Today, I spent one hour of my life sitting in a dimly lit conference room listening to someone talk about the ever enthralling world faxing.

As I listened to the presenter, I thought to myself, “Why am I here? What am I even doing, right now?!”

I tried to reference scripture verses in my head to give myself some heavenly perspective.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. — Colossians 3:23-24

This is the day that the Lord has made;
    let us rejoice and be glad in it. — Psalm 118:24

But still there was this itching feeling – something tugging at my heart to run far away because no good would come from this dark, dismal presentation room in downtown St. Paul. And I felt my heart start to wither ever so slightly.

Then God, in his infinite wisdom and always fresh grace, showed me why I had just spent my day listening to about 50 different salesmen pitch me products and services in too lofty of terms for me to be able to understand, and why I have been where I have for the last 4 months.

A conversation full of tears and soul-bearing. Of gratefulness and understanding. Of sharing in one another’s burdens, and basking in God’s grace. Of drudging up old hurt and trudging onward toward healing.

A beautiful mess of two human beings meeting each other where they were, and converging into a new place of understanding and trust.

A much needed piece of the healing puzzle.

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”            — John 13:7

I’ve always been a pretty go with the flow, relaxed person. But the further I get into adult life, the more I find myself overcome with anxiety about the stacking responsibilities that continue to heap upon me year after year. 

I look back and cherish the memories of a time when all my needs were taken care of by others. When I was a child (and sometimes as an adult too), my parents provided for the things I needed. I spent 2 years volunteering relying fully on other people for a place to sleep, something to eat, gas in the tank, and a warm shower. 

It is such a sweet opportunity to be able to rely on other people. To allow them to cover you with blessing after blessing, and constantly be amazed at the generosity of others no matter how many times your parents or a complete stranger provided for you. 

How much more does God provide just what he knows we need? Yet, I find myself anxiously crunching numbers and rushing to this meeting or that, and wonder what it’s all for. 

We live our lives, we work, we play, we love, we drive, we eat, we watch football (may or may not be what I am currently doing), all for the Glory of the Lord. 

And he delights in giving us what we need, just enough for the day. Just like the Israelites and the manna, he give us exactly what we need for the moment. 

My pastor at my current church talks often about holding the things of this world lightly. God could choose to take anything we have away at any time, but he provides what we need.

What we need isn’t always food, or money, or clothes or shelter. What we really need is a relationship with Jesus Christ. We need His salvation, and we have it constantly held out to us, waiting for us to embrace the amazing gift of provision. Perhaps that is what child-like faith is. Trusting in his provision for the day, just as a child trusts his parents to provide what he needs for the day. 

No need to be anxious, friends. God provides. 

Tonight, I’ve spent a lot of time reading blogs about how to come up with something to blog about. 

Really, I should be better prepared. Thursday inevitably comes every week and with itthe personal  deadline for my blog. 

A small part of my brain always tempts me to just forget about it and add another missed blog to the growing number that I need to make up (that number is currently 3  in case you were wondering)

Another part will not let me fail, will not let me let go of the resolution I made to blog once a week. I do not understand this dedication or where it comes from because it is so not typical of my nature to keep promises I made to myself. 

But I’m here again at 10:32 on a Thursday night with nothing to say. 

I find it hard to believe that I’ve even made it this far at all and as I reflect, I wonder what in the world I’ve found to write about for the past 9 months. 

Actually, I’ve been reflecting a lot recently. 

Typically on the other side of the big events in my life I recognize the reasons why these situations happened how and why they did. 

But as I sit here on what I feel like is the other side, I find myself just as confused as I was from day one. Not understanding why I had to endure what I did. Feeling guilty about how I handled it and looking around every bend for a fresh start only to face what seems like one more challenge or waiting game. 

We’re not meant to live like this, right? I mean this can’t be what it’s all about?! Living, making money, spending money, dying? 

Thankfully, I know for my life, there’s greater purpose in my mundane now because it is part of my eternity. It doesn’t change what I’m going through now, it only changes the perspective through which I look at it. 

I’m not meant for this world, but I’m called to live in it for the here and now. And if part of that calling is to google inspiration for blog posts, come up with nothing and just start writing until something moderately intelligible comes out, then I need to let my heart be content with that reality in the moment. 

What is God calling you to in this moment in eternity? 

Blog reading people. I have written a blog for another site! Don’t get too excited, I was asked by someone I know. Well you can actually because I was called an “avid blogger”, which was an uncomfortable, yet neat thing for me to hear. But I am excited about this next journey – planting a church.

I have officially embraced God’s call to go with Remedy, a plant church born from the congregation I have been a part of since I moved to Minnesota.

If you got here from my Facebook post link, I apologize for the clicking treasure hunt, but hopefully it’s worth your time.

So here it is the link to my first ever “guest blog”.

While you’re there check out this new church launching this October in Oakdale, MN!

I really don’t like to not know things. More simply put, I suppose you could say that I like to know things, but that doesn’t communicate the same feeling that I have when I don’t know things. I get upset when I don’t have the information that I need to complete a task, or don’t have information that I should have had at work. I am frustrated when I am learning about something and I can’t figure it out which then causes me to either be a fast learner or to give up on learning something because I can’t “get it”. I am sure there is a pride issue in there somewhere. 

On the other side of all of this, there is also excitement in not knowing. In surprises. And I love surprises. I love to be surprised and I love to surprise. The anticipation of waiting to see what comes next and knowing that it could be anything is a rush. 

I think this comes into play a lot with my relationship with my heavenly father. Admittedly, I think a lot about the future. Not necessarily in the sense of longing for things (although this happens too), but more often I wonder about what the future will hold. In some aspects of my life, I am okay not knowing – excited for the next surprise that God has in store, but there are other parts that I just want to know what it is going to be like, or worse, try to control and manipulate and make my own. 

Regardless of where I am at in the process of knowing, there is a truth that I always come back to: 

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 

Before a word is on my tongue, Lord, you know it completely. 

You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too lofty for me to attain. 

—Psalm 139:1-6

God is sovereign over all! He knows it all. I only need to wait upon him and trust that he will reveal to me what I need to know when he needs me to know it. 

Currently I am writing to you from a dark candle lit room. The power in my apartment building went out about an hour ago, and I have been sitting here sometimes scrolling through social media, but mostly just reflecting, praying, and staring into the candle flames. 

Any time the power goes out I am immediately reminded of my time in East Africa. power outages were a daily occurrence in any town that we were staying in. And not even just a once a day thing, but multiple times a day for several hours at a time. 

One night in particular comes to mind. A moment that I know that I will never forget. We were staying just outside of a slum near Nairobi Kenya. I mean JUST over the railroad tracks from the slum. We all went to separate places for the night with young adults from a local church. 

I had the pleasure to stay with sisters Happy and Omega. Their parents had passed away and Omega worked to support the family while Happy stayed home and took care of their younger siblings. At that time, their siblings were all away at a boarding school so it was just the three of us for the night.  

On our walk home from the church, we stopped at the market to buy some things for dinner and while we were there the power went out. Of course, since this is a regular occurrence, we continued to go one with our business as if nothing had happened. 

We got to their house and the power was still out. They had a small mud-wall house with a tin roof. It had two rooms, a living/entertaining area and then a bedroom/kitchen/closet/storage area. They shared a “bathroom” with the rest of their neighbors.

We hung out in the living room for a while and chatted and they would from time to time yell at their next door neighbor to turn down his battery powered radio. They laughed at him as he only turned up the music louder. 

They invited me into the bedroom/kitchen/closet combo and they began to make us spaghetti for dinner (ironically I had had spaghetti the 4 nights before as well…yes, in East Africa), and get this. The power was still out. But we just sat around in the light of a candle cooking over their tiny gas powered camping stove and chatted like giddy girls at a slumber party. Three girls with two completely separate backgrounds brought together by God’s hand just over the railroad tracks from one of the world’s largest slums. 

So whenever the power goes out, instead of groaning or whining about not being able to connect to the wifi, or worrying about my cell phone running out of battery, I stop myself and think of my brothers and sisters in Christ that I met along the way in East Africa, and say a prayer for them, and thank God for the rarity of power outages, and for my clean water and ample food supply. 

What a beautiful gift I had tonight for over an hour to remember this sweet moment and thank God for all he has done. 

I don’t know when it happened, exactly – when I stopped dreaming. 

Perhaps it was when dreams started coming true, and I learned to play guitar and became a camp counselor. 

Or when dreams didn’t come true like when I didn’t grow up to be a veterinarian. 

Maybe it was when I just finally got old enough to see the adult life for what it really was… a slap of responsibility straight in the face. 

Regardless, someone asked me today what my dreams are. I tried hard to think of something to say(after all I find myself not really believing in having dreams any more), but couldn’t even muster up something to fake my way through the question. Couldn’t commit to saying out loud that maybe there is still a place deep in the recesses of my heart that dreams. 

It’s sad really. Not really letting myself dream for anything. I mean sure, I don’t have expectations and therefore I am not hurt when things don’t turn out the way that I hoped they might. But at the end of the day, there’s only what’s in front of you. And I don’t know if you live on the same planet I do, but what’s in front of you isn’t always good. 

The Olympic programming focuses a lot on dreams that came true – a kid doing cartwheels in their backyard dreaming of one day standing on that podium listening to their homeland’s anthem. 

My cynical self tends to scoff at such segments thinking about all of the people who dreamt of going to the Olympics but never making it because of finances or family situations or an unavoidable accident. It doesn’t mean they worked any less hard than the Olympiads, it just means things didn’t work out they way they hoped.

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t changed in their dreaming. It doesn’t mean that all of that hoping and hard work didn’t create a more capable and special human being. 

We are a culture of destination. A nation of people who just want results and want them now. Few of us revel in the journey at hand, in the ups and downs of life, and in the lessons learned along the way. 

But those are the moments that make up who we are in the present moment. 

I heard someone recently talk about how when a baby is learning to walk and they fall down or need a little extra help here and there, we don’t laugh at them or scold them or assume that they will never be able to walk. They fall and we erupt with praise and clapping for their stupendous effort that ultimately will lead to them learning how to walk! 

I think about God in this same fatherly way. We reach for something, dream for something, set a goal for ourselves, or listen to what we feel God is leading us to next. 

And we start waking. 

One shaky step after another. 

At some point we fall down. 

Our Heavenly Father, shouts for joy when we face trials of any kind. 

Because he knows that the testing produces perseverance. 

And he takes our hand and helps us back up so that we can begin walking once more. 

He lets perseverance finish its work in us so that we may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. 

So really dreaming is not such a bad thing after all because often times it is not the destination that makes us who we are, but the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful in between. 

Photo: Steep Canyon Trails, Diamond Bar, California. 

I was talking with a friend recently about what it looks like to put yourself into the equation of your life. I know this seems like a strange philosophical mind game, but there are many times when I have forgotten to think about myself and my needs and what I should be doing to stay healthy. 
I’ve never been good at self care. I have spent a lot of time serving others and never really put myself into the equation of people that I should serve. 

Now hear me correctly – there are plenty of times when I have made selfish decisions and had one sided coversations that were all about me, or fell into the trap of our culture’s lie that it’s only about ME, etc. 

So how do I know that I’ve spent too much time thinking about everyone but myself? Because I got to a point where I had given so much of who I was to everyone else that I stopped being able to fulfill the passion God has placed on my heart to serve others and now have to rebuild myself up from a murky quagmire. 

Christians often have this ideal that they need to constantly pour themselves out and be at others’ beck and call at all hours. They say, “but Jesus loved everyone and spent time with everyone and shouldn’t I give all of myself to people?”

That’s what I thought too. But even Jesus himself took time away from the crowd and even from the disciples to be alone with God. He showed us how to care for ourselves. And he didn’t spend hours with every single person he met. Some just touched his cloak and were forever changed, some got to have dinner with him and learned lessons and heard parables, and some got to travel with him and see him do miracles and speak to thousands of people. 

Regardless of if he was just passing by you or if he was part of your inner circle – he changed you. 

That is what being a Christian should be. Living a life so closely with Christ that everyone – the people you pass on the street or your closest friends and family – see Him in you and are changed even just the slightest bit because of Christ’s power in you, not because of anything you said or did other than abide with his spirit. 

Not because you gave all your time to everyone you know or meet. Or because you served in this role or that. But because you decided that you were important enough to God to spend time growing deeper with Him and therefore everyone can see it. 

You are just as important to him as each of his children. It’s just as honoring to him when you take care of your own body, soul, and mind as it is to take care of others. 

It’s funny to me how so often I get wrapped up in the details of what I can do to make something better or “fix” it. 

I rack my brain of all of the possible ways that I could make this or that happen or how I can make a process more efficient or save time, or make someone feel better or fix that broken thing with a bobbi pin and a rubber band. 
And I’ll tell you what, it does make me a pretty good problem solver. And I love problem solving. If I had a job where I could sit in an office all day and people would come to me and tell me something that’s wrong, logistical, technical, personal, whatever; and then help them work through and solve it – I would be happy forever. 

While I think my ability to problem solve is a gift and one that I love to use to help God’s people, I know that it often gets in the way of my relationship WITH God. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but the first thing I do when I face a problem is rarely to pray for it. I often come up with 100 solutions and just start plowing through each of them to see what works best. 

But that’s not what our Abba Father wants me to do. HE is the big guy sitting in his office waiting eagerly and patiently for me to come to him and tell him my problems and help me solve them. 

I may get that problem solving quality from my Heavenly Father, but going to him first makes the process of solving a learning experience as I grow closer to him through each situation. 

He wants me to come to him first. And he wants that from you too. Not because he wants to control you or be the only one you talk to, but because he wants to walk alongside of you as your Wonderful Counselor and Prince of Peace. 

After all that, after everything, finally she held out her hand. This is what He had been waiting for. Gently He lifted her up out of the mucky waters where she had been sitting for longer than she could remember.

He began to clean her off of the mess that covered her. She had been there for so much time that some of the scrubbing was tedious. Some of it was even painful.

But bit by bit she became clean again. She felt like she could move freely. Slowly she began to walk, then run, then dance and sing.

He watched her with a smile and love brushing from His heart.

And He delighted in her.

And she in Him.