Tonight a dear friend of mine reminded me of what I often lose sight of – the good. She reminded me that in the messy and mundane, there will always be good. I’m big on using fancy adjectives to romanticize anything and everything, but sometimes one just has to sit back and truly relish the phrase “God is so good.” There is so much Jesus has told me to do, and there is someone much greater that he has called me to become, and there are so many children that he has told me to love. Yet, somehow through all of this, I can use such a small word to surmise the sole purpose of why I am embarking on this journey. Jesus has called me to love well; to seek those who need to know that there is good – that they are good. Yes, I see the bad with some cynical wit, but He Has given me eyes to see the good with such a brilliant hue of grace and beauty that I can no longer fathom what I saw as pretty before I met Jesus. Good is telling a middle school girl with a bad home life that she is so much more and getting to see the moment that she believes it’s true. Good is getting the opportunity to talk about missions with the nurse at Red Cross because you laugh when she gets to the question about traveling out of country in the past three years. This blog post is about answering the question “why are you going on this nine month trip?” My answer: I am not as good as I want to be, and I will never be as good as I feel like I should be. I am a part of World Race: Gap Year, because I am worn and cracked and stained from the weathering I’ve endured, and still in Jeremiah the Lord tells me I am moldable. And I am purposeful. And I am good. But He is better. In these nine months, I am relinquishing the need to know all that is ahead of me, so that I can see the good in all that Jesus is doing. Tonight, I found good in a pb&j and conversation. For that, I am only grateful.
