Sometimes, I think I have learned something oh-so incredibly deep and that I've had an amazing break through. Sometimes I think I've overcome and am so much stronger and wiser, that I have "conquered" a certain thing. Then in about three seconds God reminds me how GREAT HE IS and just how much that means I will always have to learn here.

I've been working on a song that for about a year I would work on, grow frustrated and then put aside. But I've continually come back to it over and over until......yeah, I finished it. (Now if only my vocals could be fine tuned/trained......looking forward to eternity.) One of the first lines I penned for it was "By my tears draw me in" and so that's kind of been the theme for me when writing this. I wanted it to be about coming from a place of in the midst of whatever this life does, that God is still my God. That in the midst of everything around me in this world might be screaming and breaking or enticing or flowing perfectly-that He is my everything. Thought I had a worship break through, thought I'd gone much deeper. Maybe I did, but God stepped it up a bit a few weeks ago.

A few weeks back several churches in our community had a yearly "Community Revival" where each church takes a night to lead services. One of our neighboring churches worship team asked my dad to play guitar with them. He was great. As the service was nearing closing I watched dad go up on stage again with the band for the last song. My mom came walking by and stopped to tell me my dad had a kidney stone that was moving like crasy and to be ready to go as soon as church was over. For me it was a bit like a fist to my heart/stomach. My dad has had several of these things and is a diabetic anyway, putting those together.....I hate seeing that. Anyway, I turned back to the stage expecting dad to probably just exit as quietly as he could. Instead I saw him stay up there and continue playing, I watched my dad work past his pain and glorify God through it. It was one of those moments when it hits you that God is who He is no matter what is going on around you, He is still worthy of praise weather we feel worthy, capable, or whatever, to give him praise.

Over the next few days I listened as my dad would lay in pain, watched a couple of times as my parents rushed to doctors and hospitals. I listened as my dad never once questioned, but simply called out to his Father. Mom told me that she had never seen my dad in this much pain-neither had I. I saw and heard my dad cry, I watched as several times it looked like he might pass out from the pain. My mom told me that my dad would cry out and such on the way to the doctors, then would begin to sing worship songs. Watching my dad go through all the added pain on top of the diabetes he has to work through every day was heart wrenching, "by my tears draw me in" took on a much deeper meaning. There's an hymn my dad and I love, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Words so simple, but if they get to your soul and you sing them from there....it can change your life.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.

The things of earth, like dads sickness, really did grow strangely dim when I turned my eyes upon my Savior. I don't know how exactly to describe it, I can't really say that it erases the pain or frustration, maybe it just puts it in the right perspective when you look past it to the vastness of God's greatness. Maybe it's that I've watched as sickness and I guess, though it's hard to say, the grave try to take a hold on my dad my entire life. Maybe it's that when the Father takes my tear stained face in His loving hands and gently turns it from the world to His eternal, conquering, amazing love that I can see that no matter what this life may do to my dads body it can never take His eternal one.

The things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.

going back.....

Soooo...I've got some exciting news that I've neglected to share until now. Don't ask how this has slipped from my mind as it is most often at the front of my mind often because I am just so.excited.I.don't.know.what.to.do! Well, almost don't know. Generally I actually just start grinning like a cheesy idiot.

OK, the big news is that I am going back to Guatemala! Yes, after over a year and a half since my all too short visit when we were finalizing the kiddos adoption I am going back to Guatemala. The funny thing is, I thought I wasn't going anywhere international mission related this year. The one trip I thought I would go on, I backed out of trying for. Everything else seemed to be doors closing in my face. After a lot of prayer, a lot of surrender and placing all the desires and such in God's hands, and a whole lot of learing to be still, God brought an amazing mission my way. A trip to an orphanage in Guatemala with my awesome friend Ellie and a bunch of people I am super ready to meet because I am hearing that they are quite awesome. I am very excited, nervous, freaked out, pumped, completely scarred out of my wits, etc, etc.

The thing that I'm most excited/nervous about is that last time I was there, was kind of a point of change in my life. I kind of went there with one mind set, and came back with a broken heart and tear washed mind where God began to work and make something new. That is all too simple of a way to say of my experiences there, but I'll share a bit more of it maybe later. I love what God has done with my life through the few days I spent in Guatemala, those times were a turning point in my life. But I'm also a bit nervous as you can see. I don't know what to expect out of this next visit. One thing I do know though, is that God is gonna be there. My Savior and His love and teaching and ways will be there if I'm willing to open my heart and eyes to find Him.

Beautiful flowers

My little sister is four years old, adorable, and totally fascinated by every little bloom in the grass or on the trees and so on. She often tells me, "Don't step on the beautiful flowers!" as we walk across the yard. The "beautiful flowers" as she says are actually just the grass, for my parents and I these "flowers" are the sign the yard needs to be mowed again. But little Joji absolutely loves them and often will bring little bouquets of them to mom and I. "Rachel, don't step on the beautiful flowers" she says. I love the way she notices little things like that.

Maybe this is stretching just a bit, but I'm reminded every time she says that to me, how to so much of the world my little sister was on of those little flowers in the grass. I'm so thankful for the people who saw Will and Joji not as a sign of inconvenience or annoyance, but as beautiful. I'm so thankful they stood up and didn't allow anyone to "step on" my brother and sister, that they took care of our little ones until we could bring them to their forever family. My beautiful siblings are growing up so fast and so strong, their courage and love amaze me. God is faithful, I've seen and am seeing that He is the father to the fatherless. His love and glory are so evident in Will and JoAna's lives, I'm blessed to be a part of it.

I think we're all blessed to have beautiful flowers in our lives, we just miss them so many times because we're consumed in keeping our grass cut better than the neighbors. Maybe my four year old little sister is a bit ahead of us, she sees beauty all around her. To Joji the worlds opinion of pretty doesn't matter, if there's a tiny little bloom down in the grass she picks it up and treasures it just as she would a dozen roses. I want to be like that, cherishing each bit of my Father's creation, from people to the lawn out side, seeing the beauty he has created and the reminders of his love.

seniors and SENIORS

I have to share a bit about my day today. Each year our church has a little part in the service where all the graduating students come to the front and are prayed for and given cards, congrats, etc. After the service there's lunch and people can come by and talk to us seniors and give advice or encouragement. So, after lunch I was talking to my great grandmother who was asking about my plans for after high school. "College." What do I want to major in? "Probably social work and counseling." Well that's good, I was told. I told her I hoped so and something like I hoped I could do good in college, I don't know. Then she tells me, "Oh you'll do great. You've got a big brain. A little body, but a big brain." SENIORS rock. I love it!

No Answers

So, my life is full of a LOT of questions right now. Mainly, the obvious question on every seniors mind.....college, the future, and so on. I really don't have any answers right now to much of anything at all in my life, not just college, and I guess that's been pretty obvious that I don't through my writings here lately on this blog.

I've been given a really amazing opportunity, the Honor Academy. A one year internship with Teen Mania ministries, missions, worship, a campus full of young people and teachers after the heart of God, awesome right? But I just don't have peace about this, I don't know why. It seems to me that it would have so many things I need to learn, it challenges you and forces you out of your comfort zone and to be disciplined and you even get a years worth of college credit out of it. So WHY? Why does something in my soul just not feel right about this? Is it me, my own fault and flesh getting in the way? Or is it me going to the academy that is the problem?

What if I don't go to the Honor Academy? Can I truly let God lead me out of this complacent and comfort I'm in here at home to live for him and out the love he's given right here in my community in our happy-go-lucky little country place? He has so opened my eyes to the need of soul's right here at home, I've realized that to God each and every soul is an 'extreme case.' Not just the poorest physically, but that my next door neighbor, the lady a few rows back in church who sits there smiling and nodding at everyone, my parents, my best friend, even me, we are all extreme cases to God. All of us have a need for God and his love, it's a need that is infinite and always, we absolutely all need that love. So many times I look at those pictures I have of Guatemala or China, and I think, "there, that's where people 'truly' need. That has to be where God is leading me, there is so much to do there." Yeah that's true, those people need in a sense that the American church mostly hasn't even grasped in the smallest sense. But the need of the beggar on the side of the street for the love of the Savior is exactly the same as the owner of my favorite coffee shop, with out Christ they have nothing of eternal value, no matter how much or little they have on this earth. Anyway, so I just don't know. Get it after all I just said? It seems to me like right here right now is pretty important, and I don't really think God's opened my heart to this just to open it, just like I don't believe his love is in my heart to keep me out of hell, there's so much more to be done in my life.

So I don't have the answers. And that's hard for me, I want so much to know what's in store for my life. I wish I could share with you right now how I've seen and heard God leading me in a very (very very very) specific direction, but I can't. And the more I try to beg, and pray and impress the answers from him, the more frustrated and clueless I become. SO HERE I AM, this is what I've come too, like the boy Samuel in the Bible, I'm waiting, when God in his perfect time is ready, for the Lord to speak to me his servant. I'm realizing as I just commit my heart and devote my time to him and desiring to love as he has loved me one day at a time, that there I'm finding fulfillment, there I find peace in making him my joy. I'm so blessed and so loved, if God can hold the universe then surely he can hold my life. If he knows every hair on my head then I don't think there's even the smallest or greatest thing in my life that He doesn't want to be a part of, and I don't want my ways to come between his plans and my life. So I have no answers, but this one, that God who spoke this life into existence, gave the most precious thing he had for my redemption, God the Father holds my life and has proclaimed he has plans and purpose for it and absolutely loves me. I have no answers but know that my beautiful Father does, and that's all I could really need to know, He is faithful and so I will be with what he first gave to me.