Happy Birthday to me! (Really the congrats can go to my mom and Christ) I don’t normally reflect back on the last year with the “New Year” mind set but I did this year and I took that time to reflect on the last year that God gave me.
I just got home from an amazing trip to Mexico with a team from my church and during my debriefing of that my mind wandered to the time in between Mexico trips.
I was talking to my friend Katie and we were discussing how the story we were given is far from the one we would have handpicked, but in the same breathe how incredibly thankful we were that God didn’t give us the story we would have handpicked. After those words left my mouth to her, God’s goodness rushed over me and I sat in my car crying. Even as I write this, I tear up. How thankful I am that I was given this exact story and I would honestly walk it a million times over to get to do what God has asked.
Isn’t that even sweeter of Him? He ASKED things of me, He has never demanded anything from me. He is a gentleman, patiently waits on me, and all I have ever has to do is simply (sometimes very quietly and nervously) say yes.
I turned 29 a few days ago and it was the best time I have had yet. The place I pictured myself at when I pictured my last 20 something birthday was married to Jeremy, two kids, and nice house somewhere in East Texas…….
…..let it sink in…….
I am nothing but in awe of how God changed my heart for His plan. For too many years I ran after a lot of things that belonged to the world and that would never belong to me. Then April 10, 2016, a sweet voice asked me if I was finished running. I had a broken and quiet “yes”. The eight months that followed were not easy, I was a daughter who fought with her Father a lot. January 2017, my first trip to Mexico came and I got a little of the dust on my heart. I wanted more of God. (still do!!) He began to teach me my value in Him and not in the things of this world, that my acceptance and beauty were not to be held to standards of this world. He shows me what trust, forgiveness, and an unconditional love looks like.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. Psalm 42:1
Between my trips to Mexico, God has done things I never pictured in the story I had written. How thankful I am that He is the Author and finisher of my faith.
