Excited

I am excited about all this new school year brings. I love our homeschool curriculum (My Father’s World, but we are also throwing in several other subjects and resources). I love that Selah is doing gymnastics. It was so much fun to watch her go around the gym and get to try out every single one of those cool things (cool to her; they just make my hands start sweating even looking at them). I love that my mom comes on Tuesdays, giving me a day to teach lessons again and prepare for things coming up, such as maybe leading songs at church one weekend or a concert. I’m excited about making a CD and getting to share these songs in concerts maybe once a month. I’m excited that by God’s grace, and I do not say that lightly because He knows it’s Him, I am out on my road running 5 mornings a week. And lastly, I am excited that I am going to be co-teaching Spanish and Missions 2 mornings a month to homeschoolers in FAITH’s Enrichment program!

If that made your head spin, it did mine as well. We’ll see if I make it to Christmas. Everything in my life right now feels very focused and led by the Lord (i hope!). I’m getting to teach and do many things that I have a passion for, but had completely given up and surrendered to God. I’m excited that when people said, “He’ll bring that back in another season”, they were right! I had to fully let go of these actually very normal things during those years of sickness. That sounds so pitiful, but it’s not. God is teaching me so much about how He cherishes the weak, the unable, the despised…how He loves the humility and wisdom these things can accomplish in our lives. I understand a little bit now that things that embarrass or make us misunderstood are a gift from God.

Letting go of everything that I thought defined me, and for about 2 years only finding my identity in Christ because I had nothing else, (I didn’t even have a hobby!) has made me alive. I died to what I wanted out of myself. I died to my somewhat unBiblical expectations of God. I died to what others thought of me. I died to the life I thought He wanted me to have, in order to finally and slowly embrace the life I do have. Somehow I am living in that grave still, because it is right where I need to stay…but because of the grave, resurrection becomes a possibility. Not resurrection of my goals or identities or activities or health, that doesn’t matter in the least. That’s just external stuff. Resurrection on the inside. Just like Jesus had to go to the grave before He was resurrected, we do, too. He gives us crosses– to kill us– in the same way that He gave us the law to show us we were incapable of keeping it! So when we finally give up and die and let go of our understanding of how to love and serve Him, then the Spirit finally has control and freedom and power and we stand literally amazed. That doesn’t mean life becomes bigger and better, or ministry becomes bigger and better. It means there is no more striving to get somewhere else. There is rest and peace in the midst of daily obedience.

I have to say, if this whole thing I’m talking about was a download on my computer, I would say I have downloaded less than 1 %, but nonetheless…I am excited.