I may be inadequate but :

"He does not build on any natural ability of ours at all.  God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us- He only asks up to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come."
~Oswald Chambers

Beautiful, Strong.

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."
~Elizabeth Kublar Ros

Being a strong person does not mean being comfortable or being ignorant or being naive.  Yet so often I choose to ignore the world's pains, disasters, and fears rather than face them.  This needs to change.

Living where dying is gain...

My values are changing... And so am I.   During this past week I took this VAL test to see what I value most in my life.  And my top two life values were God and Family.  For the longest time, part of me wanted these two things to be most important to me, but they weren't.  I valued achievement too much, autonomy, fellowship, success...  But finally, here I am.  

As my values have shifted, so has my focus.  Suddenly, I am looking at life through a different lense.  I'm reading this book about missionaries Frank and Marie Drown and I love it.  They gave up everything for God.  I am just compelled by that.  I find myself exercising more and thinking "One day maybe I will be on the mission field and will have to be strong to travel and thrive" or I work on memorizing Philippians a lot because "Who knows when I may just be in a closed country and the only Bible I have is the one in my memory?"  I study the Old Testament for school and think to myself "One day I will maybe teach this to adults or children who don't completely understand the truth of the Bible."  I think about all kinds of different things- trying to cook with strange ingredients, attempting to learn a new language, living in a hut, adapting to a different culture.  Does that sound strange?  Well, Frank and Marie were much like me, young Americans with a desire to serve God with everything.  They were willing to go to a foreign jungle to spread Christ's love.  They made Christ their number one value and everything changed.

I've heard people say this before: "I believe in God.  But you know, just to be safe.  If God ends up not being real, what do I have to lose by just believing in him now...?" That's not belief in God, that's belief in fire insurance.  To believe in God is to lose everything if He doesn't exist.  Christ doesn't say to go on living the same way, just reassured.  He says to take up your cross,  say good-bye to your family, become a new creation.  He calls us to come to know Him and never stop drawing close.  He doesn't want us to ever say- "I've reached it! I know God enough now... This is a comfortable place to stop."  No!  This may sound radical, but I don't think those things Jesus commanded in the gospels are safe on any measure. 

I want God to always be my first priority, I want His love to consume me, I want to be obedient to His commands, I want to be true to His calls, I want to live in a way that Philippians 1:21 holds true for my life.

Worship with every breath.

Friday evening found me at an amusement park, riding indoor rollercoasters, battling thunderstorms, sipping coffee, eating ice cream with good friends, meeting celebrities, waiting in long lines, and experiencing some unexpected worship.

I feel close to God a lot now.  The other day I missed my devotion in the morning and it felt so strange until I finally read my Bible and prayed for a while.  I don't know what it is, but even the most ordinary moments of my life I feel close to God.  On Friday at Rock the Universe, I felt close to God simply by being around other believers.  But then I had these couple moments by myself with a crowd of unknown faces watching Switchfoot in concert and I just had such a moment of worship towards God.  There's something about that band's lyrics that are beyond profound to me.  I stood towards the back, surrounded by strangers, listening to them sing Stars, Your Love is a Song, This is Your Life, The Sound, and Gone.  The rollercoaster gliding behind the stage, the lights shining, the stars twinkling above, all seemed to fade out as I listened to these songs and worshipped God.  How? I just kept thinking about how God created those stars shining overhead before He even created man, before I existed.  I thought about how His love is a song, how I just knew His love so deeply and He was becoming my everything.  I meditated on His sovereignty and His goodness. I thought about my life and about who I wanted to be- a servant of God.  It was something that God has been slowly nurturing in me, this desire to serve Him each moment of my life and now I'm finally beginning to embrace it.  Before long, my prayers came to a close when my friends joined me again and we walked off in our still-wet-from-the-rain TOMS out of the park and back to the bus.  We were heading home.  What a wonderful Friday with an unexpected moment of worship, a "captivating moment" with the Lord!

It seems the more I know, the more I realize I don't know.

"For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."

1 Samuel 16:7

I haven't yet learned the secret...

...to being content.

I feel as if God is sifting me at this time in my life, refining me.  He's been showing me all my misplaced priorities.  I have to admit, I haven't been very content lately... and it's all related to making "usefulness" too high of a priority in my life. 

You see, God doesn't care as much about how "useful" I am... He just wants me to be His.  He wants to come first and then let everything else come out of that.  He wants me to be content with Him alone.

I have dreams of being on the mission field, completely dependent on God, seeing God transfrom lives, relying wholly on Him.  And I'm discouraged because here I am, still at home, not in the world.  Maybe, one of the reasons I want to go to the mission field is because I think I will feel "useful" to God there.  But this motive needs to be uprooted immediately.  God can use me anywhere, not just the mission field.  I don't have to feel "useful" to be used by God.  He doesn't want that to have value over knowing Him anyways.

[The secret to being content is to give everything to Christ, not to be useful, but to be His.]

Baby, it's a new day.

For a while I couldn't get out of feeling this strong nostalgia for the way things used to be... I missed my high school, sitting in class with my friends, doing artwork twice a day, seeing the same familiar faces that are long gone.

But then I finally came to realize, it's a new day.  I can't spend all this time remembering the past when I have so many wonderful things in the present to think about.  Like friends, this year I thought I would be left all alone, but God has given me wonderful friends :)  One day I met my friend for coffee to hear how her summer mission trip went.  Or this past Friday I spent time with a group of friends at Chili's just laughing and making the most of every moment.  Or tonight I went to my friend's beach house and played volleyball with some of her other friends on the beach.  These little things, these people, these moments make me happy.

Then I got a job this past week... What an incredible blessing! Now I can save up for the summer mission trip/internship I hope to take part in. 

I've also able to spend a lot more time with my family, without taking them for granted.  They love me so much!  So I get to be here with them for a year before I leave... I probably will never live in my house again after I go off to college. So why not make the most of the time now?

I can't live yesterday or tomorrow, just today.  So why not rejoice in the best of what today has to offer?  Today is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!