Moving Mountains

"Savior, He can move a mountain." So said the graffiti on my desk in my English class. My friend pointed to it and said, "Can He? I've never seen Him do it."

I couldn't reply since the professor walked in right at that moment, but I wanted to say, "Maybe you haven't been looking."

I see mountains moved every day. Not physical mountains, but mountains just the same. He moved a mountain in my heart a little over a year ago. I had been trying to go around it and pretend it wasn't there, but He pushed it right in front of me. Suddenly, the truth about my heart and His love for me stared me in the face. I could have run away or continued to ignore it, going on living life in the hole I'd dug for myself. But I knew that in order to truly come to Him, no matter how difficult the journey would be, I had to climb it.

He didn't make me do it alone. He was with me, carrying me every step of the way, sending me friends and angels to encourage and teach me. I learned so much in that journey because I was able to gain a new perspective on the world around me. What looked big before suddenly seemed small and insignificant. What had once seemed out of reach suddenly seemed much more obtainable. And really, as I stand on top of this mountain that God conquered in me, I see a whole new world stretching out around me. It's as if I am beginning this life all over again.

See, when we say God moves mountains, it doesn't always mean He moves them out of the way. Sometimes He puts them in our way, giving us the choice to trust Him in the climb or to continue digging ourselves deeper into our holes. He never said His Way would be easy, He just said it would be worth it.

The Great Catch

I remember a night a couple years ago when I was telling my friends about how a guy I had a crush on just started dating someone. One of my friends told me, "He's just a goldfish. You want like, a barracuda or something." She was right, but I often find myself attracted to the goldfish, wishing they would become "barracudas or something." Kina Grannis puts it perfectly in "The Goldfish Song:" "I feel defeated again/ I'm always losing to myself/....I had the right intentions/Sometimes my hope envelops me/And I can't learn the lesson/Not to send a goldfish to the sea."

This is the problem I have with crushes: I see a guy and create this idea of who he is in my head. In reality he is just a "goldfish," but I try to send him to the sea and make him "a barracuda or something." I get so discouraged sometimes, wondering if I'll ever find the right guy. I feel just like Peter, fishing all night and catching nothing. I have faith though, that in the morning light, Jesus will appear on the shore and tell me to cast my nets on the other side. There, in His time, I will reel in "the great catch."

In the meantime, rather than lay in the boat dreaming of that day, I will do better learning to focus my thoughts on God, how I can serve and love Him in the little things, rather than how I'll catch my...fish.

Make up and smell the roses.

A little update: In June I wrote about my break-up with coffee. We made up when I discovered the truth in Caribou Coffee's slogan, "Life is short. Stay awake for it." Now every morning, I wake up and smell not only the coffee, but the promise that each new day holds. Coffee is my morning-person friend who gives me the physical energy that I need to live each day to the fullest. Whether you are a coffee addict like me, or you prefer tea, or you are like a friend of mine who likes to add a little coffee to his sugar every morning, most of us have something of a morning routine that helps us survive the day. This is especially important for me as I try to figure out what God wants for the rest of my life. I am itching to leave my hometown and see the world, to find a job and begin a new and exciting life. There are so many possibilities, but while I try to solve the mystery, I want to enjoy the little things as well.

Yesterday I returned from a little road-trip to visit some of my good friends who still live near the university. While I was there, I finally made peace with an old friend who I have not spoken with much in the last year. It was exactly what I needed. Afterwards, I went to the chapel to pray and was pleased to see a bouquet of white roses on the altar. I smelled their sweetness and smiled. It felt liked I had woken up from a bad dream and now smelled the promise of new life in these roses.

There will always remain a little sadness and regret for the time I lost with my friend, but I no longer want to look back at those times. I have learned and grown from those difficult days, and God has helped me pick up the pieces, guiding me as I struggled to put them back together in His order. The joy and sweetness I found when I ordered my heart according to His will soothes any lingering pain. Freedom has never tasted so good--even better than coffee! And even better than the promise of a new day that comes with a fresh cup of coffee, God promises a new phase of life with these roses.

The possibilities are endless for this next phase of my life as a dreaming college grad and artist. It reminds me of a book I read when I was younger. The book, written by Sharon Creech, is called Bloomability, a word one of the characters (whose first language is Japanese) invents to say 'possibility.' It seems to me to be a more accurate translation of Jesus' words in Matthew 19:26: "With God, all things are possible." Possibility simply means something that can be done, whereas bloomability implies that something can be done, and then it can grow and bloom into something even more beautiful. When we have God in our lives and let Him write the story of our hearts, we spend our days planting seeds of love, seeking and doing His will in the little things. He takes these little seeds and, by grace like rain and the light of His love, they bloom.

So make up and smell the roses. The bloomabilities are endless, and God is dying to pour His love on your life!

Green is for life.

Nestled on a clearance shelf in the back of the store, it called to me. Shades of green and funky weed things sprouting on the front made it look exactly like the kind of journal I would buy. Pretty leaves mark the bottom of each page--I love that kind of thing. The eco-friendly label also informed that no trees were used to make the journal. Here I must admit that I am something of a Go Green girl. You won't see me waving banners to save the trees (unborn babies are still my priority), but I do believe it is important to have a deep appreciation and respect for all of God's creation. The simple beauties of nature are a constant reminder of God's power and majesty. But these sensibilities and the fact that the journal is my favorite color were not enough to persuade me to buy it.

I confess that I have something of an obsession with journals. There are currently enough empty journals lining a shelf in my room to keep me covered for at least the next three years. There is just so much potential in a blank journal, so much hope and excitement for the words, dreams, secrets, and prayers to come. Writing is a discovery process for me, allowing me to piece together the crazy-mixed up pieces of my mind. Re-reading old journals helps me learn from my mistakes and not make the same ones again. I could go on forever about the joys of journals. This is why I get so excited when I find really "me" journals, especially really "me" journals on clearance....But I didn't need it. I told myself so and was about to put the lovely greenery back on the shelf, but the quote on the front suddenly made so much sense for the journal, for Go Green, for life: "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I thought to myself, I discover by journaling...what are the weeds in my life, the dark spots in the garden of my heart that need the most tending? They are those sins and temptations that I constantly fall into, those people that I have the most trouble loving, those hurts, pains, and regrets that I don't seem to go away. Though these things take the form of life-sucking weeds in my eyes, to God, they are opportunities to work miracles. When I give them to Him in faith, He pulls them out and plants something much more beautiful and life-giving in its place. He makes all things new. There have been so many times when I wrote and wrote about the hideous weeds in my heart. I hurt, I cried, I begged God to take them away. He always did, but it was so slow and so quiet that I didn't even notice until months later when I re-read what I had written. I began to see and discover the virtues that God had given those weeds. He shed light on the tear-filled pages, and in His light, nothing is ugly. He is stronger than murderous weeds, so that in Him, even they can become flowers. Even our greatest mistakes and failures can be transformed by Love into His greatest victories.

I bought the journal with no more hesitation. As I drove home, I saw more clearly the way the tops of the green trees brushed against the brilliant blue sky, the way each tree stood in its unique beauty in the golden sunshine. I thanked God for the beautiful trees, and for the journals they had produced for me to record the words that He writes on my heart. When I got home and pulled out the journal, I thought, What is a flower? A plant whose virtues require rain to bloom so that they may shine in the light of the Son. I laughed and smiled up at God.

It's the little things.