I spent most of my life believing in fairy tales or hoping my life would turn out like some great old Hollywood love story, which of course would make me Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, or the great Ingrid Bergman. Embarrassing enough, I used to come up with scenarios in my head that would come out incredibly dramatic and very unrealistic, but it somewhat made my life more exciting, to live in my own imagination. I wanted to live an adventure, experience a great tragedy, fall hopelessly in love, and ride off into the sunset.
I didn’t see the Lord’s pursuit on my life until college and even on the race have discovered it more. I was praying in Malaysia and the Lord revealed to me one of the clearest visions I’ve ever seen. I was standing at the beginning of an aisle to a church. I looked in front of me and I saw my Bridegroom, my Savior, standing at the end promising me love and reaching out to me. As I looked around at the church I realized that it was full of boxes each with a different word on the outside. I knew that these boxes represented everything that has kept me from submitting and surrendering to the Lord in the past. I remember I had a confused look on my face and I met eyes with the figure before me questioning how I would ever make it to Him, then, as He read my thoughts and saw straight through to my heart, the boxes started moving away from the aisle as I took each step closer to the alter. I prayed over and over again that night that my heart would belong to the Lord and it would be only His. I heard the most beautiful response, “I know you love me”. My Bridegroom knows how much I desire to be with Him and be only His. His love is the only perfect love I will ever know and His pursuit is the only one that will make me feel truly desired. I am pursued. I am loved. I am redeemed.
As I think back on the past eight months and look to the next three, I see how faithful the Lord has been to me. I have felt loved, pursued, convicted, healed, desired, challenged, and called to more. I have spent my whole life waiting for a beautiful love story only thinking it would happen on the earth not considering it could go beyond and into heaven. I spent my adolescence planning out the perfect wedding, describing the perfect man, listening to romantic music, wanting the perfect life, and now I’ve entered adulthood, officially in my mid 20’s, and I see that the Lord has revealed to me my perfect wedding day to the perfect Bridegroom and I’m living the perfect life because it’s for Christ. I am living an adventure this year experiencing God in a whole new way, I have experienced a great tragedy seeing oppression and witnessing hardships of fellow believers and the lost, and I have fallen deeply in love in a way I know I never will again. This love is strong. This love never fails. This love is full of hope. I no longer have to dream about my future or make up scenarios in my head because my God has great plans for my life and as I continue to surrender to Him more and more, I see that His plans for my life are far greater than anything I felt I deserved.
“To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue. All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.” Proverbs 16:1-3
We are leaving Africa in a week preparing for the last 3 months of the race and I feel the Lord calling me to a new season of committing to Him and letting Him be the one to establish my plans. He is the author of my faith and I can’t think of any other way to have it.
