debrief over the day, sharing stories of what God had done or was doing.  I loved these times.  but after a couple days, I was starting to get discouraged.  we’d hear all these awesome stories of how all these people were coming to know Jesus through the door-to-door evangelism.  but on the sports team, we really didn’t see a lot of decisions like that.  we would take a break in the morning and the afternoon and share the Gospel with the kids using a multi-colored soccer ball (red, green, yellow, black, and white).  we’d share one of our testimonies.  but then when we’d ask if anyone wanted to accept Jesus as their Savior, they’d all stare at us.  then we’d ask if they already knew Jesus…and they all said yes.  :)  a lot of them came from the churches we were working with.  but whether or not these kids actually knew Jesus, it didn’t really give us the opportunity for a lot of deeper, one-on-one conversations with the kids.

so I was getting discouraged.  I was thinking, “man…all we do all day is play with the kids and have fun…I haven’t seen anyone come to know Jesus yet…how can I be more faithful with this week God has given me here?”

I went to bed Tuesday night discouraged by this.  Wednesday morning, I woke up and had some time with Jesus on the porch, wrapped up in a big soft blanket and drinking coffee.  :)

(my view)

God really spoke this to my heart that morning. “It’s not about what I accomplish – how many people I share the Gospel with, how many people come to know Jesus, etc. – it’s about being faithful and obedient with what God has given me to do.”

I thought about that awhile.  I thought about what He’d given me to do that week.  He had placed me on this sports team for a reason (and not just because I love sports).  He was giving me the opportunity each day to meet kids and spend my entire day loving on them.  spending time with them, playing with them.  showing them they have worth and value by giving them my time and attention.  and through that, the love of Jesus is shared with them.

a couple pics of friends I made and miss very much in Costa Rica:

 

(our sports team)

a 1 minute post

I have 1 minute before 9am and I need to get to work at 9.  therefore: prepare for the 1 minute post.

some days my heart aches to be in the Keys more than other days.  I miss the atmosphere.  I miss the palm trees, the unending beautiful views of the ocean.  the sand.  the beach volleyball matches.  the laid back, no-worries people.

I miss having a full afternoon of intense beach volleyball followed by a jump in the ocean, followed by an outside shower at the beach.

but it’s OK.  there will be plenty of time for that when I get to Heaven.  :)

oops.  that took 2 minutes.

tonight, we eat steak

(monday, 7/30/12)

this morning I woke up to 3 cows outside my window.  mooing.

when I say outside my window, I mean … literally right outside my window.

during the night, the cows got out and all through the night we kept waking up to the sound of unusual mooing.  around 5am, I finally got up to look out the window to see what was clanking around outside my window.  I didn’t have my glasses on, so at first I saw this huge black animal and I thought, “IT’S A MOOSE!!!!” and I was so excited.  then I thought it was a black bear.  then I grabbed my glasses.  and realized they were cows.

I heard my dad go outside.  then I heard a pack of coyotes howling and it sounded like they were right outside my window.  I thought for a second that maybe my dad had gotten attacked by the coyotes.  then I decided that would be absurd.  then I decided I should see if my dad needed help.  it was at that point that I realized my dad’s true calling: to be a shepherd.  that guy had all but a couple calves rounded up and herded back into the right pasture!  that’s MY DAD!  :)

we got back in around 6am.  since the cows kept everyone else up all night, almost all of us slept past 9am this morning.  we didn’t even eat breakfast until 10am.  totally not normal for us.

I have never had a dislike for cows.  until this morning.

I decided we should eat steak tonight.  just to spite them.