One More Month

Oh geez. 

It's coming real soon. 

I might be starting to freak out a little.

Yes, 

Yes I am.

  

I think I need to start packing....

Fortune cookies and Ace of Cakes

I like Chinese food.  It's true.  I have my favorites that we always get when ordering out.  I always get the same thing.  I'm a very picky and plain eater so I don't usually stray too far from the foods I already know.  But I try sometimes.  Anyways...there is one thing about getting Chinese food, no matter where you go.  They always give you a fortune cookie.  I kind of have a love/hate relationship with fortune cookies: First of all, they are NOT cookies.  That's very misleading.  I also like trying to take the fortune out of the cookie without taking it out of the bag while only breaking it once in the middle.  (Try it, it's fun).  I love them because I love reading the fortunes.  But to be honest, I don't really like the taste of them too much.  I'll eat a couple little pieces and then realize that I still don't like the taste of them enough to eat an entire cookie, even though I've heard that if you don't eat it, the fortune won't come true.  I beg to differ.

All of this to say it is most definitely clear to me that I am supposed to go to England with YWAM.  I have never been so sure of anything in my life.  You probably could have already guessed that by all my previous posts but I am just continually reminded of how true that is.  I will give you 2 examples:

Example #1: This is a real fortune cookie that I cracked open one night:

I got this the day that my visa got approved.  The approval of my visa made it a 100% for sure thing that I was going.  How crazy is that?  This fortune has definitely come true.  Today I got home from work to find a very generous check from a couple that I have never met before.  They work with my parents and just decided they wanted to support me.  That is just so incredible.  I must be doing the right thing. 

Example #2: I keep seeing things that have to do with England.  It happens almost every day.  Like tonight, I was watching Ace of Cakes and they were in London making this cake for the Globe Theatre.  No joke, I was smiling the whole time.  About every 3 minutes I would think to myself, umm, that's a big place to go to all by myself.  What am I thinking?  But then that would just make me even more excited.  Then the commercials would come on and I would relax and and breath for a second and then it would come back on and my smile wouldn't go away.  Overall, it was a good episode and I think it's safe to say that I am so incredibly excited.

HOPE

Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion.

~Philippians 1:6

If something comes easily and without sacrifice, it's rarely significant.

~Cameron Strang

The not yet will be worth it.

~Rob Bell


Set us free to trust the mystery until our eyes are clear enough to see You
Where You lead us, we will follow.
~Jars of Clay

APPROVED!

Yep.  That's right.

My Visa has officially been approved.

Nothing says 'APPROVED' like Kristen Wiig...

Target Lady

Finding my Here

"The only thing suitably quenching is the nearness of God."

~Praise Habit - David Crowder

I'm starting to very much dislike my job.  It stresses me out.  All the time.  And I never used to get that stressed out to the point of wanting to cry.  Seriously, it's been pretty bad lately.  The holiday season has officially started and so has the craziness.  And that craziness will last for the next 2 months.  The early mornings (as in 5am), and the long hours take a lot out of me.  It's just not somewhere that I want to be.  This isn't where I want to be, this isn't where I want to live my life.  I don't want this place to be my Here.  Let me explain:

I noticed something this past week.  Most of the people I know are in the place where they are going to live their lives.  They have a job, they're going to school for a specific thing, they have a significant other, they have all their family and all their friends, they have a purpose - Here.  This 'Here' is where their whole lives are.  Now I know that all of that can quickly change (as in my case) but I'm just saying, that is something that I have noticed with the majority of people around me right now.  It's not a bad thing at all.  In fact, it's something that most days, I wish I had for myself.  But I don't anymore.  I used to, but that all changed real quick.  And that has definitely been the most difficult thing that has happened to me.  Now, I have no Here.  Most days, that's pretty upsetting.  But there are times when I can smile about that.  I can do whatever I want.  I can go wherever I want to...like England, for example.  I know that someday, someday I'll find my here.  Now is just the journey to find that.

Bless our God, O peoples!

Give him a thunderous welcome!

Didn't he set us on the road to life?

Didn't he keep us out of the ditch?

He trained us first,

passed us like silver through refining fires,

Brought us into hardscrabble country,

pushed us to our very limit,

Road-tested us inside and out,

took us to hell and back;

Finally he brought us to this well-watered place.

~Psalm 66:8-12 (The Message)

I really like how the NIV finishes off this passage:

...but You brought us to a place of abundance.

I can't wait for that abundance.  Seriously.  In that abundance, I'll get to do something I've missed so much:

Dance.  Dance until we can see your soul.

~Praise Habit - David Crowder

But I think before I can find my Here, there is a lot to be learned.  I want to learn more about God.  I want to learn more about who I am and who God created me to be.  I want to learn how to love God and loves others and love myself.  I'm anxious and excited to learn.

A Better Story

“You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character.  I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.”

Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Here comes my better story.  


For the last 2 years, I've kind of just been wandering around with nothing to do and nothing to really look forward to.  I have been directionless with no hope of finding any sort of direction.  I tried thinking of what I could go to school for, but nothing ever popped out at me and anytime I looked into it, I got mad, like, really mad to the point of wanting to throw my computer out the window.  That would not have been a good thing.  So all I have been doing with my life is waking up at 4:30AM to go to a job that I'm ready to be done with, then go home, take a nap, eat some food, watch television, then go to bed early just to start it all over again.  That's no life.  Where's the purpose in that?  So when this opportunity came to go to YWAM, I immediately knew, finally, that this is what God wanted me to do.  All the pieces have finally been put together and things started to make a little more sense.  

“As soon as you point toward a horizon, life no longer feels meaningless.”

Moving to California almost 2 years ago, has definitely been the hardest thing that I have ever done.  Colorado is home to me, it's where I grew up, it's where I learned to love God and to love others, it's where I found unexplainable joy, it's where I learned to serve, it's where I learned to live.  So why would God want me to leave that behind for something that turned out to be just the opposite?  Rude.  I feel like I've never been able to be myself here.  But looking back on everything that has happened, and everything that has NOT happened since I've moved, it seems like just one big practice run for what I'm going to be doing.  I've gone through the loss, through the loneliness, through the homesickness, through the depression and I've survived and God is still very much with me.  Now I'll be able to go to England (still a crazy thought) and not have to worry about those issues as much (though I will never stop missing things) and be able to truly be there and truly experience it.  

“The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”

This is such an incredible opportunity to go to this place where I can learn more about God and grow closer to Him, live and work in community, and serve others.  As well as going to England, which is a place I have always wanted to go.  That place is quite literally in my blood.  I can't wait to get there.  This is just the beginning of this crazy journey that God has for me.  There is so much unknown but that's the great adventure of it.  It is so great to finally be excited about something, finally have something to look forward to, finally have a direction to go and finally feel that God is telling to do this.  God knows the desires of my heart, and it seems He has found the perfect opportunity for me.  He hasn't been silent this whole time as I have thought.  He's been speaking, I just wasn't listening hard enough.  I wasn't seeing what He was doing to prepare me for the next chapter in my story.  I'm seeing it now.  

So here I go.  I'm jumping into this with all that I am and I could not be more excited.  Like seriously, could NOT be more excited.  The next 3 months need to go by faster.

“I admitted something other than me was showing a better way.  And when I did this I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.”

The wait is over!!

It is now officially official.

January 14, 2011 - Goodbye United States of America

(10 hours later)

January 15, 2011 - Hello United Kingdom

Excitement doesn't begin to describe it.

Here's hoping....

Application - check
Registration fee - check
References - check
Acceptance - .........

Here's to hoping that I get accepted to YWAM Harpenden in England.