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Dreaming with God

And yet another late night post. Funny, though, that as I am awake when I'm supposed to be asleep, I am thinking about dreaming. There are a lot of people in this world that shove their God-given dreams as far away as they can to try to live according to somebody else's dreams or standards. But those people really only "survive" because they are operating from the fear of what others think rather than what God thinks. It ends up being a lose-lose situation because the God-given dreams end up dying in a corner rather than beaming forth from the person who embodies them and blessing the world with their unique color and purpose.

The world needs dreamers who dare to dream. The world you to dare to be you. 

I have my desires, my hopes, my dreams. I once was an ocean full of sunken dreams that set sail too long ago to remember, and needed a raising from the depths and a fresh wind in their sails and some direction.
God has been waking my heart to His dreams, as He is putting His heart to my dreams. And it's time to set sail. There's no turning back, the course is set. And whatever He has planned for me is what I want. Wherever He goes, I will follow. The dreams in my heart are founded inside my desire for Him. And knowing God's heart is all I need in this life, I don't need anything else. God's heart... His crazy love... is my dream, my desire, my passion, my reason, my life, my all. No matter where I go or what condition I am in, if I am alone or surrounded, rich or poor, hungry or full,  cold or comfortable, God's heart and His love is all that matters to me. There's nothing else I hold onto.

Looking Both Ways

It's early Sunday morning, just a bit after 2:00am June 19th, and I feel as if this is the perfect time to be awake. I go outside, smell the Oregon rain-washed air, hear the water in the fountain falling softly, and then I listen to the sound of pure silence playing perfectly and somewhere behind all the other little noises. This is what midnight sounds like. The sun is on the other side of the world, and I quite like how suddenly this front-porch, which with the sun is a public thing, has become my temporary hiding place. I feel like this time of day is when I can think, when I can feel, and when I can breathe. Every now and again, a car will slowly drive by and remind me that I am not the only one awake at this hour. But I feel as though I am.

Dawn outside my room at the Heart to Heart Children's Village.

A year ago today, June 19, my time in Tegucigalpita, Heart to Heart Children's Village, Honduras was coming to a happy yet strangely unfinished ending. I opened to this chapter of life in my old journal and smiled as I breathed in the scent of the pages smothered with ink, food stains, and memories, and tried to read my scribbled-in-the-dark words which brought to life the vivid descriptions of the beautiful children and their full eyes, dancing and laughing and inviting me into their family, and teaching me about the simplicity of love. I packed these pages with ten days of Honduras bliss, and then I went home and had a lot of questions, a lot of thoughts, and a lot more pages to write.

So I put that journal away and took out the next one. When that one was done, I took out the next. I have written through seven journals since then. Huge journals with huge pages, I am talking. Thousands of pages and hundreds of thousands of words...sit on the highest shelf of my closet and remember the things I told them to.

Maybe some of those secrets have grown old. But I dare believe most of them would still crack a smile, refrain a laugh, or shed a tear.

....Some memories I will hold in my heart forever, and some I will not, simply because I can't. Life can't be based on what I remember. I cannot live from my past, no matter how wonderful or terrible it might have been. To me, my journals are beautiful books: they are stories of everything that has happened between the depths of my heart and the depths of God's.

My words are my footprints through life, and footprints always leave a mark.... But there is a time when one must decide...which way to go now?

I have looked both ways: back by flipping through the stained pages of my journals, and forward... straight into the bright eyes of Jesus...full of more stories than my pen and hand could ever acquire.

I have looked both ways, and chosen forwards. How ready and how excited I am to pioneer onwards. I move into a story that is more real than what I've written with my pen, a future more tangible than my pages, and a destiny that hasn't merely been scribbled as riddles and poems, hidden between yellow pages for nobody to ever see, but a destiny that grows clearer, stronger, and brighter with each passing day for me and the world to discover.

I move in closer than before, I press in deeper than before, and I hunger harder than before; for I am after Jesus, and Jesus alone.

Writing My Own Story

My life is just one of many, but every life lived is worth telling. My life is significant because I am significant to God. As I write my story......as I live my life, I am encouraged by the fact that my story doesn't have to sound or be like someone else's. It's part of discovering who I am, and it's part of drawing closer to God and letting His love tell me who I am, and then letting that story and that grace flow freely from me.

I want to be filled with stories. And not just stories of pen and paper and some imagination, but stories of earth and Heaven colliding, the reality of love flooding in from every side, and Jesus using my hands, feet, eyes, ears and mouth to express how He feels inside. I want to be filled with these stories. I'm ready to know the unexplainable, remember the inexperienced, and live the impossible.

My Resolve

Well folks, the big day came and passed. I graduated from high school! Since my last day of school on Friday  until now - the day after graduation - I have been trying so hard to not only put words to my emotions and thoughts about this huge and inevitable turning of a page in my life, but actually find emotions & thoughts about it that would make sense to those who ask "soooo, how are you feeling about right now?" Haha.
So far I haven't come up with anything "profound" and "not-cliche" to say on what graduating feels like.

This morning I woke up and realized why: what this part of my life means to me isn't really about "getting out of high school," "celebrating all I accomplished," or even "moving onto something 'bigger' and 'better,'" nor is it about finally facing "the REAL world."

This event actually sooo comes down to being all about One thing, One person, and One love. . . .

I am out of high school now, and I have this serious revelation... this huge resolve... that I have the rest of my life to live. And in this life, there is only one thing that matters to me -- only this one thing. That One thing, One person, is Jesus.

No matter how overly-poetic this might sound, I am truthfully saying that after all my searching for thought and emotion, I cannot do anything right now but say how much I love God! .....

I am outrageously, unfathomably lost inside inside His love, and in turn, I can't help but just LOVE Him with all of my heart, with every fiber in my being. He is everything I live for and will live for until the day I die. Words cannot express this love, this passion burning inside of me; this passion to know Him more, this passion to just be with Him, this passion to love other people with His love, this passion to sit face to face with Him, this passion to live above what the natural says is possible and instead live only by what God says is possible and see Heaven here on earth! ...This passion to feel His every beautiful heartbeat, so that myself and, in turn, everyone I touch will be transformed into a testimony of the most wonderful, beautiful love in the entire universe: the one and only Love of God!


Right now, I am indeed a high school graduate. But even more so, I am a living, walking, talking, breathing testimony of the love of God. 

No matter what happens in my future, my comfort, hope, and peace is found in this amazing truth: I have given God my heart. He has my whole life. He has my everything, He is my everything, because everything He is.... I have realized.... is more valuable than anything else I have found out there. He is literally "out of this world." He is worth it. He is worth my life. He is worth my everything.

So here's to being alive
Here's to being lost inside of love, and in turn...
Here's to being found by love
Here's to the power of love
Here's to the One who is Love
Who is Jesus - You have my whole heart, my whole love, my whole life!