.2% of all my actual thoughts here.

a lot of my deepest thoughts and revelations have been during this last month and a half of the race. i knew coming into ethiopia that the lord had told me that this was going to be my hardest but sweetest season of my race. and that has been so true which is one of the reasons i have struggled summing up my experiences and life into blog posts. i wanna share the goodness of the lord. but god is not just kind. he is kind with a sternness and purpose behind it. so i have decided to not try and sum anything up to sound pretty and perfect with bible verses to back it up or even a formula to the way i write this out. I’ve decided to just write out some lessons and thoughts and feelings i have felt in the last month and a half straight from my journal entries and paintings. 

1. i want to have a heart so steadfast, people take notice.
2. the lord calls me to be bridge. stand in the middle and fight for people. 
3. i am not “neutral” or “boring”.
4. i desire a soft heart with the ability to lead from a place of empathy. 
5. his fruit is sweet, but taste testing with him before the fruit is ripe is even sweeter. 
6. he is the summit. no matter where my feet are. 
7. fighting sometimes looks like complete surrender. 
8. sometimes i just need to check where my eyes are and then look up to heaven.
9. the lord sustains me. i get to wake rested. tall. and steady. 
10. peace is not just the lack of war or conflict, but wholeness and completeness.  
11. don’t trade the eternal for the temporary. 
12. i have heavenly status and sweet assurance to lean deeper into. 
13. i will no longer compare myself to the person i think i need to be or to the expectations i place on myself. 
14. god delights in putting our lives together and painting moments for us to walk into. 
15. there is always more from him. 
16. we have an open, spacious, and free life to walk into everyday. 
17. those once called unloved he calls beloved. 
18. i am fighting for my old yes and forming my mouth into the position to say new ones. 
19. strength is for service. not status. 
20. stride free and easy in what the lord says.
21. i am right where he wants me to be. 
22. if i speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but not out of love, i have nothing of importance to say. 
23. love extravagantly. 
24. the lord has promised me a year of abundance and steadfastness. 
25. i am expectant. 
26. god promises to lead us from place to place in a perpetual victory parade.
27. this is the year of being carefree in the care of god. 
28. he is a god of pressing but never a god of pressure. 
29. he loves loving my family more than i love loving them.
30. we give off a sweet aroma that people on the way to salvation will recognize. 
31. i want to understand not just to understand, but understand to love better. 
32. the spirit of god whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what is ahead. he gives us little pieces of heaven and places them in our hearts so that we will never settle for less.
33. live openly and expansively. 
34. heavenly distress will lead you into more. 
35. i am no longer driven to impress god. 
36. living in relationship with the lord looks like embracing everything he has arranged. 
37. even when i want to feel “normal” the lord tells me to never settle. 
38. i have been set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into patterns they create. 
39. i no longer need to wander. 
40. love extravagantly, not cautiously.