There are some days where no matter how hard you try, you just can’t thread the right words together to truly describe the day. There’s too much beauty, wonder, joy…just too much. It’s okay when it’s just one day, one special day that you can just tuck away in your mind as a blessed memory with the Father. It’s a different story when it’s an entire month.
I’m a journaler through and through. I sit down with my journal every night (and sometimes every morning and afternoon too) and just let my pen paint the pictures that play in my head. These past couple of weeks, that norm has proved a struggle. Not because I can’t write, but because there’s just too much.
No string of words satisfies. No picture crafted of letters and phrases truly captures the place I am in.
This month has felt like a dream.
We ride through the nights in the back of a pickup truck, throwing our hands in the air, letting out giggles and squeals of joy and freedom as a blanket of stars smile down on us.
We have taught English and learned to speak love.
We have built walls of bricks that have torn down the walls in our hearts.
We have laughed and danced and cooked.
We have played pick-up games of soccer and new life was breathed into a place in my heart that the game had scarred.
And I find myself every day, whether in the back of a pick-up truck or sitting in a hammock looking out on our precious home, wide-eyed and asking myself if this is really happening.
If this is really my life.
If it’s possible to feel so alive.
I guess I thought that after four and a half months, it’d start to get normal. And in some ways, it is normal. But in many other ways, it’s the furthest thing from normal I’ve ever been a part of. And I love it.
All I can muster up to say about the past few weeks is this:
God is real.
So real. So close. So loving.
Realer than the sun that’s kissing my skin as I lay bricks, than the gravel I stand on.
He’s singing over us constantly.
His song is in the wind that’s brushing my face, the baby chicks that are scurrying through the yard and the wild laughter of children playing soccer in the field with me.
I thought I knew of this abundant life that He has promised to give us…but I’m discovering every day that He has more abundance than I can dream of. Every day, there is more coming to life. Every day there is more joy and more hope.
And it seems impossible, and it seems like a dream, but I walk around in a constant state of wonder and amazement at a God who can put this all together.
The days we live on this Earth are nothing but canvases of love. The Father has painted us into His own story of beauty, freedom, love, joy and hope…because we matter to Him.
We matter to Him.
I matter to the God of the universe.
YOU matter to the God who imagined sunlight, rice fields, Everest and coffee.
We matter to and are loved by the Creator of all things – trusting that love drastically changes the way you live. It frees you to love freely. It unlocks a piece of you that you didn’t even know was chained down. And now instead of just living life, you get to enjoy it to the fullest.
Because an abundant life was always in the plans for you.
And it is so good.
Yep. Enjoy it.
