Stirring with a Flute

"You can use a flute to stir soup, but that is not what it was made for. What we can do and what we were made for are not always the same." - Shane Hipps

I read this quote in the fall. It made something inside of me shake.

For months I had started becoming more and more discontent with what seemed like just about everything in my life, but I couldn't really point out specifics as to why I was feeling that way. Then I read this and everything inside of me started rattling. This was it. I was spending all of my time doing things that I was very capable of doing, but not what I was made for. It started me on a journey of readjusting that I am still in the middle of.

To be honest, not a whole lot has changed in the natural and I don't have a grand plan to execute doing things that I was made for. I'm still doing most of what I was doing six months ago. My outlook has completely changed though. I felt stuck and out of control then. I now look at things with excitement, anticipation and hope for what is coming.

I could have very easily made drastic changes in those moments out of my own abilities, but that's not what I was supposed to do. I knew I was supposed to wait and that's what I've done. I waited and did nothing on my own, trusting that God would work it all out for me (Romans 8:28). And guess what? He is doing it! He has removed obstacles, renewed strength, stretched my faith, released me from obligations and is birthing dreams inside of me. I know it's where I am supposed to be.

You may not see me playing my flute center stage for some time, but I am no longer stirring soup. I am beginning to hear the melody of what is it come and I like what I am hearing.

Powerful & Free

I posted a picture on Instagram about 6 weeks ago of the cover of the book Powerful & Free by Danny Silk, marked with the caption, “Starting to read this tonight. I have a feeling it’s going to change my entire life.” Sure enough…

I finished the book today.

The weekend before I posted that picture Danny was at our church for a family conference. He also spent some extra time with our church staff before and after the conference. Those five days were truly an incredible time of teaching. I had over 25 pages of notes and even missed two of his sessions.

My caption was so true. The book itself is a great read, so challenging, but it has been the journey since that time that I have truly seen so much change in myself. It has been a long time coming and I’m still in the middle of experiencing a lot of it. It’s crazy to me that things that people started telling me 6 months ago that I completely thought were crazy are starting to more and more get confirmed and come to pass.  I wish I could share some of them, but they are still too fresh and too personal to share on a public forum. I’m sure I will share all that this season has been at some point down the road though.

The forward of the book is by Heidi Baker and she makes this statement, “Regardless of what people may think, it is important to carry what God has placed inside of us to full term.” For those of you who are close to me, you will immediately notice significance there. (Before anyone asks, no, I’m not having a baby!) There is something of great value and worth that has been growing inside of me though, and it’s such an encouragement to allow it to stay there until it has reached an age of maturity that it can live in existence in a place that is close to me but not necessarily private to me. In this season of gestation though, I’m thankful for the way it has stretched my faith and trust in God, and I'm looking forward with great excitement of all that is yet to come.

 

PS I know it seems like I’ve been absent, but I’ve actually been writing, just not posting. The blogs are way too long, too personal, or just not the right time to post! Thanks for keeping up with me though J

What is that to you?

In August, JD received a prophetic word that we were going into a season of shaking. I was in a weird place spiritually at the time and I remember having such fear about it. I honestly tried to blow it off. A couple weeks ago it came to my mind and it all made total sense. I truly believe we have been walking in that season without ever being aware of it. Our life has always been a little crazy but the last couple of months multiple areas of our life have seemed to be turned upside down, shifted, chaotic. We recognized it as being a spiritual thing (see Ephesians 6:12 if you don't know what I mean by that) a couple weeks into it, but I honestly didn't even have a thought about that word until a month or so after that. I wish I could say we are on the other side of this season, but I don't think that's true. I think we are looking in the eye of the storm, either closely behind it or about to hit it.

As crazy as it has been I have loved this season. I remember feeling so unsettled about 6 weeks ago and as I look at what the past few weeks have brought I know I have received things that in no other circumstance I otherwise would have. Even being in the middle of it, I know it's a gift. Recently, different people who I'm close with told me how they thought this season was ending. For them, it may be. Several people we know have been experiencing different degrees of this shaking in their lives. But for us, I knew it wasn't. Thankfully I didn't let my mindset shift out of sync and yesterday the Lord spoke something so beautiful and timely into my heart that I just had to share.

John 21:22 says, "Jesus answered, 'If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." In this statement Jesus was replying to a question that Peter had asked about John. You see, Jesus had just told Peter something about himself and in an effort of comparison he asks Jesus about John as well.

I so have this tendency! I find myself comparing constantly. Relationships, ministry, lifestyles, fashion, the list goes on. It is a constant battle I fight in my mind to not compare. Jesus speaks so directly to this in a way that I've never noticed before.

What happens with other people doesn't matter. Jesus asks, "What is that to you?"

God has a specific calling, plan, destiny that He designed for me and me only (Psalm 139:16). No matter what else is going on in circumstances around me I am called to follow Jesus and His guiding. Follow. Not try to figure out what all is happening around me, come up with an action plan and go. No. I'm called to follow. No matter what, in every season. So in this season of shaking, I'm following Jesus and finding so much peace in that.

Five Years

Back to my big move five years ago.

It is funny the things I remember from those first few days. I remember the drive up with my parents. We had two cars so I split time driving with my mom and dad. When I was with my mom I remember I kept trying to be excited. We talked about what my life would look like over the next year in my internship and future plans of when they would come visit me. Then I got in the car with my dad and the reality of me actually being away from them set in and I spent the next few hours trying to compose myself and choke down tears. We got there and went and found the apartment I would move into the next day. I remember how surreal it all felt. Good ol’ Bella Springs. It really was an awesome place!

Then we had to go get a new phone. We had a local cell phone provider in NM so I had to get a new phone right away. I remember sitting in the hotel that night trying to figure out how to work it. I actually still have the same voice message that I recorded that day on my phone… I should probably update that! My parents stayed for a couple days and the day they left I cried in the Perkins’ backyard with the two second year girls (who were total strangers to me then) for a good half hour. I truly didn’t think I was going to make it for the first 10 days or so. I would dream about packing my car up in the middle of the night and leaving. I’m so glad I didn’t!

I can’t imagine what my life would look like without my first year of DI, or the year and a half after that with Desperation. An amazing journey began that weekend. I became an adult. I met incredible people who would forever change my life. I created my own opinions and developed godly convictions. I discovered my giftings and passions. I spent hours upon hours in tour buses and fifteen passenger vans. I became an expert packer! I went to three different countries. I lived a life that ruined me for the Kingdom. I let my past become my past and allowed God to redeem my life and mark my future. Truly it was a beautiful journey.

Five years later there are days that I wish I could go back and re-live. I know I took that time for granted. I am forever grateful for it though and know that my best days are yet to come.

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Blogging Again (Hopefully!)

So I’ve once again become absent from the blogging world. Go figure. It has become my M.O…

At any rate, I feel like it is time to start again. This time not really for the benefit of anyone but myself. I’ve found myself getting lost in my own thoughts again, something that hasn’t happened since I was in high school. Just when I start thinking I’m a mature adult, life throws me a curve ball and I feel like that awkward teenager that is just trying to figure life out. Anyone relate? My next few blogs will probably be less directed than my past ones. I’m trying to get all the randomness of my life so I can remember these awkward days and maybe help navigate the craziness of life.

Anyway, this weekend marks a big day in the history of my life. Five years of adulthood. I moved to Colorado without a friend to my name, an eagerness to start new and a dream of figuring my life out 5 years ago this weekend. I really do laugh when I think about those first few weeks. I hated it. I swore I would never like Colorado and if you were to tell me I would still be living here I probably would have had a meltdown.  Literally a meltdown. You can ask anyway who knew me then; there were many! How time (and the goodness of the Lord!) has changed me.

I truly enjoy life here. I love the cold. I love being cold. (Even after getting hypothermia… That story is for another time.) I love nearly everything about fall and winter. Scarves, boots, peacoats, soup, baking, football, pumpkin spice lattes, snow days, more snow days, holidays. The list goes on.  As you can tell I have colder weather on my mind as I sit inside my 80 degree house right now.  

Until next time my friends...

Facebook

I’ve spent the past several days off of Facebook and it has really been a mind opening experience. I hadn’t realized to the extent of how absolutely addicted I was to it. As silly as it sounds, I have felt so much pressure off of me as I’ve taken a break from it. We live in a technology driven culture and with that, there is a constant feeling I have of always know what is going on and happening. This started at first with what was going on it famous people’s lives. A few years back I became intrigued with celebrity lifestyles, not that I wanted that, I just wanted to know what was going on in them. This slowly drifted over to my Facebook friends. I’m not one of those people who are constantly on Facebook or check and update it incessantly, but I found myself having to read my entire newsfeed, figuring out what my friends had been doing since the last time I was on.  I slowly became addicted to a social media network, spending my time reading about people’s lives that I’m not even close with.  Seriously, what a waste!

Please don’t hear my say I’m deleting my Facebook page or that I think it is bad. That’s really not the case at all. (I do however want to spend my time more productively.) My problem with Facebook is this: people feel like that they need to broadcast their lives in a public display and make the small details of their lives seem like celebrity events. It’s a bit of a joke when you really stop to think about it. Last month my family found out about someone speaking poorly of us on Facebook. You should have seen us all up in shambles over something that wasn’t even spoken clearly or pointed fingers directly to us.  For a few days I was so upset by something so silly. I finally realized that it really didn’t matter. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t in the wrong and that’s what counts. There is no need for me to live my life walking on egg shells when I know that I’m living with good intentions.

So in the next few days as I transition back into social media that’s what I want to focus on. Am I spending my time wisely? Am I making my life seem more important than it actually is? Am I allowing the silly thoughts of others to affect my life? I want my life to point others to Jesus. If I can do that on Facebook, awesome. If not, what am I really doing?

A Few Thoughts on Faith

Being my OCD self I have a list of things to blog on. Obviously, that hasn’t happened and this blog isn’t even part of the list. 2011 has come and gone with such change in our lives from the beginning of the year to the end that it is almost difficult to process. I knew when I married JD that life would not be quiet, still or consistent but I was not at all prepared for the adventure that lay ahead of us. We are doing things that most young married couples wouldn’t begin to even think about, yet alone try. It makes me feel old and somewhat out of place in our generation. That has been the story of my life though. Since I gave my whole life to Jesus in June of 2006, I have lived very different than others my age. I don’t say that in a chip on my shoulder kind of way but simply to say that it is not a new thing for me to live somewhat counter-culturally.

A man I met briefly at the end of 2007 told me he saw me living my entire life against the grain. I have never forgotten his statement, yet over 4 years later it still doesn’t make it any easier to do.  People think I’m some weird, over spiritual person because I’ve devoted my life to Christ. While many my age feel the freedom to participate in the rampant sin of our generation, I hold different values. The same is true in our marriage. Very early our faith was stretched more than what I thought we could handle when we moved to back to Colorado. Yet here we still are, more devoted to our faith and thankful for the life we have here. I was hoping that the move would be the end of our faith stretching, yet here we are just a year and a half later and I feel like we are being stretched again, yet in a totally different way.

That’s the funny thing about faith. We feel like once we have gotten through something once we won’t have to go through anything again. What a misperception! It is so easy to sit in church and listen to a message about faith and say, “Amen!” and get into the hype of the emotion. But how can we consistently turn that hype into action? What makes us change from simply sitting in a church thinking we are good Christians because we showed up, to being devoted followers of Christ who live our lives with audacious faith? I don’t have the answers and it’s a hard thing to tackle, yet that is what I find myself often thinking of.

I want to live my whole life in a way that pleases the Lord. That doesn’t mean that I have to talk to every person I encounter about my beliefs.  It doesn’t mean that I have to sit all day and do nothing but read my bible. It doesn’t mean that I have to live a rigid life by some set of rules. What it does mean is that I have to be faithful to the things that I feel like God has called me to: serving, giving, loving. It means that when I feel like quitting, I have to trust that God is making a way for me.  I have to trust that God is bigger than the emotions I feel, the wrongs that I feel have been made to me, the situations that I cannot begin to wrap my head around. I have to trust and believe that I serve a God where nothing is impossible and bend my life around that fact. That for me is what living a faithful life means.  That’s how I want to please the Lord.