Tag: Trust

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Let Your Heart Take Courage

Sometimes a verse just kicks you in the teeth. It hits you hard and knocks you to the ground and sometimes it kicks you in the teeth, breaks your heart, and then mends pieces you didn’t know were broken. Psalms 27:14 has made me mad, encouraged me, scared me, and then changed my view of God in a completely different way than I ever expected.

Photo courtesy: oilofjoy4u.com
Photo courtesy: oilofjoy4u.com

I’m reading through the Psalms right now and I guess I just passed right by 27:14 and it just wasn’t the right time for it to stick or be used in my heart. I am currently on Psalms 119, and on a side note let me just say you need to read it! So good! Anyway, I passed Psalms 27 awhile ago and it didn’t hit me then. But a few days ago I was reading a blog over at Sacred Ground, Sticky Floors, which I HIGHLY recommend and Jami used this verse. I don’t even remember the context, but immediately it HIT ME. I opened my bible app on my phone and looked up Psalms 27 and I remembered reading it a couple weeks months ago (I’m on the read your bible in three years plan), thinking how did I miss this verse.

Guys, I find myself in an extremely slow and also very fast time of waiting. I don’t know how else to say that, besides that I feel I am constantly in a state of waiting, yet what I am waiting for is right around the corner. It’s a strange feeling, a feeling of deep deep longing and at the same time an anxiety for what is to come. And in this paradox of emotions, God inserts Psalms 27:14. It just stuck, without any effort and played on repeat in my brain. My first-ish thought was GREAT, I’m not getting an answer anytime soon. Perfect. Thanks a lot. (I know… my thoughts are SUPER godly). God clearly wants me to trust Him and wait, which let’s be honest I wasn’t thrilled about. Then it encouraged me, built me up, and empowered me! Yes, Lord I will trust you! You’ve got this! Your way is better than mine and you know what is best. I WILL be strong and courageous. Next came the fear…my kryptonite. Fear rips through my mind, like nothing else. It twists my thoughts and brings doubt and the worst of the worst case scenarios into my heart. It changes a loving God who cares personally for me into an omnipotent deity that will do the worst TO me in order to accomplish His will. Clearly not a good place to be, especially in this state of waiting.

In true Psalms fashion, I did not stay in that horrible state of fear. The Lord swiftly used Psalms 116:7 to remind me of His true nature and my propensity to sway towards that which is terribly negative. I love the gentle rebukes He sends us to bring our hearts back to Him.

Photo Credit: http://zombiemmanuelle.tumblr.com/?og=1
Photo Credit: http://zombiemmanuelle.tumblr.com/?og=1

Today, Psalms 27:14 changed my view of God, in a much more positive way and hopefully much more permanent way. I started thinking less about the call to wait and more about the “be strong and let your heart take courage” part. God believes that I need to be strong and that my heart needs courage to get through this difficult waiting period. I realized at that moment that I believe God to be up in Heaven shaking His head at me and muttering, “Why can’t she get this right?!!?! I’m God, HELLO BaCall, trust me already!” The God in my head is irritated with my lack of trust, with my inability to get it together already. He’s grumpy with me. BUT does a grumpy, irritated God encourage you with, be strong, take courage? No, the answer is no! I have this personal loving God, who gently tells me it’s really hard, BaCall, I understand more than you can ever imagine. I just need you to be strong right now, let your heart have the courage to trust me and wait. Believe me, it takes courage to do that, but rely on me and I will give you the strength to do it.

That’s the God we have! The loving, encouraging, and slow to anger God that sent His son to save me, not the God grumpy, irritable god that lives in my head when fear and doubt take over.

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Blog

Stress, Sadness, Celebration, and Blessing

A quarter of a year has past since I sat down to write to you. That seems so weird to say, a fourth of a year has come and gone. I didn’t intend to go so long without writing about the journey of trusting the Lord that I have been on, but the writing just did not come. The end of September, October, November, and December brought about many joys and many sadnesses and now I am ready to share it with you.

Five days after my last post, Allison, the friend fighting cancer whom I asked many of you to pray for, passed on to be with the Lord. My heart broke. While I had not been close to Allison in life, I felt an intense call from the Lord at the beginning of her journey to be a prayer warrior for her, her husband, and their sweet baby Judah. God called me to pray at all hours, while I ran I prayed, while I worked I prayed, in the middle of the night I would wake up and pray, and I begged many others to pray with me. Only one other time in my life have I ever felt so desperately compelled to pray unceasingly (some may know her as a sweet little miracle named Maybre). I was sure that the Lord would save Judah and heal Allison. I believed so strongly that He had an amazing tale for Allison to tell and would draw so many to Himself with her story.

I was right in believing those things. They just didn’t unfold the way that I thought they should…the Lord calling me to trust Him more.  Judah is full of life and healthy, a sweet little baby boy. Allison is healed of all that ever ailed her on earth and now lives with her Heavenly Father. On October 17th, 2015 at Allison’s Celebration of Life, I watched in tears and in awe at what the Lord is doing with her story and how He continues to use her to draw people to Himself. I felt personally stirred by Allison’s young life to seek the Lord more deeply and to more strongly pursue the things He has placed on my heart. The Lord whispered to my heart that Allison was much more needed with Him and He would use her life to bring so much glory to Himself and to Allison. It was a gift to watch how many people were and are touched by Allison’s faithfulness, see some of it here.

Also in September, I began a journey at school that has repeatedly broken my heart and my heart continues to bleed for many of the children at my school. I had my first of several encounters with needing the police and CPS to intervene. So many of the children I serve, teach, and love everyday do not live the life you and I plan to or do give our children. My heart has not yet learned to live in the tangle of caring about my students/my children, trying to help and love them, and still giving these cares to the Lord for Him to carry. This has been an on going struggle for the past 4 months. I clearly cannot share much of their stories so please pray for my students and their families, their safety, that the Lord reveals Himself to them, how I can help them, and how my heart should respond to these situations and how my heart should respond to the Lord.

I don’t think I can think of a time where I have felt at the same time so much pain and joy at the same time, which I might add is very uncomfortable. While Allison was going to be with the Lord and school had become a very sorrowful place, the Lambert’s were adopting their beautiful baby girl, they had been awaiting her arrival for years (read more here and here). I was and am ecstatic for them. Another couple, we love dearly was also getting their bundle of joy through adoption. It was so confusing, painful, and beautiful to watch the Lord work in so many different ways.

During all of this, we were preparing for our new home and getting ready to move. We watched prayerfully and joyfully as the Lord and the construction workers built our home. It was a beautiful time, we wrote verses and prayers on the frame and foundation of our house, family came and wrote well wishes, proverbs, verses and prayers for us, as well. We visited frequently praying for the house, the people that worked on it, the ministry we would have in and through it, and we prayed above all else that it would be dedicated to the Lord and His work and that we would not forget that. The Lord planted beautiful things in mine and Luke’s hearts, the seeds of what He has next for us and what He would use our house for.

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My heart constantly was and is skipping from joy to sorrow. At times I felt and still feel overcome by the sadness and grief in my heart and then in an instant joyous over the many amazing gifts that the Lord has brought: babies (adopted and birthed) of friends, marriages, debt reduced by over $40,000, a beautiful new home, a job that gives me my husband back, friends completely giving themselves over to the Lord, engagements, pregnant friends, myself growing so much in trust and faith, and whispers of joys, ministries, and service to the Lord yet to come.

These three months have been amazingly and awfully difficult and yet amazingly beautiful and joyful. I have learned that I cannot save the world, the people and children I love, or even myself, that job is reserved only for the Lord. I feel here and now, I begin to embark on a new journey of trusting even deeper and in new ways our awesome Lord. Won’t you come too?

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Finance

A New Year and a New Adventure

Welcome to my new adventure! I say new adventure, but I’m really hoping this is more like the third part of The Hobbit, the home stretch of a journey with new adventure of it’s own. Don’t worry, I’m long winded, I’ll catch you up on parts one and two. This adventure is about faith, trusting the Lord, and debt. It seems odd or unusual to write that sentence… faith, trust, and DEBT. But that is exactly what this adventure is about…

THE CURRENT ADVENTURE aka Part 3 of The Hobbit:

December 30th is the day this leg of the adventure started, I spent some time with some godly women whom the Lord used to plant prayers, thoughts, ideas, curiosity, and most importantly faith into my heart. Henceforth was born this plan:

Luke (see part 1 & 2 for who that guy is) and I plan to spend the next 12 months working our tails off and (more so) trusting the Lord to pay off $54,000 in debt. As you might have guessed we don’t have  or make all the money it would take to pay this off, hence the faith and trust. (If you have really big faith pray for $66,000).  More on the current adventure to come.

*It is really nerve-wracking and quite vulnerable to put these numbers online. Please be kind with this knowledge.

Part 1:

This journey started in 2004, maybe even before… wanting to live for Christ was my intention, but I didn’t know how to or where to turn. There were things: hurts, abuses, and people in my life that  hindered me and some that I allowed to hinder me in my journey towards and with Christ. My seventeen year old self, with much thought and prayer, decided escape was the best route. I did well in school and maybe I should have applied to many schools, cheaper schools, but Azusa Pacific University was on my mind and in my heart. A private, Christian university sounded like the perfect place to get rid of and escape from those things and also a great place to grow. And I did!

I grew in my faith by leaps and bounds and started the lifelong journey of eradicating those things from within me. It was a long, hard, tumultuous, exciting, fun, and humbling year. Some unforeseen circumstances led me to only spend the one year at Azusa. I continued my higher education at a slightly (very very slightly) less expensive private Christian school, Fresno Pacific University. I loved my time there and continued to grow and mature in my faith, which led me to an amazing church, wonderful Christian friends, and to one of my greatest blessings, my husband Luke.

Maybe you see where this is going or maybe you already know because you’ve spent at least a minute with me… Either way the answer is a big fat student loan… student loansssssss, I should say. Tens of thousands, lots of tens of thousands of dollars. I try really hard to be smart with money…to be a good steward, to honor the Lord with my spending, saving, and such. But lots of tens of thousands of dollars in debt does not sound honoring to me. I struggle with this a lot…was I not following the Lord when I took out these loans? Did I mishear His direction? Or was this just His plan? I honestly don’t know, but here I am and I can say I’ve grown closer to the Lord through my time at both universities and He is molding me into who He wants me to be.

Apparently who He wants me to be next is someone who has stronger faith, trusts Him completely, and who has no or at the very least much less debt.

Part 2:

In 2010 I married Luke and we started dreaming of our future and what the Lord has for us to do. We decided/discovered that adoption, having children, being debt-free, and possibly having some sort of home that we care for/ invite people into make the list. So we decided in August 2014 to move in with Luke’s parents who graciously obliged. Thus far we have lived in their beautiful home and have been greatly blessed by them for five months and have paid off about $10,000 in student loans (that is not part of the $54,000 we are aiming for in the next 12 months).  As you can see much more hard work and faith are needed to make this happen and we are ready to see the faithfulness of the Lord in however he sees fit to show it.