~And His Life Brought Light to Everyone~

     I know it happens every year, but this year it seems like a rampant disease around Christmas. To-do lists, pressure, exhaustion, and pure agony. Getting "ready" for Christmas has become less about preparing our hearts and WAY more about preparing for duties and responsibilities; making sure everything gets bought, and wrapped, and baked, and cleaned, and sent and woah- I am burned out just from merely trying to explain what most of us are actually experiencing. Christmas is all about celebrating new life-life that changed the world, but it's slowly sucking the life out of us all instead. 

     

We're all so overwhelmed, so busy, so on the verge of breaking with no time to stop and reflect. This year, in the midst of chaos, I have been asking Jesus to remind me that I am His daughter. I have been sitting at his feet asking him to remind me that I am free. Because of his miraculous birth, life, and death- I am free. I am free from pressures and judgements and expectations. I am free from my tendancies to worship perfectionism and performance. Because of Jesus I am divorced from the sweet, yet tempting lies that His love is based on what I do or what I have done. Because He entered the world, I am seperated from the false comfort that anxiety brings- I don't have to hide anymore or overthink anymore or stress anymore. I already know what He thinks of me: I am His daughter. I can burn my to-do lists and I can smash the stack of bricks weighing me down. I can rest in knowing that He died to set me free from all of those messes. I can sigh deep and Celebrate that He came to earth through a woman- a woman who had to let go and trust. She had an unshakable faith in God's plan and because of her willingness to obey and because she laid down every worry and fear, God used her in an unfathomable way. She gave birth to the savior of the world.

I can celebrate His birth and life this Christmas. My heart is brimming over with thankfulness for the precious gift of salvation made available to all. Because He was born, I can rejoice. I was brought life and hope.

     Often I still have one piece of my heart in the arms of Jesus and the other piece trying desperately to cling to the false comforts of the world. I know the truth, but sometimes it is scary to fully believe and submit and let it change me. 

     I am not interested in a life that isn't fully submitted. The concept of knowing about the life-changing love and grace of Jesus, but not letting it penetrate deep enough into my heart to radically change my life, terrifies and me altogether disgusts me. It's not enough to simply know and hear about the Christmas story- to know the stories of His life and death. I want those truths to change me to the core, to completely uproot the life I think I can build on my own efforts. I want the unexplainable and completely unmerited compassion, grace, and mercy to hit me like a freight train and remold my whole life, how I view each moment, and how I value others. I'm not interested in a cute, pretty telling of His life and birth- I want the whole radical truth of who He is and what He's done-overflowing into all that I do.

"We have been born into a new life that cannot be destroyed or corrupted and can't fade away." -1 Peter 1:4

So with that, I challenge you this Christmas, and at the same time I challenge myself, to not crumble under the unrealistic pressures and expectations of this season. Instead lets breathe deeply of the peace that He brings and sing loudly about His remarkable birth that has freed us all. 

Hope

In the midst of chaos, confusion, and disaster I don't have the words to say. My heart is silently overwhelmed, aching and jumbled. I want to have this dazzling outpour of something...anything..anything to make sense of what is happening, but instead I remain silent. In those moments I have to say: "Lord, I cannot. But you can." And there are a lot of moments when I cannot. 

God is the only refuge in the depths of turmoil. Alone, we cannot say anything that will make it better. I can't say anything that will provide hope. I can't say anything that will provide answers, because there aren't any. 

But God. 

But God steps in and He is the only one to bring peace and reconciliation to our jumbled, tired, and confused hearts. He is the only one who can comfort the brokenhearted, the scared, and the confused. He alone can restore and replenish all of His children who are righteously angry and hurting deep in their bones. He can refill them with His truth and living water. He can bring unity and light into the dark and twisted crevices that appear so far gone and out of reach. Innocent, lovely people have died. People that had a purpose and a story and families and life in their veins--and we don't understand--righteously, we don't understand why this keeps happening. We cannot comprehend the devastation that has happened. The hope of God is the only anthem of our souls. I will sing loudly about the strength that He brings, because what else is there? There is nothing left to cling to other than the hope that He brings and the strength that He provides when we cannot. Smack dab in the middle of unfathomable tragedy, His light shines brighter than ever before. His love is what binds together all of our wounds and ignites the fire in our souls.

These truths cannot be forgotten.

"They breathe out violence, but I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the world of the living."-Psalm 27:12-13

As we mourn and shed tears I can't even begin to comprehend how much more our father in heaven mourns as he witnesses acts of terror and hate so so far from His original design.

"He will lead them to springs filled with the water of life and God will wipe every tear from their eyes."- Revelation 7:17

All Things New

Every season of life is an interim or in-between period. Everything should be written in pencil, ready for God to move. 

I'm not a planner. I guess in a way I am, because I plan NOT to plan. Human plans are scary to me because they often leave little room for God's creative and chaotic directing style. Maybe some people would look at my life and see only a confusing amalgamation of sharp turns and bewildering discord. But God has helped me to see through His perspective: it is gorgeous and messy all rolled into one, with His hand woven into the little moments. He has helped me stop desiring a clean-cut, easy, comfortable life. He has dared me to not cling terribly tightly to my plans or my way. And actually, I feel freedom in allowing God's artistry to guide which way I walk. I feel freedom from myself; I feel freedom from the world's unrealistic expectations. I find joy in the chaos and I praise Him for allowing me to be in places where I must depend on Him alone, not myself or the life I think I've built. I can't accept a watered-down version of surrendering my life to God. This isn't always easy. Sometimes I wake up at 2 am and all of these questions are churning around and I feel it in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes I want complete certainty; something concrete- but that's not what we're promised. Living a life etched in pencil can be captivating and beautiful, but it can also be challenging and muddled. In those moments, though, God reminds me that He Makes All Things New. He has to remind me that truth over and over again; each time it stirs my heart to live more radically for Him. He Makes All Things New as he launches us into new seasons, introduces new relationships, gives us new purpose. If I tried to carefully craft and meticulously lay out how the rest of my life is going to sail until I'm 90, I would miss this. I'd be too busy trying to get myself back on the track I think I'm supposed to be on and I would turn my head and my heart away from the marvelous new things God is doing right before my eyes.

My life is not normal by the world's standards. I don't have a 5 year plan. I'm 21 years old, content, and married. I met my husband on twitter four years ago. How much more unpredictable can it get? I don't have career goals, but instead I have daily goals to experience and share God's love more deeply. God has changed what that has looked like in different seasons- I've been a manager, a mentor, a teacher, a cashier, a decorator- I've lived in Massachusetts, Texas, Maine. There's been seasons with school, seasons without it. But in every season, He is faithful, His grace is more than enough, and His provision is sufficient.  I'm confident in saying I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone next year- but I am content and on the edge of my seat for what God does next. I'll be His vessel, ready and willing to step with Him as He Makes All Things New.

A Writer

I am a writer. It has taken me a long time to embrace that completely because I'm not only a writer. I am a lot of other things, too. There are endless elements that make up each person- facets of life that are always changing; always growing. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a traveler, a coffee drinker. I am in love with Jesus and everything that makes up the entirety of my existence hopefully points back to the unfathomable grace He has shown me; how He took my impossibly blackened heart and transformed me into His daughter, healed and set free from the strangling bondage I had enclosed myself in. And now, in addition to all of those things, I am freely welcoming the fact that I am indeed a writer. I've forced myself to stop saying someday, and instead I am embracing today. Today is the best day there is to write.

A writer writes, not because they have to, but because they want to. A writer doesn't write to add to a list of life achievements or to impress people with a stack of works that will eventually collect dust anyway. A writer doesn't write for money or for fame. I am a writer. And I write because I experience life through words. Long, strung-out, enticing sentences linger in my head until I rummage for a pen and scatter them all over crisp paper. As I go about my day, I willingly submerge myself into a sea of potential stories all around me; I cannot shut the words off and I don't want to. I am a storyteller, and a feeler, and a thinker- dispensing these ideas onto paper is my only option. I will no longer wait around for some grand moment; I will stop anticipating that I will someday be granted a special right of passage to give me permission to live life through writing. I will write for today. I will tend to the stories and experiences that I have been given and share them with the world that God has placed around me. Maybe after all of those moments and words have collected up, it will have transfigured into a larger work; a book. Maybe not. But I'm okay with that. So today I will write, because I am a writer.