The lord speaks to me so clearly through nature. Im a self-proclaimed tree hugger and it’s kind of this thing that I can bond over with the lord. Dreaming and beauty are two things that he also speaks to me through and I value very heavily. He has shown me through his creation that God himself is also a dreamer. He dreamed up the mountains and the oceans, the trees and the critters that walk around, and the features of your face and how your freckles connect to make little constellations. He dreamed up this incredible planet we live on and through the beauty in his creation, I am inspired to create and dream myself. Back in Romania the hen I was beginning to walk into this past hard season, the lord gave me vision through his creation for the things that were happening that I could not put into words myself and helped me to write the feelings into existence.
October 3
It’s like a sunny day. There’s the warmth and light and everything just seems so joyful and bright. Only now there’s a cloud drifting right in front of the sun. It’s not a storm cloud, not big and scary, but a simple fluffy white cloud. It’s lacking in threat, you’re fully aware that in cannot in this moment support any storms or produce rains and winds, but it is still there blocking you from feeling the rays of sunshine on your face or the warmth on your skin. It’s becoming more and more frustrating the longer it stays, you only want the sun to touch your skin again. You can see that it can not bring any danger on its own, but you also know that clouds like this are foreshadowing and a promise of bigger and badder storms that are already on their way. If it would just dissipate then it could not carry the weight for future storms, You would readily feel the warmth on your skin again and the rays would hit your face. But as the rains begin to fall, it’s realizing that you have to learn to dance in the rain and to be knocked over by the winds rather than go inside where it is comfortable and dry. Every drop of rain feels familiar and in a way nostalgic and yet somehow each drop and clap of thunder is also a brand new sensation. It’s standing out in the storm until your clothes are so heavy and dripping that they weigh you down and you think you’ll never be dry again and you can’t even remember what the sun looks like or what it means to you. But you sit down and soak in every last drop because you’ve been told it’s all worth it.
It made perfect sense and it gave me perspective as to what this next season was to look like. The clouds that He showed me we not these short lived clouds that I expected. They were here to stay for a little while. I had been holding onto the promises that the lord had shown me vision for. That I would learn to find the joy among the storm and would learn to run and dance in the rain because He and so many others promised that it was going to be worth it. But somewhere along the way I got lost and I lost perspective and I lost the vision that the lord had given me. I was angry and discouraged. Those were feelings I didn’t know what to do with. For the longest time I pretended it was something that I didn’t feel because if I did then it would mean that I wasn’t this gentle person I wanted so badly to believe that I was. These feelings however began to seep into everything I was doing. I would see people go into these seasons of walking through tough things and then would come out of it and I would still be struggling alongside others. I pleaded with the Lord to give me their resilience and their fight, but instead He was preparing me for something else. Recently when my team was in Peru we went to Machu Picchu and I kept asking the Lord to give me some vision for this season and just to give me a breakthrough while hiking up the mountain to the top. I got to the top and nothing felt different, I didn’t feel this sort of enlightenment that I was looking for and there was now magic fix that came through huffing and puffing up the mountain. I was angry all over again. I sat at the top of Machu picchu and all I could see was rows and rows of mountains and clouds covered the tops of them entirely. In my mind I was saying ‘what the heck Jesus’. Where was the lesson in this? Was I just going to keep struggling, not seeing the clouds dissipate at the top? The rows of mountains were so dense that I didn’t even understand how people navigated them. And then he gave me another vision right in the middle of processing this with a teammate.
January 29
Lord I’ve been frustrated lately because you haven’t been speaking to me so clearly through nature like you once did in Romania (enter brain blast), but actually that’s not true. On top of Machu Picchu. Dang. I was upset and frustrated because all I could see was miles and miles of mountains with nothing rings and clouds at the top. I was so upset, especially with all the wanting to go home stuff so fresh on my heart. But what I see now is that yes there are going to be miles and miles of mountains that reach to the sky and they may not look navigable. But lord I remember praying to you that morning to give me your strength to get up that mountain because I was still getting over step and could not have made it up on my own, my lungs were short of air and my muscles were aching. And look, you got me up there. But you also didn’t let me take the easy route, I had to work for it. I had to work for the views and you gave me little tastes of the top along the way up the path. So it’s like the rest of the mountains in the distance where they are so tall and cloud covered. You are going to lead up the dirt beaten trails that may be muddy and I may get filthy, but you aren’t going to let me cop out and take the roads up. It’s easier, it’s cleaner, it’s faster, but the view from the top is worth the struggle and worth the messiness. So thanks for that. Thanks for the trails that challenge me and may look like they’ll never end because in return they lead to the best views.
The lord had kept his promise and was still good but along the way I lost that perspective. I thought that he had good for everyone but me and that I would be stuck in this indefinitely. Since then the Lord has given visions of myself tending to a garden and marveling at the beautiful flowers that have bloomed. There is dirt under my nails and sweat on my brow, but something beautiful and blooming is being cultivated.
