Within the context of Home

What if I had my house on a string, able to take it with me everywhere my feet would wander?  All the comforts of home conveniently only as far away as the few porch steps up to the front door.  What if my house had sails and could fly like a kite, and I could travel over the seven seas while still safe on my well worn sofa?  What if I could write letters at my own kitchen table and then hand deliver them all around the world on the same day?  What if the vagrant lifestyle could coexist with the home life?

I am called to the nations.  That presents me with a dilemma.  My heart has always longed for home.  No, I'm not a homebody.  I don't get homesick.  I'm not even really referring to the home that I grew up in.  In all honesty, I am an adventurer, a pioneer, a traveler.  I get restless leg syndrome when I sit around in one place for too long.  I just want to see what lies around the bend.  So what do I mean when I talk about longing for home?

According to the dictionary home is "a place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates."  Home is the environment in which you thrive, where you are able to fully be you and where the most fruit comes out of your life.  Home is where you belong, where you know and are known.  A fish is at home in water.  A bird is at home in flight.  A baby is at home in his mother's arms.  A song is at home in a cathedral.  Paint is at home on a canvas.  Tap shoes are at home on the feet of a dancer.  It's not four walls built out of wood or brick.  Home is the collision of passion and purpose.  And it's not just doing what you were born to do, but doing it alongside people you love.

In my limited perspective, I have always thought "being called to the nations" could be summed up as... lonely, displaced, always a stranger in a foreign land, never truly belonging anywhere and far, far, FAR away from home.  This idea was anything but appealing to me.  I rejected the word about the nations, or at best, "put it on the shelf" for a future lifetime.

I would have people come up to me and prophesy that they saw nations over me, God was sending me out to all nations of the world.  God they must be confusing me with someone else.  I'm not that girl who can't wait to live in a village hut for the rest of her life.  That's not me!  Or I would get the word that I was going to be like a gypsy, never staying in one place for very long.  Now that's definitely not me!  I just want to belong somewhere, to invest into some place that I can call home.  Thus unfolded the dilemma.  

Well I guess God must have shifted my heart...  I somehow found myself signing up to live in South America for 9 months.  And I moreover found myself in love with the world, the Psalm 2 promise becoming one of my greatest passions.  (Psalm 2:8 "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.")  

So have I sentenced myself to a lonely, displaced life far from home?  Am I denying myself the vanilla ice cream by choosing the chocolate instead?  Does it have to be either-or?  Or could it be possible to have both?

Jesus has been gently and not-so-gently reminding me of my desire for home.  He has shown me that it is in fact more than just a desire, but is essential for every human being in order to truly thrive.  What's the point of stepping into your life's calling if you feel alone and unsheltered?  Isn't that why so many missionaries come back tired and defeated?  It's like the child who whimpers out through broken sobs, "I just want to go home."  We all know what it feels like.  So why do we try to push past that?  Shouldn't our lives, whether simple or great, all be lived within the context of home?  Home should be a reality that we carry with us wherever we go - a reality that we belong even when our feet wander throughout the world.

We all know the old proverb, "Home is where the heart is."  But do we truly know what that means?  I think that this is the desire of every human being, to have our hearts rooted in a place that is safe, a place that we belong.  It should become a measuring stick for our lives.  Am I at home in this environment?  Am I at home in this relationship?  Am I at home with Jesus?  And when we know that we are home in our hearts, why not take that place on a string and go wherever the Lord is leading?
Just a thought...

If you were having chai tea with me...

This moment would appear to be everything tranquil and relaxed - I'm cozied up on our couch in the sunroom with my coconut chai tea, listening to Yann Tiersen piano music an watching the approaching rain storm roll in...  Perfectly serene, right?  And yet my brain seems to be running a full on Marathon.  My thought life has been a swirly disarray of contemplation, internal processing, details, futuristic thoughts, and who knows what else.  All good things, just a LOT.  It's like my mind is running on overload, making up for lost time. Let me explain.

When I got back from Ecuador almost 4 months ago I was what you could call a little burnt out.  At the time I didn't have language to explain what I was experiencing.  All I knew was that I was tired, really tired.  Everything was tired - my body, my mind, my emotions, my spirit, etc...  And I was so ready to come home for a while and enter into a season of "rest."  I had it all figured out in my mind.  I would come home and spend the first month not doing any work or ministry but just do all the things that made me come alive.  I would get rested and filled back up and then be ready to jump into the next ministry opportunity that I felt like the Lord had laid out for me.  Well that idea was nice until I got home and found that nothing brought me joy or life.  Instead of getting filled up and rejuvenated in the "still waters" oasis season that I was expecting, Jesus led me into the desert where He proceeded to strip me of EVERYTHING.  

Like I wrote in my only blog post in June, (Writing became almost impossible for me in that state.  It seems He was stripping me of that too,) it was a super vulnerable place for me.  I normally have a plan, things figured out to some degree or something concrete and valid to show people that I am doing something productive and or meaningful with my life.  During that time in the desert, I fought so hard to get out of the desert and back to the fruitful fields where my life had purpose.  I so desperately wanted to climb out of that place of barrenness and nakedness, but I literally didn't even have the strength to pretend that I was OK, much less to forge my own way back to my ideal world of "purpose."

Anyway, after 2 painful months of striving with the very place that Jesus had me in, I finally gave in to what He wanted to do in me there.  I'm not even kidding, the shift was almost immediate.  Within a couple of days I heard God speak to me about going to a worship school in Harrisburg, PA called Hillside Intensive.  2 weeks later I found myself in a crazy environment of continual, radical worship, an incredible community of people with the united pursuit of God's presence, and the healing, rejuvenating oasis that I had tried so hard to find on my on.  It was there that the Lord healed my heart, reawakened dreams, stirred up my passion and gave me clarity about my future and calling.

Worship set at the Hillside

Well long story short, I am moving back to Harrisburg in a couple of weeks to run with a ministry called Burn 24-7.  It has been a crazy journey of trusting the Lord, seeing Him put pieces together, opening doors and converging so many of my dreams in one place.  At this point I'm still having a difficult time doing justice the word that God has put in my heart and painting a picture of what I'm heading into.  And over the next few months I am sure I will be able to do that a whole lot better as these first few months are mostly about getting to know the heart and DNA of the ministry, establishing and living in presence centered community and beginning to pioneer some new aspects of the ministry.

A little bit about Burn 24-7.

Sunrise over Harrisburg

The mission of BURN 24-7 is to plant a sustainable furnace of 24-7-365 worship, prayer and explosive supernatural outreach releasing a sound of indigenous, creative, vertical worship in every community, people group, city and nation in the world.

Our vision is simply to answer the cry of God throughout the history of humanity for a “resting place” (Isaiah 66) to be established so His Spirit can collide with a broken humanity.

Only in a posture of beholding Him, can we hope to become like Him to the rest of the world. As we obey and respond to the first commandment of Jesus to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” we are compelled by His love and goodness to “love your neighbour as yourself” and walk in supernatural signs and wonders carrying His presence into every sphere of society and culture.
(Taken from burn24-7.com, Mission and Vision)

Basically, it comes from the belief that worship and adoration of Jesus is enough to transform our world.  And as every nation and tribe begins to do that in their own tongue and with their own unique sound, we will see world revival.  This ministry is built of the pillars of worship & intercession, ministry within the context of community, raising up burning ones, seeing nations transformed, awakening the church, reviving the arts, basically everything that has been burning in my heart since I left the womb.  Even though I won't necessarily be in the nations like I've thought, being part of this ministry is everything my heart has been longing for and is a set up for me in being successful when He does send me out to the nations.  So all this to say that I am so incredibly excited for this next chapter in my story.  And I am so thankful that the Lord is writing it out for me.  His version is always so much better than anything I could have ever come up with.

I will be able to paint a much better picture as this journey unfolds.  So keep posted!  :)

Dancing my little heart out!

A Letter of Thanks from the Hillside

I find myself seated on the hillside.  Waiting.  Watching.  Participating with the serenity that is around me.  I take in a deep breath.  The air is full of so much more than just oxygen.  There is pure, undiluted life filling my lungs and clearing the fog in my mind.  I appreciate the hillside so much more after having lived in the pollution down below.  How sweet are the banks of the still waters after the barren wasteland!  My thirsty soul drinks in deeply as if tasting water for the very first time.  Bliss!  The old wounds that have been festering and infecting my whole being are slowly mending.  My sick heart begins to heal as I eat the fruit off the tree of life - hope restored, dreams renewed.

Here on the hillside I can see far into the distance.  As the dusk settles, the twinkling lights of the city down below begin to wake up.  There is a sense of something familiar, like being reminded of something you can't fully remember but the feeling it elicited.  I'm able to look back, back on all that was, the path that I walked for so many long days.  I can still taste the dust from the road, still feel the sun beating on my neck, feel the muscles in my legs sore from long and wearisome days.  But from up here I get to see the road in its entirety.  I see where the path started.  I see where it led.  Many would find pleasure and pride in completing the journey.  But self-accomplishment is far from my heart or mind.  Humility gets caught in my throat as I try to open my mouth and speak.  Gratitude gathers in the corners of my eyes and spills over.  I know all too well that I could still be wandering down there in a futile pursuit of self-effort.

How is it that life is so much more of a question than it is an answer?  And the more you seek for answers, the more questions you run into.  It turns into this endless goose-chase for something concrete that may not even exist.  That is when the despair, the panic and the disillusionment crashes in.  They make for terrible traveling companions, but at least they are committed to you.  At some point you must come into the realization that the destination of "answered questions" is not fact but fiction.  There is no arrival.  There is no happy ending to such a vain quest.

So is all hopeless?  Why do we even set out on this road of life?  

His name is Jesus.  He is the road on which we journey, the map that leads us on the way, the compass that sets our hearts on course.  He is the answer to every question, the ultimate reality of truth.  And He is the destination, the reason we are on this journey, the source and the definition of life.  (John 14:6)  When did we lose our First Love?  When did entitlement rob our affections?   When did we allow our rights to become more important than our relationship?  The right to know, the right to understand, the right to be understood, the right to have our lives all put together.  When did the main thing stop being the main thing?

But here I sit on the hillside.  I’m not sure how I even made it up here.  No, wait... I see it now.  I did finally collapse in the middle of my wasteland.  I couldn’t, I just couldn’t exist that way any longer.  With my eyes half swollen shut and my throat completely parched, I chocked out, “I give up!  I give up trying to find my way out of this endless wilderness.  I give up trying to climb out of this cavity in the ground.  I am here.  However long it takes, God I am here.  I will let YOU lead me out of the desert.”  As my tired head fell back down on my arm I suddenly felt someone’s shoulder lift me by my middle.  Nothing more than a dead weight, all I could do was surrender to this unexpected rescue.  Even now I only remember as though it were a hallucination, my consciousness being so fragile at the time.  He carried me up to the hillside.  In the middle of that empty, barren wasteland I had unknowingly collapsed right at the base of mountain.  And that’s where he found me.

By no means did he ever leave me, not at any one point.  Even on the loneliest bend in the road he was there in step with me, chatting in a lighthearted manner, unhurried, unconcerned about my current situation.  He never over spiritualized a thing.  He was just a friend.  And he became a very dear friend out on that dusty road.  And now I get to enjoy the hillside with my dear friend.  I get to enjoy this place of rest, this harbor for my soul, knowing full well that I do not have myself to thank.  It’s my friend who I get to thank.

Here in this place I have found my weary heart beginning to heal.  He has kissed every scar, rubbed balm on all the infected wounds.  He has reminded me of who I am; in all my weaknesses and brokenness I am still the one he chooses.  He has stripped me of those filthy rags that clung to my flesh, the rags of ambition, entitlement, offense, disillusionment.  He has unlocked those deep places in my heart where I store the things I love, the things that make me come alive, the things that make me me.  And He has painted rainbows in my sky, hopes that have materialized into dreams being realized.

Thank you my dear friend.  Thank you my one true love.  All I know to do in response is tell you thank you.

Post missions rambling

This past month I have gone into hibernation in many different areas, my blog being one of them.  Maybe I have been rebelling against my love for writing.  Maybe I have run out of things to say.  Maybe the transition of coming home from the mission field has been too much for me to process on a public diary.  Maybe the inspiration has checked out.
Maybe we'll never know...

But for now I'll tell you that, yes, I have been home in Colorado for the past month.  My chapter in Ecuador, that brought me so much growth and reason to love being called to the nations alongside of many difficult challenges and painful pruning, has come to an end.  For the past month I have been at home, licking my wounds and relearning how to connect to my heart.  I have been facing many fears and been learning how to let Jesus fight on my behalf.  I have, for now, set my bloody sword down and sit waiting for whatever lies ahead.

"So Ellie, what are your plans?  What's next?"  This arrow flies at me from a thousand different angles (including coming from myself), penetrating what's left of my armor.  I stagger from the impact of such a loaded question.

I have chosen not to choose.  I have decided not to decide.  As hard as that is for me, my life is not my own, my future belongs to Jesus.  It is a scary place to be in, not knowing.  It is the very place that you get to test drive your TRUST.  Hopefully it works.  If not, we're all screwed.  There is no plan B.  My eggs happen to be in one basket, which may be pretty risky, but it's all I know is sure.  Everything else is simply too faulty.

So I guess part of the reason I haven't written lately is that I don't have any of the answers.  My world is foggy and I don't have anything figured out.  And for me, that is a pretty vulnerable place to be in, leaving me wordless and/or speechless.  But I choose not to live in denial, instead choosing to face my reality and be completely honest with myself.  I will not hide from this feeling of helplessness and weakness.  I choose to be real in a world full of fraud.  It's not easy, but it is my life source.

I sat down to write about my half marathon (haha).  It's interesting to see what comes out when you actually start to write.  Maybe all of that was just a bunch of ramblings.  Maybe it was more.  Maybe it was important for me to say.  Maybe putting all of that into writing will be a turning point.
Maybe we'll never know...

Jesus loves hanging out in prisons...

Saturday morning we walked down the very uneven, dirt pathway to the big black gate that served as the doors into the girls prison.  We waited at the door for the guards to let us pass through into the outer courtyard.  What had always been just a plain courtyard for as long as we had been coming, was now lined with beautiful flowers and shrubbery.    Over the past month we had noticed this simple transformation that spoke of a greater transformation, one just as beautiful as the vibrant new gardens that splashed colors of life in what society might see as a lifeless institution.

Three of the girls we have come to cherish and love were out in the courtyard raking and sweeping.  As soon as they saw us, they came running at us, laughing and chattering, teasing us about this and that as they greeted us with the kind of hugs that sisters give each other when they haven’t seen one another in forever.  They truly are so precious.  Each girl has a beautiful name and face; each girl has a story of untold hurt and tragedy; each girl is marked by the injustices of life; and each girl has dreams for a beautiful, hope-filled future.  I love the way this Latin culture greets one another - it’s always with a kiss on the cheek.  Each time we get to kiss each of the girls, it’s as if we are kissing the beauty and the hope and the value and the dreams back to life.  It’s as if we are saying, “I see your outer appearance, all your scars, all your protective walls that try to keep love out.  And I love you in spite of all of that, because I see something else.  I see the light that is inside of you, a glimmer but still alive.  I see the beautiful girl that longs to dance in the freedom of love.”

From there, we walked hand in hand into where the other girls were waiting for us.  Again, I am so blown away by the simple things that mark the transformation that has been taking place.  Just a few short months ago we might might have been greeted by a few girls as we set up for the art program, some might just wave without any sign of excitement, some might just walk off and pretend they didn’t see us, and it would take a good 20 minutes to actually get all the girls in the room and sitting down.  Now, as soon as we come, they all come running to greet us and are ready for us by the time we get into the room where we do our activities.  They are ready and eager for whatever the day holds.

This Saturday we wanted to celebrate.  We wanted to celebrate everything that had happened in the girls lives - the moments of breakthrough where we all wept as the Holy Spirit healed their hearts, and the moments of freedom where we all danced and spun around the room as the Holy Spirit set them free.  We wanted to celebrate our relationships - the love and friendship that had bloomed through the simplicity of being with one another.  Basically, we wanted to celebrate life together.  So that looked like running around like crazies, doing a whole assortment of races and relay games; we definitely drew out the competitive side in the girls!  But we had so much fun just playing together.  And then having chocolate cake and soda together in the dining room where they had decked the place out with balloons and art work.

Gifts the girls made for us

Then they surprised us.  And for the next half hour I was completely undone by love.    

As one girl after the next stood up in front of the other 37 girls, to present us with a gift that they had made for us and a word of what we meant to them, I was hit with a wave of Jesus’ love.  This is what it looked like - She would raise her hand to speak next, and once called upon, she would scoot her chair back, get up and walk around the table so that she could stand and face all of us.  She came with nervous giggles from having to speak in front of so many people, but a strong resolve to say what she wanted to say.  As she started to speak, looking into our faces, she choked on tears and couldn’t continue.  After a few words from us encouraging her, she continued in a wavering voice.  “I want to thank all of you for giving up your lives and your homes to come here to be with us.  Before you came, I felt so alone here.  I didn’t know what love was like.  But every time you came I felt love.  I saw that God was real.  I know I’m not alone now.  I know that I can have dreams.  You helped me learn all of this.”  With that she handed one us the gift she made and then gave each one of us a hug, tears still streaming down her face.

This happened again, and again, and again.  I lost track of how many girls shared their testimonies and thanked us for loving them.

It didn’t even feel real.  We are in a girls prison right now?  These are girls that have sold drugs, robbed, murdered and who else know what?  These girls?  The ones who are sobbing in our arms, thanking us for loving them?  It felt more like testimonies from a revival meeting.  The prayers that they prayed were more powerful than a lot of prayers you hear in churches.  How could this be happening here?

And another thing... I have felt so inadequate.  Each time I have come to the prison, I have felt like - what do I really have to offer?  I speak Spanish, but not well enough to really know these girls and be able to speak into their lives personally.  I have not known the right words to say even with a translator.  I have wanted to pray for and see crazy miracles and breakthroughs.  But mostly it has been sitting with one of the girls as she paints.  Or walking around the tables and praying, saying how beautiful their art is and smiling at each girl.  I have spent one-on-one time with a handful of girls, but many of them I don’t know that I have ever had a conversation with them.  But to my surprise it was those girls that told me specifically how I changed their lives.

It makes you realize a lot about the Jesus that we serve.  He isn’t spending all His time in church.  He isn’t standing behind a pulpit preaching.  He is in the prisons, in the red-light districts, in the slums, in the nursing homes.  He spends His time simply sitting with the broken, not offering advice like a counselor in an office.  His love truly is enough!  The most hopeless situations are His specialty.  He loves using dirt to make something beautiful or mud to heal blind eyes.  And He asks us to join us in that place.  We don’t have to be something special to sit in the dirt with Him, or even influence influential leaders with Him.  It doesn’t matter who or where, Him in us is always enough.  

Justice Stirring

This weekend was the 14th year anniversary of the tragedy that happened at Columbine High School with the shooting and killing of 12 students and 1 teacher.  I still remember that day so very clearly even though I was still a baby, only 7 years old.

We were waiting in our family van in the parking lot at Einstein's Bagels - 5 hungry kids waiting for our mother to bring us our favorite chocolate chip bagels after an entire morning spent at the dentist's office.  I remember swinging my legs outside the car door and looking up as helicopters flew right overhead.  "Hey, it's the news!"  I shouted excitedly and waved with both arms.  Within a few minutes I saw my mom running out toward our car in complete hysterics.  My first thought was - something happened to the baby!  My mom was literally one week away from having my baby sister, and so my little 7-year old mind jumped to the only thing I could imagine would send my mom over the edge like that.  "Maybe something really bad happened to the baby," I thought.  But it wasn't the tragedy of a woman's womb this time...

I don't remember how my mom explained what had just happened to a van full of little kids, but we soon discovered that a there were gunmen at the high school a couple blocks away from where we were.  There had been students who had just run into the bagel shop screaming for help.  That was the reason for the helicopters.  That was the reason for my mom's hysterics.  I remember the entire 30 minute drive home, sitting in somber silence, listening to the local news over the radio, wondering what was going to happen.

That day crashed upon our community like a furious tidal wave coming upon an unsuspecting beach town.  Everyone was affected.  This was not just something we heard about on the news in some distant nation.  This was real.  This was personal.  Everyone either knew one of the students either directly, through a family member or through a friend of friend.  For my family, it was Rachel Scott.  Her mom had been a part of our church.

This tragedy was not only so horrific because of the nearness of it all, but the blow took on an even more personal note.  Many of these high school students believed in Jesus.  When the barrel of the gun was pointed at their faces, they were directed with the question - Do you believe?  And those who said "yes" died that day.  The blood of these modern day martyrs was spilt in a high school library instead of in a Roman colosseum.

In the weeks that followed that historic day, a movement started.  Youth from around the country were radically impacted by the tragedy that had happened in my hometown in Colorado.  A call went out from my church, challenging the youth to "pick up the torch" that students like Rachel Scott had so passionately carried.  The response was incredible.  There were events where hundreds of kids rallied around this call.  Songs were written out of the movement.  Apathetic youth were turning to Jesus with a new passion.

Like I said before, I was only 7 years old during this time.  But I remember the mark that was being engraved upon my heart.  That torch that they talked about was starting to burn in my own heart.  I wanted to be a part of the events and the movement, but I was too little.  I remember thinking how I couldn't wait to grow up so that I could be a part of what was happening.  I wanted to carry the torch.

Ever since then, tragedies and injustices have always stirred my heart.  Whenever I hear the statistics or the breaking news about some tragedy, I feel that same passion rising up inside of me that had first been awakened in me all those years ago.  What can I do?  How can I be a part of the answer?  It wasn't til years later that I realized that this was actually God's heart of JUSTICE.

The issue of justice fills every book of the Bible...
God loves justice.  
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice...?
He has established His thrown on justice.
Blessed are those who observe justice.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Just open the book and you will find it; you cannot miss it.  It seems to be on every page, grabbing you by the collar and begging you to listen.  And yet, do we even know what it means?  Are we practicing it in our personal lives?  Can we find it in our churches?  Are we leading the world in doing it?

One of my favorite definitions of justice is that it is the restoration of every violation of love.
The shooting of innocent school students is a violation of love.
Millions of starving children is a violation of love.
The woman dying of cancer is a violation of love.
The man without a job is a violation of love.
The thousands trafficked into sex slavery is a violation of love.

Where does it end?
It ends with us.
Just read Isaiah 58.  It's pretty straightforward.

So looking back at Columbine, I can't help but wonder, why is it STILL happening?  The injustice is that there are still gunmen running around.  The injustice is that we haven't come up with solutions.  I don't want to sound over dramatic, but the blood of those kids IS crying out for justice.  What are we doing to actively bring Biblical justice to our society?

Today I am starting a 40 day period of prayer and fasting for God to start a justice movement on the earth.  It is time for us to actually look at the injustices around us.  It is time to be stirred with indignation at the little that is being done.  It is time to become the answer because we carry the Restorer of love inside of us.  His name is Jesus and He is dying to make all the wrongs in this world right.  He already paid the price.  It is injustice that we are not fully living in the victory of what He finished.  Justice is giving Jesus what He paid for.

Seeing in circles

It's always so surreal when you feel like you are in a moment of coming full circle.  You look around, you take everything in, you remember what it was like when you started the circle, and now you get to look back and all the way around.  One year ago I started my journey in Ecuador on my Bethel missions trip.  I remember what it was like.  I remember the experiences.  I remember the faces.  I remember how my heart felt as God showed me His love for this nation.  I remember thinking, "I will never be the same after this."  Little did I know what "this" would turn into.

Two and a half weeks ago we had a group of fresh faces from Bethel arrive to this beautiful Ecuadorian land.  The same missions trip that started everything for me, but this time being on the other side, my internship behind me and having to face it's near conclusion.  I wasn't at all sure what to expect in having a short term Bethel missions team coming.  I knew it would be good, but what would I feel, what would I see, what would be different now that I have lived here and sown here for 7 months?

I think I saw, felt and experienced more in these past two weeks than I have in a long time.

I don't know that I can fully write down or explain everything that happened while the team was here, but if I had to label anything I would say that I'm pretty sure my heart went through surgery.  And I didn't even realize how much I was needing that surgery until I was right in the middle of the operation.  First of all, this team loved so well, laid down their lives in such and beautiful way, and filled me up in every way possible.  

Their words still ring in my ears - "Thank you for plowing the ground.  Thank you for your faithfulness.  Thank you for loving this nation."  It is incredible the power in them simply honoring what they saw in our work.  Instead of coming to Ecuador with an agenda of seeing amazing miracles, I am convinced that they came for us.  That may sound selfish, but every time they loved on our girls at the prison, or the kids on the streets, or the old people in the mountains, all the people that we have loved - they were loving on us.  It screamed the message to us that everything we have been fighting for, everything we have been giving ourselves to, has been worth it.  Nothing is wasted.

It makes all wrongs right, turns all sorrow into joy, makes all the hours of hard work completely worth it when you see the fruit of your labor.  Maybe it's how a mother feels after the months of pregnancy and then the agony of the birthing process and then to hold her own flesh and blood and to look into the face of life.  Maybe it's how Jesus felt when He received the joy that was set before Him that helped Him endure the brutality of the Cross.  For me it was sitting in the girls jail with my arms wrapped around one of our dear ones and feeling her melt under the the love that charged the atmosphere.  It was watching the girls in the prison weep uncontrollably as the men on the team repented for all the men that had hurt them in their lives.  It was seeing the power of guilt and shame break as the men washed the girls' feet and the women prophesied over each one that they are pure and washed from all sin.  That is the moment that you know with everything inside of you that it was all worth it.

The lies of discouragement, hopelessness and despair that try to make themselves at home in your heart are exposed and uprooted in the light of that kind of extravagant faithfulness, displayed by our perfect Father.  I am truly undone by His goodness and just cannot thank Him enough for all that He has done, is doing and has yet to do.  These kind of testimonies stir up hope inside of your soul - If God is this good, what more is possible?  What kind of impossibilities can I set on fire with the testimony of His goodness?  How can I declare war on the enemy with the weapon of hope?

So here I am, at the completion of a beautiful circle.  It makes me think that we should view our lives through circles, always seeing where the Lord has brought us as we look back on everything that we have fought through.  Not that we need to measure and compare growth, but it truly is encouraging when you see where you started and how far you've come.  Whether that be through reading back in old journal entries, or through remembering testimonies in the past, or through spending time with the people who have gone to hell and back with you.  Truly taking in the circles of your life's processes reminds you of God's goodness and propels you onto what He has next.  We are never stuck.  We are always moving forward in His perfect will.  Sometimes it just takes a little bit of perspective to see where we truly are.