Here we go, my first real international flight. Over big seas. Across big lands. Turkish airlines.
EVERYTHING IS FREE. What is this?
Oh, It’s free.
This seat next to me is open? Kelly Anne, come sit with me for the next 10 hours. Ok!
Inside out is on here! For free, yes!
Free pillow and blanket and headphones? Don’t mind if I do.
Oh, they’re coming down the aisle with something else, a little pouch of something. More like a little pouch of everything!
Slippers, socks, eye mask, lip balm, toothbrush & paste, I could go on.
Turkish airlines, on fleek.
I believe that God likes to help cushion us for big blows that are coming our way.
And I do believe that this year has a lot of big emotional blows coming my way.
If you haven’t heard a lot about my friend Kelly Anne, let me sum our friendship up quick for you with a photo.
We met the first morning at training camp during a walk and hit it off instantly. And ever since have been able to laugh together, cry together and build each other up as sisters in Christ. How sweet of a friendship it has been and I met this girl 2 months ago!
Before we even left our gate in Chicago, Kelly Anne and I began talking about some stuff that came up. I won’t go into too many details with you of how it came about, because the things that came from it are what really matter.
There are going to be people in our lives who love God, and are pursuing a relationship with Him and therefore should be loving us well as an out pouring of that, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen.
Sometimes crap happens.
And hearts aren’t guarded well.
And you end up sitting in row 45 with your good friend, crying it all out.
I felt so hurt. So taken back. To a time in my life when it was ok for people to hurt me and use me and want to change me in such a way.
Kelly Anne, dear Kelly Anne, wouldn’t have it. She began speaking such truth into that situation to drown out the lies from the enemy.
She asked, if I were sitting with one of my young life girls and they were in this situation, what would I say to them?
Dang, does this girl know my heart well.
So, I pictured the faces of so many girls and started speaking such truths aloud about them against the lies I was believing.
And Kelly Anne asked me, Ok so why are those things not true of you? Why are you not those things? Because yes you are! I see joy, and love and an independent spirit and someone who is so FULLY LOVED!
Dang her truth, God’s truth, felt so rich, felt so sweet.
So I cried again.
We still hadn’t taken off.
“Why is it that you don’t know in your heart all of these things you already know in your head?”
I had no answer.
I kind of know the answer.
But it’s just some stuff God and I have to go a little deeper with this year.
Some stuff along with a whole lotta more stuff that needs healing.
But, I believe I left a lot of those lies in America.
We started this journey crying on Turkish airlines, giving it up to the Lord, with a friend who so quickly learning my heart and began to challenge it and speak such truth into it.
And I am sitting here now in Podgorica, Montenegro surrounded by my team of nani women and those truths that Kelly Anne spoke over me that God spoke over me before I was even formed in my mother’s womb, are truths that I am sitting with and taking to the Lord every morning.
“This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words” 1 Corinthians 2:13
