Hands Full of Gifts

I have a lot to praise God for and just want to take a second to recognize all He is doing in my life right now.

·         Work is still as amazing as the first day I stepped foot into my building.  Every day I wake up and have to realize, Yes, I really work here.  I have amazing coworkers whom I already love and adore—I feel like I’ve been there for years the relationships are so synced.  Today I spoke to a donor and she let me into her life and I was able to hear her prayers and petitions, and she reminded me that “we’re not only survivors, but God made us overcomers.”  I am blown away by the people, by the purpose, by the dream of Danny Thomas and its realization.  I thank God every day for where He has me and for the first time in my whole life I feel as if I’m not wondering where I’m supposed to be.

·         Friendships It was maybe last week that I prayed for sacrificial friendships.  I love my friends and normally end up doing what they want to do just to hang out, but have found very few people have time to do Jamie stuff, and so I haven’t really felt loved in a long time.  I promise you just this last week I had a friend go with me to see Fast and the Furious 6, a friend accompany me to a worship service, a friend eat Vietnamese with me—and people pouring into me has recharged me almost and this has lightened my heart.  They have been an answer to a prayer I never thought would be answered.  I know it may not always be like this, but this last week has meant so much to me.

·         Discipleship Slowly God is placing women into my life that I feel that nudge to pour into—almost the same way my mentor felt the nudge to pour into me.  I think back on that and wonder where I would be right now if she hadn’t.  If she hadn’t, nobody would’ve.  She sacrificed time, energy—she really invested in me.  She took a new believer and walked alongside me—never judging, always answering my questions honestly, loving me so fully and completely.  If she hadn’t loved me, I can’t say I’d be the same Christian I am today, because she helped build my foundation.  Where God is the architect, mapping out the completed plans, He uses His children to do His work—and He definitely used her to build in me a heart for Him.  I’m excited to listen about these women’s paths.  I’m excited by their curiosity, and I’m reminded of myself two years ago and smile.  It is exciting to be a new believer, and it’s crazy to be watching it now, on the other side.

·         Music I absolutely love music.  You can tell that just by looking at my Twitter.  Shazaam’s errywhere.  This morning I heard for the first time Angie Miller’s You Set MeFree, and was blown away.  I absolutely love this song: When I was haunted and alone / With this baggage on my back, dragging me down / You set me free.  It just hit home.  God rescued me.  Praise Him!

·         Leadership Ever since I began going to church, somehow I’ve always ended up in some kind of leadership position.  Whether it was by my own hand, a friend’s prompting, there I was.  And here I am again.  Leadership positions are always scary, because it means, one, I’m responsible, and, two, I have to pull the extrovert out of me to connect with people in order for our mission to succeed.  For someone who was born an introvert, this is a very weird role switch.  It’s comfortable now, and I think that’s the crazy part.  It feels natural to reaching out to people, talking, building a team.  That’s one of the ways I know God is real is that I look back at my life and see a totally different Jamie.  I loved that Jamie and will always love her, but recognize the change that took place when I accepted Christ.  Something really changed in me.  Everything changed in me, by the power of Christ!  Amen.

·         Dating Single women often face the dreaded, “So why aren’t you married?” question.  Believe us, if we knew, we’d tell you.  I’ve been reading this book and have found comfort in Connally’s words.  To this question, her suggested answer is, “The reason I’m not dating anyone is so that today the work of God might be displayed in my life,” AKA God knows why I’m single and that’s all that matters.  I have this feeling that one day my husband will ask, “So you really didn’t date anyone for two—or three, or twenty—years?”  And I’ll say, “Nope, I didn’t.”  And instead of asking me why not, he’ll simply nod, taking solace in that we both know God had our cards in His hands.  Who knows, my husband might be out there praying protection over me and that could be the very reason I haven’t been asked out.  In that case, God, carry on.  It’ll come when it comes, and if it doesn’t, it won’t.  Either way, after this week God has shown me that life can be very full, very satisfying, and very sweet.

Thank You, God, for all Your many blessings.  May I always appreciate them as I do in this moment, returning to You to offer gratitude and all my love and adoration.

Penmanship of God

In about 2 weeks, I turn 28 years old.

When I was 18, I never would’ve imagined myself sitting here.

The life I picked out for myself was very different.  I would’ve married Jason, my high school sweet heart.  We’d have at least two children by now.  A house in Stockton.  I would’ve been a wife to a cop and I myself would have been a paralegal.  I would have spent my life in oblivion, concerned with only worldly concerns, left to die of the world.

God has continuously ripped my “endings” away from me—the places, the seasons in my life I would not have left had His hand not personally and emphatically moved me.

August 2006 I moved to Memphis as a nonbeliever.

December 2007 I was engaged (and I was also baptized as a nonbeliever—hah).

October 2008 I finally moved into my own apartment.

January 2009 I began a new relationship.

February 2010 We began going to church.

November 2010 That relationship ended; life changed.

April 2011 In another relationship.

May 2011 I made a really huge mistake.

June 2011 Life changing event.

June 2011 In another relationship.

August 2011 Life changing event.

October 2011 The end of another relationship.

November 2011 Begin of the OYC.

There were many days in between these years where I would have been satisfied if that had been it.  If he had been my husband, or if I had stayed at that job—I would have been comfortable.

Looking back at each year, realizing what was to follow, even though the pain of hurts was greater than before, the good things grew more plentifully.  And by “good things” I mean what came from acknowledging God and His graces.  It’s been a progressive scale of transformation.

I can’t say what it was specifically that changed my heart for Him.  It was the evolution of a thousand small instances mixed with large life changing events—it was, at some point, the constant feel of His hand behind every breath of wind, every motion of movement.

In November of 2011, in not so many words, the OYC was a vow to God that I would be obedient to Him.  A boot camp of sorts, where I would pace myself to align my heart with His.  It was intense, focused, and completely what I needed to turn my life around.  This was my commitment to Him that I would no longer walk along this tightrope between His path and my love of the world, and I would sacrifice everything I knew to know Him intimately—or as intimately as possible for a baby Christian.

Sometimes I still try to envision for myself a perfect life.  And then I realize I’m a blind fool if I think I know what’s good for me.

For today, God has given me all that need.  He has all my tomorrows, and will fill with them His loving provision and direction, if only I continue to look to Him.  He has a future written for me with the strength, beauty, and blessings that are only of His penmanship.

Precious Empathy

How precious is empathy?

We can feel the pain of others by watching them go through something difficult, but how much more we are connected to a person when his or her pain is something through which we ourselves have arduously sojourned.

We live our lives experiencing hurt.  On one hand, God uses it for our sanctification.  To use the opportunity to rise above and keep focused on Him through the pain.  On the other, which ebbs on the "love your neighbor" side of the spectrum, the deep pangs of hurt that reverberate through the walls of minds and hearts echo in the hearts of the specific people God brings into our lives at specific times.

God grows empathy in us in the most miserable and glorious ways.  What we’ve specifically experienced…  The abuse…  Your father walking out on your family...  Your mother being an alcoholic...  Your brother committing suicide...  The cousin who was shot…  Your friend dying of Cancer...  When you had the miscarriage?  Or the abortion?  Or your childhood bullying?  The illness you have...  Are these happenings solely purposed for you and you alone to bear, to conceal, to overcome without being used?

All of the hardships that we face connect us to each other.  No one person is going through any one thing alone.  Every single one of us is going through something that another has gone through, and it is up to those who have made it through with the love and grace of God to pour into those that we meet that stir up in us a place of remembrance.

Each hurtful, broken situation is a hand to be stretched out to another.  Don't keep it to yourself.  Stretch it out and reach for the hurting.

Happiness breeds love as well.  Joy is contagious, amorously building relationships.  But the knitting of bonds brought together by pain and its redemption, it's like setting an anchor in wet cement, a permanent connection of understanding, being understood, and with that, being loved through it.

Yes, Jesus experienced everything we could possibly imagine.  There’s the vertical love.  But when there is someone sitting in front of you that knows deeply and intimately the specific pain through which you are going, that in its own right is the light and love of God shining down upon His children.

Loneliness.  Loss.  Illness.  As His beloved children, our horizontal responsibility to each other is to love one another.  Our greatest pains, our most hurtful heartaches are not lost...they are not meaningless, but so meaningful that God trusts us enough with the hurt so that we may be a light to those whose eyes can't seem to find Him in the dark.

Every day God gives us tools.  Use them in love.  Pray to Him through them, these aching situations.  Then when you make it through, because you will, when God gives you that opportunity to share, to console, to teach—take it.  Empathy empowers us to move.  Pain can bring glory to God.  That sounds like a terrible, unloving equation.  But what if this is just what it takes to cause us to pause and reach out to those hurting—not just to simply wave as we pass by, but to stop, reach out, hold onto, and pull through?

Empathy.  The price tag is large.  But the gift is great.