I am not the great “I am” but by the grace of God I am what I am!
(Exodus 3:14, John 8:24, 28, 58, 1 Cor. 15:10)
If you would’ve told me two years ago I would be a missionary, I probably would have laughed in your face. Oh about being a live-in director at a safe home for women coming out of the sex industry…”Mmmmhmmmmmm, yeah okay!” It is safe to say my life is far from what I had thought it would be.
Looking back on my dreams throughout my life, I am in complete awe of God. He took my ideas and expectations and turned them upside down in the best way possible.
Over the past month I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my life… I am doing things I never imagined. I’ve been blessed to live in the bush of three African villages. I was able to love lepers and sing and dance with children in some of the most impoverished slums in the world. I was a lumberjack in Estonia… what, who does that? I was an undercover missionary in China. I’ve seen miraculous healings and deliverances in Nepal. Built churches in Mongolia. Interceded in the middle of one of the largest red light districts in Thailand. Built relationships with precious little girls who have experienced immense darkness and divine healing in Cambodia. The list goes on. God parted the seas and created a full time ministry position uniquely for me in Denver, Colorado. He has brought me to Albania to disciple seven incredible teenagers. I didn’t do anything to earn this life, it was simply given to me, by God’s creative grace.
I have to pinch myself often to make sure that this is real life. I question God often, why me? In January 2015, my life was a rollercoaster and dramatically changed several times. God gave me a beautiful gift and then took it away. Pain and suffering, is more along the lines of what I thought I deserved but God gently used my brokenness to draw me closer to him than ever and made me new. He then opened big doors for me…. Esther House and Team Albania. He has given me a huge coat to fill with many lives entrusted to me. I did nothing to be worthy of any of this. My life is so much more interesting and rewarding than I ever hoped it could be, because of Him.
Why would God love or choose someone like me? I don’t deserve this crazy-beautiful life. I am not worthy or enough for this…. These were the thoughts that filled my head as I sat under a beautiful big Albanian sky lit with radiant colors as the sun set around the majestic mountains. God used Caleb, a 17 year old whom I am honored and blessed to lead, to speak directly to me…..he handed me a note, written on it was….
HE LOVES YOU (72 times), followed by YOU ARE WORTH EVERYTHING HE HAS DONE FOR YOU.
Radical joy and deep enjoyment filled me as I sat in awe of my King.
God continuously places people in my path who are able to look beyond the broken girl I was and see into the realm of what I might be. I have made derailing decisions that threw me off course but they had faith I could be put back on track and spoke life into me. God is my redeemer and wastes nothing. He is using my shadows to light the way for others.
This is not because of my own doing but because HE LOVES ME and He says I AM WORTH EVERYTHING HE HAS DONE FOR ME!
Guess what…..the same goes for you!
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them to become what they are capable of being.”
~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
