"If I perish, I perish"

I've completed my internship. It's crazy to think that three months ago I was stressing out, for lack of a more intense word, trying to make the right decision. I was torn between a place that made perfect sense in furthering my career, and a place that would push me outside of that.

When seeking my answer I stumbled upon the book of Esther. She didn't know the outcome with where to lead her people, but she made her choice solely on the basis of wisdom and love for her people, and trust in God. She made a decision, and handed the outcome over to God.

And away came my pressure, embracing the reality which is no matter where I feel led, or choose to go in life God can use me through that, God can be seen as holy through all.

I feel, way too often, I unintentionally limit God's power. Something God has put on my heart this summer is to feel pain, versus praying to get passed it. Not just pain, our blessings, to not simply admire them but seeking more through them, seeking God's glory. I've been blessed to have had my heart awakened to a whole new outlook on love. The power of loving, the patience and heart God can give you for people when you allow your heart to be broken for such. I've also been challenged to risk.

Risking, I've found, to be beneficial not because God promises it will always be successful, but because it allows for childlike faith in His love. Belief that He will lift up your face in the end, it reflects God's value.

Every loss we risk in order to make much of Christ, God promises to restore a thousand times over with his satisfying fellowship.

After all, what more do we need?

"Every good poised to bless us, and every evil arrayed against us, will in the end help us boast only in the cross, magnify Christ, and glorify our Creator. Faith in these promises frees us to risk and to find in our own experience that it is better to lose our life than to waste it. "

"but i do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." Acts 20:24

all is fleeting, wander.

nurture your soul.

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
and twists them in her fingers while she talks.
Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands
You let it flow from you, you let it flow
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see
Yet with these April sunsets,
that somehow recall
My buried life
and Paris in the Spring,

I feel immeasurably at peace,
and find the world
to be wonderful and youthful, after all.
T.S. Eliot

No Fear in Love?

I have been shaken.
Trembling outside of comfort.
Grasping for normalcy, in a vast sea of newness.
Fears crash with such strength I feel I'll be washed away.
Back to what I was before.
I'm receeding into the endless, vast, depths in the distance.
Oh, to place my feet on stable ground again.
To run.
To run on the edge catching glimpses of Your glory
while rooted in Your plans and promises.
To run towards the sun, as if the darkness does not exist.
To be so sure.
This fear I feel, it is not of You.
Much to learn, much to change.
Get out.
Get out of fear, get out of comfort.
Risk, take me over.
I wish to live widly.
To walk in faith,
to run in such,
to breathe in such.
Experiencing every day as a blank canvas.
Stainless.
In what form will You create in me?
Today, I will remain white.
I'm clean in Your eyes,
Oh God, Thank you for reminding me,
I'm pure to You.
New, everyday.
Usable, everyday.

"I have tasted Your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.
I long to be filled with longing;
I thirst to be made thirsty still."
AW Tozer