Birthday Thoughts

An excerpt from my journal on my 23^rd birthday: 

“As I’m sitting here looking over the past year of my life, I just have to laugh. I tried so hard to plan, to control and to fit my life into this picture perfect box that I thought would fulfill me the most. The Lord took those plans, threw them out and started new once I was finally able to take my death grip off of my life and let go. My life doesn’t even resemble anything my mind conjured up. I was going to be graduating, getting married, and preparing for my future. This year was instead a year of being stretched, taught, challenged, refined, having to make hard decisions, and having my life rocked. I am overwhelmed. I am being prepared for my 23^rd year of life. A year marked by adventure, obedience, surrender, and finally allowing the Lord to actually have access to my life. I am literally taking on the world. I have very few desires of my own. My desires are that the Lord would be magnified and glorified. I am blessed that the person I am now is not recognizable to who I was.”

(23rd birthday- Dinner at Blanco in Tucson, AZ w/ friends)

 
This was exactly a year ago, and here I am in Africa on my 24^th birthday laughing once more. If I were asked a few years ago what my 24^th birthday would look like, this wouldn’t have been it. But I love it…the extraordinary and the seemingly mundane parts of life in the past year have all come together beautifully. I cherish these moments. The moments when you reflect back, and things that may be seen in an ordinary light by some are enhanced and brush stroked with vibrant hues for the pleasure of those who stop to look at them…a blessed gift of sorts. My life has reached a paradox, it’s like nothing I ever planned or imagined, yet it’s exactly everything I’ve wanted. I am able to taste and see and soak in moments and truly live. I find myself going throughout my days lately with a goofy grin spread from ear to ear that wasn’t purposed there. It stretches across my face as I see the details of what God is doing and how He is aligning the stars to make this one big beautiful, grandiose life. The Lord has reignited my zest for life again. I am sucking the marrow out of this one precious and short gift the Lord has given me, and I am discovering immense joy that I sometimes pass over. We are so easily distracted by things in life that bring us happiness, but forget what truly brings joy. Joy and happiness are different. One satisfies unmet desires for a short period of time, while the other makes a nest in your heart and grows a family of moments inside that reside there forever and remind you why you are alive. I am not a naïve dreamer who thinks that life will be shiny and full of only goodness and that reality won’t hit me and make me wonder what I am doing, and why things are happening the way they are. Even when I have moments where I forget who I am, I can never forget who’s I am.  I know in those moments that joy still exists and that God is still good. I will fight like hell to choose to grab life by the horns and enjoy the ride and dig deep into that wellspring of joy until it’s overflowing onto those around me. I will toil and struggle to realize in the end that the effort was both unnecessary because the Lord provides for our needs and is the source of that joy, and also needful, because struggle is a catalyst for growth. So I will continue to fight in order to not stay where I am, but to reach new heights that the Lord has ordained for me.

(24th birthday- hanging out at a soccer field in Rwanda, Africa)

 
I love that this year was learning more and more that the world does not revolve around me. Thank goodness, because that can become tiring. I feel like we each need these sobering reminders to look out instead of looking in. I have had my flaws and my gifts presented to me daily, some easier to swallow than others; and have been challenged to alter them and use them to give out even more. I have gotten to plunge into other peoples’ lives in many nations and remember how huge and yet how small this world is. I have seen millions living in different places around me and recall how I often can barely wrap my mind around the lives of the people right in front of me, in my own state, or in my country. It can be overwhelming. Yet, there are so many more living to find purpose. I have heard and comforted the pain, watched and joined in the joy, told that my God is not good and then watched Him transform that same heart to worship Him. I have seen that even in struggles far greater than I can imagine, people walk forward knowing there has to be more. I’ve walked away from people wishing I could do more, but trusting that the Lord wants good things for them even more than I do. I have seen Him bless people in ways that I could never even imagine. I have learned more from the world than I ever could sitting still. Yet even after moving around for 11 months and enjoying the thrill of newness, I still see the importance of commitment. I humbly admit that it’s something I’m not a fan of because freshness makes me feel more alive, but I am learning that it’s actually a spiritual discipline that needs to be further developed in my life. It’s when we push past the discomfort and monotonous that growth is able to happen.
 
So that’s where I am today. Blessed beyond measure to have new friends around the world, new perspective on life, and a further insight into the Lord. I was blessed to see the out pouring of love on the internet from people I love today and reminded how lucky I am to have incredible people to live life with both near and far. Thank you for showering me with love! In this 24^th year of life, I will wake up each day to His new mercies and bask in His daily blessings. I will hug tighter, love deeper, look up and then out, and live with more purpose and obedience, allowing the Lord the reigns. Will you join me?