Uganda

I just want to direct anyone who follows this blog to my other blog for the next month. I will be updating it as much as possible during my experience in Uganda! That address is http://ugandanlove.blogspot.com. :)

Shadows-The Cure

I encourage anyone who reads this to take the time to watch this podcast!!

http://www.flatironschurch.com/messages/_video/index.php?vn=21734415&sn=Shadows&md=03-27-11

Matthew 11:28-30

God works in crazy ways. I just came down to my room, turned on a repeat playlist between Madly In Love With You by Sean McConnell and I Will Wait For You There by Phil Wickham, then after journaling wasn't going as planned I decided to turn to any random page and the first verse my eyes went to, I would read it. This was the verse:

Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

What a perfect verse to read tonight. I am feeling very weary and burdened. Jesus wants nothing but for me to come to Him and cast my heavy burden on Him. He says then that He will give me rest.

Why is this all so perfect for me right now? I have my heart in a box with thousands of nails around it, so guarded right now so that no one can get in. I will honestly say it wasn't feeling like that earlier, I was feeling so fresh, but as of tonight I have shut down. This was my last intention. All throughout the day today I told myself to just pray and to only let these hardships strengthen my faith, that God had a reason for all of this. No matter how hard I fight, my heart just wants to return to it's safe place of just hiding. Because when it isn't closed up, it seems to get hurt. Why am I so scared of that though? My last post talked about how I KNOW it is going to be broken to pieces and it was going to be soon. I didn't think it would be this soon. I didn't expect it to come out of nowhere. For this waterfall of emotions to just spill out of me. If you know me at all, I really try not to cry very often. Another part of me not enjoying being vulnerable. I am really good at keeping a "happy face" on all day and night until I am in my room and can give myself time to really catch up on my life. I like to focus on everyone else, to give them advice, or even most times tell them what they are doing wrong. I really need to sit back and tell myself what I am doing wrong. But what fun is that?

God really is with me tonight, He is feeling my hurt and trying to heal it. As if the verse wasn't perfect enough, a good friend of mine sent me a text with a picture saying:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of-throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

I knew God was rebuilding me, or even just building me, as I have never known Him as I do now. I expected Him to break me, to challenge me, to love me. I didn't expect the abominable hurt, the confusion as to His plans. If I think I am part of his palace now, I will be pleasantly surprised after all of this. It only gets better. Every day, for the rest of our lives. We will never know why God loves us, why he challenges us, what his purposes are. But we do know that He will never stop loving us no matter our sins. No sin is greater or lesser than the other. We are all humans, created to sin and experience human error. We will never stop sinning, God will never stop forgiving us.

If I have learned anything today it is that I don't want to claim to have the desire to live my life as Jesus did, but instead to share the word and love of God every single day. To continue loving those around me, as Christ did, no matter their beliefs. The more they see my unconditional love and understand that is really the love of God, they will crave that, just as I do every day. That's want God wants of me; to show grace, forgiveness, compassion, and love, day in and day out.

Journal post from a few days ago:

My heart is hurting tonight as I am flying back from California with Dan. While we were taking off my mind wandered back to my flight home several summers ago from Florida with my family. For some reason I was sitting in a different row than them. Sadly, I can't emember who was sitting to my left, but there was this little boy to my right. He was going into 7th grade. For the first half of this flight he was staring out the window & kept rubbing his eyes. I was continuously wondering to myself if he was just sleepy or if he was crying. Eventually, very unlike me, but I started up conversation with him. I asked where his family was, and even though his English was a little hard to understand, I learned that his family lives in Guatemala and he was flying to Denver by himself to live with his uncle and go to middle school at Dunstan. My heart was so aching for this little boy. He cried while he shared his story with me. I kept myself pulled together and told him my mom was a teacher and gave him my cell phone number in case he ever needed help with school. I never heard from him again, but went home and prayed and cried for him to feel God's comfort in such a scary new world. That was the first time I had prayed in a long time.

So why does this little boy keep coming up in my mind? I am being broken right now by God and think he wants me to remember that feeling I had through this kid's story. The feeling that my heart was hurting not only for him, but with him. God wants to remind me that I am here to serve the helpless. That it is not only me in this world.

He is breaking some of my closest relationships to bring me closer to Him. He is taking the ones that led me to Him our of my life to break me and then fill me back up again with only His love.

I am not sure I am ready for that, but when will I ever be? Who is ever ready to have all the feelings and emotions emptied from them? To feel at an all time low somedays, just to be filled back up again with only His love and grace.

I think He is breaking me to pieces for my trip this July. So that I can go to Uganda with only His love to share. To love on the brokenhearted and hopeless. So while this may be one of the scariest, furthest out of my comfort zone experiences of my life, God wants that of me. He wants me far from all I've ever known, from the humanly push I have always had to seek Him, so that I may seek Him purely on my own.

Over and over again God has to remove our friends in order to bring Himself in their place, and that is where we faint and fail and get discouraged.” “It must be God first, God second, and God third, until life is faced steadily with God and no one else is of any account whatever.”

Don't you ever wish that you could have control of everything? That you could determine everything about not only your life but about those around you's lives. I am struggling right now. I usually just try to blog about good and happy things going on in my life, but I am really struggling right now. I am just feeling so disconnected from the people close to me and I think it is because we all let our busy lives take over us. I know that I am busy between school, work, and just trying to find time to eat and sleep. I have been praying constantly to be shown how to find a balance between everything, to still keep my friends/family close in times of craziness. I thought last week, a week ago exactly actually that prayer had been answered.

At 7pm a group of my closest friends and I joined together to start a Bible Study. It was such a beautiful picture; 6 20 year old girls making the decision to engage in God as a group. He was such a part of our 2 hours together that night, opening all of us up to conversations that could only be had through him. I came home feeling so refreshed and excited. So close to God and so close to these girls that I consider family. I think I took that though as God answering my prayer and that was it; everything would just be perfect. Me being the selfish human being that I am.

That's not what he was doing at all. He was opening my eyes to the people that I have surrounded myself with and showing their beauty, but he wasn't just going to make things as easy as that. God is challenging me to not only have it be a once a week thing. To not only dive so deep into Him once a week, but every day. I will admit, I think I need to be held accountable to doing that. Hopefully a start to that is the book we are using for Bible Study; it is Beth Moore's Breaking Free and it has a daily worksheet to fill out. I am actually so excited to HAVE to do that every day. To take the time out of each day to give to God (although I should be doing everything through him all the time). But I still need more, I need those friends close to me to encourage me constantly; one of the friends that always has is busier than I am and that is a challenge for me. Or for her to come to me for all of her problems and updates, like I do to her, even though she has others to keep her accountable. I don't know why I expect this person to hold me so accountable or to make the time for me, but I feel disappointed when she doesn't (another part of me being an absolute control freak).

Prayer request:

God, you show me your love day in and day out, even though I may not immediately recognize it. Thank you for putting such amazing people into my life that hold me accountable in my relationship with you. I pray that you, God, continue to show me that my life isn't going to be a fairy tale and I am going to struggle. Help me to make the time to study the Word every day and worship you constantly. To do all those things without being pushed by those close to me. Thank you for loving and forgiving me, God.

Amen

Uganda

Gosh it has been so long since I have blogged. You know those times where you just kind of lose inspiration to write? For some reason that has been my problem...

I sit down often with the intention of writing a blog post and always end up getting distracted and walking away from it. Today I am really going to try to do the opposite. Blogging really is a way to express emotions and a way to be able to vent things in my view. I woke up this morning feeling like I wanted to run away, like literally pack a bag and move to another state, even country, just me and not tell anyone where I went. I have that tendency, I tend to run away from the things I just don't feel like dealing with no matter how much I let it build up in me. I have been running away and hiding from things for a good while now. I have been in a constant "battle" with one of my best friends for almost three months now. I think both of us know it and don't want to face it. I think both of us just put on an act of being ok with each other when we both can see things are different. I really actually hope she reads this because I don't know that people realize how seriously I take friendships and relationships. I don't have a huge group of friends, by choice. I surround myself with people that encourage me and show me they love me as much as I love them. I don't want to have a big group of friends because that means you are surrounding yourself with a bunch of people that you simply "get along with" not share a deep, intimate (weird word choice, i know) friendship with. This person is someone I consider myself to have a friendship with that goes past being just friends, we are sisters in Christ. She is one of three friends that I expect to hold me accountable in my relationship with the Lord and that I strive to hold her accountable for too. I just find myself feeling like things don't go both ways lately. I know she is struggling to find the place she wants to be in her life, and I want to be someone that helps her in that struggle. But I can only try to involve myself so much when I feel like I'm getting pushed away and being put as a lesser important part in her life. I pray every single day that we be allowed to open ourselves up to each other and be able to grow from this rather than lose a friendship. I feel tears well up in my eyes every time I pray because I'm not convinced it's going to help. I need to allow myself to put that trust in God that he will guide our friendship in the way it's meant to go. I pray that she never allow herself to get so wrapped up in a guy that she loses the people that have been here for her longer. I pray that her heart doesn't get broken and then she is lost because she's pushed other people away. I pray that she desires the same friendship that I am longing for.

So yes, I may continue running and hiding. But I am going to try to bring the people along with me that I can't lose. So why is this title Uganda? Because that's where I want to run to and hide the rest of my life. Because that's where my heart is wrapped up at, not having even ever been there before. Because I expect to experience and feel the most love I will ever feel in my life the month I am there, from the people and from God. Not stress about the petty things that go on in a college house, but stress about and love the people that have nothing and wouldn't want their lives any different because they are surrounded by the people they love. That's why I run and hide, because I don't want to let myself see all the hurt in the world while being selfish about the hurt I feel.