Nachtviolen.

It is okay to be sad.

This is the deep conclusion I have come to after being stuck inside my head for hours.

It is okay to be sad. It is okay to be frustrated. It is okay to mourn.

I am allowed to feel what I feel as long as I do not let it rule me.

I don’t have to hide from God while I feel these emotions. My God does not just love me when I’m joyful. He loves me when I’m weeping, when I’m angry, when I’m broken. My God loves me in every circumstance. He longs to meet me in those places; He draws near to the brokenhearted. He is a loving, kind, compassionate Father who aches for me and brings healing. He understands my emotions because He created them; He created me. He knows me deeply and intimately, He knows what moves my heart and He gives me love in ways He knows will bring healing. My God is infinitely kind, and that is how I know I will be okay in any and every circumstance.

In this season, and in every season of my life, I will run to Him with my emotions. I will humbly kneel before the King of Glory with tears in my eyes, and say “Dad.. my heart hurts..” and He will kneel beside me and embrace me, because His heart is for me. Oh, how He loves me.

He will restore me. 

"This I know, that God is for me."

Psalm 56:9b

Eire

Tonight is my last night in Ireland. As I've been going through this trip, I've been asking God when my big "life changing" moment that everyone else seems to get was going to happen. And I got nothing. I was frustrated at first, but as I started thinking about it, I realized that He was slowly but surely altering my heart in not one, but hundreds of ways, some I'm not even sure how to describe. He moved in unexpected ways through unexpected people, and by the end, my heart was radically different. God gave me a brother and a sister, Wade and Raegan, whom I love with the deepest parts of my heart, and he taught me about vulnerability, unconditional love, grace, and most of all He taught me that when it comes to pursuing Jesus that physical age does not correlate with spiritual age. They love Jesus and live for Him in a such a beautiful, surrendered way; it's inspiring. They are living, breathing, testaments of the Truth of the Gospel.  God gave me Emily, who showed me that knowing who you are in Christ is the only way you'll ever be able to walk in your calling. God gave me Kimi and Jill, who showed me what it looks like to be a spiritual mother, and how to war for people in prayer. God gave me Landon, who taught me about self discipline and a spirit of excellence. God gave me Holly, who taught me how to push through your circumstances to continually pour love into other people even when you feel like you have nothing left to give. God gave me Jimmy, who taught me how to relax and let the Holy Spirit flow through worship, and that my humble offering of worship through my guitar was pleasing to the Lord. God gave me an entire team of people that taught me that family is not necessarily bound or defined by blood relation. We are covered and washed by the blood of Christ-that is what defines us as family. They taught me that the unity of peace binds us together through exhaustion, frustration, laughter and tears. The peace that is cultivated from hearts that love Jesus surpasses all circumstances. Though God showed me small things through each person, when you put all the pieces together, you see that He showed me a big piece of His heart for me, and He gave me that piece so I can in turn, give it to others.

Thoughts from DFW to Chicago.

Things that man has made look so ugly and false against the splendor of the Creator of the universe. We will never create anything more beautiful than what God has created. The wonder of a blooming lily cannot be recreated by man, the raw power and vastness of the ocean cannot be measured. All creation screams "LOOK AT MY CREATOR!" Creation begs you to stand in awe of the Great I Am, who was, and is, and is to come. It beckons us to marvel at His intricacy, to treasure up who He is in our hearts. Ah, the heart understands what the mind cannot fathom: God desires to be adored, treasured, feared, and trusted. The heart understands why it is stirred by a beautiful sunset, or the wonder of a shooting star, it understands that it is a romantic gesture from the King of the Universe, it understands that is his way of whispering "I love you" to the deepest corners of the soul. 

Humbled.

I'm fickle. I'm indecisive and I make decisions that are not honoring or loving out of that place of fickleness. You see, my fickleness stems from pride. I think I know what's best for me, I think that I don't need to submit myself before the Lord, I think that because I spent some time reading my Bible earlier in the day that I can do no wrong. So here I am now, in a place of realizing that I don't know as much as I think I do; I have allowed pride to well up inside my heart and in that I made a mistake. It is so easy to cast the blame on someone else and allow them to carry the weight of the mistake on their own, but the more I pursue Jesus, the more I realize that it is completely necessary to admit that I fail too. Admitting failure is one of the hardest things in the world for me, my pride gets in the way and I can't see that walking in humility is what Jesus calls me to do. 
However, today, God revealed to me this theme of fickleness in my life, and He kindly reminded me that I'm supposed to walk as a child of light (Ephesians 5:8). I can't walk in the light if my pride keeps constantly pulling me back into the dark. The only way I can rid myself of pride is to humble myself, admit I was wrong, and turn from pride. Jesus is kind in showing me that He is constantly refining me (Isaiah 48:10) to bring Him glory, and that my heart will continually be purified by His refining fire. He doesn't leave me in the dirt broken and prideful, He picks me up, tells me He loves me, refines me, and places a call upon my life. He says I will be a light for the nations, that His salvation may reach to the end of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). He chooses me in the midst of my pride, my fickleness, and brokenness; He chooses me because He loves me, He has made me a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). So here I am, humbled, before the King of the Universe because He chooses me. Because He loves me. Because He cares enough to make me new, to forgive me when I'm prideful, and to humble me so in turn, I am able to love Him more. I am so filled with awe at the fact that the Great I Am adores and treasures me that pride has no room in my heart and is obliterated. Humility is what I am called to walk in, and I am so grateful that my Jesus walks beside me and teaches me how to humble myself before Him.