How to Begin?

Taken by Cally Declan at High School Camp in June

Truly, how? I'm back from camp. I suppose that's where to start. I have been postponing this post... I have been busy, for one, and just don't know if I have all the words to say for another. Camp was... amazing. Actually, let me rephrase that. God was amazing. In ever weakness, He was strong. In every heartache, He was there alongside me. In every triumph...well, every triumph was certainly His.

How can I explain fully the greatness of God? I can't. Yet every moment I was relying on just that. Who is God? I know just bits and pieces even now. God is faithful. I saw that in the millions of stars and seeing Saturn through the telescope, and I saw it as I cried at my incompetence in the bug-filled shower. I saw it in the Spirit-filled discussions, in the laughter of my girls, and even in the bloody knees and broken souls.

I can't say it enough. I couldn't have done it without God's faithfulness. If you ever need to know how incapable you are (and we all should find this out at some point...it's truly humbling), go and be a camp counselor. Because there are questions you can't answer. There are trials you don't know how to deal with. There are emotional and spiritual battles in which you are helpless to defend yourself. But guess what?

God is our sword and our shield, our fortress and our deliverer.

How amazing is that? Seriously. God is so good.

And I cannot fathom it. This stark contrast between the vastness of God and the hollow, tiny, broken vessel that is me is humbling and joyous and full of such grace and power and majesty and God...God, God is the only thing left.

 

That's what camp teaches me over and over again. I can't. He can. I am broken. He is whole. I am empty. He is fullness. I am darkness. He is light.

 

Is that not glorious? I can't bend my mind around this thought. It is marvelous and yet so practical. And best of all? It is unchanging. God never changes. He never fails.

 

And so I sing it, hard, into the star-filled sky, "Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders / Let me walk along the waters / Wherever you will call me / Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander / And my faith will be made stronger / In the presence of my Savior!" 

Skyward

From Pinterest

These days I’m looking skyward

Into the blue of the morning, the grey of the storm,

And the gold of the sunset.

The peak breaks the clouds to let the sun filter through.

Breathtaking.

It was a hawk that I saw, I think.

It cut through the wind, soaring higher than the very mountains.

And I ran and I laughed and I jumped,

But the wind did not take me up to join it.

Still, these days I’m looking skyward.

Because the ground is full of flowers and trees that reach up as hard as they can,

And me, too. I’m reaching up.

I’m ready to fly.

P.S.
I will be gone for a little over two weeks! Candence Declan will be gone as well, so Monday Madness will return probably July 27th. Anyway, I'm off to camp and I can't wait! I will have lots of stories to tell when I get back, I am sure. Until then, as the Guatemalans say, may God richly bless you.

Monday Madness: S1 P7

NO, I DID NOT FORGET!

But I am not searching Pinterest for a picture. So boohoomoomoo.

OKAY ACTUALLY WRITING NOW:

When everyone left me in the interrogation room, in the dark, all alone, I almost cried. But I didn't, because I was so mad. See, now that I had time to get my real emotions out, they all mixed and formed into a bursting rage.

Of course, I had questions. But the questions only fueled my anger. So I decided to do the logical thing and list everything that I was angry about.

#1 I was kidnapped. By a kid. After being hit by a car and witnessing a shooting.

#2 The kidnappers were annoying.

#3 They had my dog.

#4 They didn't know that Beowulf always eats his food with all the human leftovers piled on top and he had grown rather spoiled and wouldn't eat without the leftovers and would therefore probably starve.

#5 They had questions I couldn't answer

#6 They had questions I realized that I wanted the answers to.

#7 The handcuffs hurt almost as much as the duct tape.

I took a deep breath, blowing my bangs up out of my eyes. Then I took in another deep breath, and in frustration, I yelled at the top of my lungs, some inaudible thing that even I didn't know what it meant. But it felt right.

"Would ya quiet down already? You're making this rescue an awful lot harder than it should be," said a voice from the shadowy corners of the room. I started.

"Who are you?"

"Eh, that's neither here nor there, as they say." The shadows moved and formed into the form of a human.

I almost screamed again, but he quickly nixed my attempts, as he clapped his hand over my mouth.

"Shh! I tell ya. Ya'd think you'd be happy for a rescue."

I calmed myself a little bit, then tried to examine my "rescuer", but there wasn't much to be seen, as he was hooded and masked and had sunglasses on and also black clothes.

Red flags galore.

But right now, it was either follow the guy who had just miraculously appeared and picked the lock on my handcuffs, or wait for more interrogation about stuff I knew nothing about.

I stood up, rubbing my wrists. "Can you please just tell me who you are?"

His gloved hand closed over my wrist and we started walking. He put his finger to his lips and opened the door and looked out. Quicker than I could blink, the two guards that were outside the door were on the ground, tied together, with their shoes in their mouths.

Before I even knew it, we were out into fresh air, around a few corners, through some alleyways, and finally crawling through a cellar window. I was panting with the exertion, but my rescuer didn't even seem like he had felt the effort.

As we dropped to the ground, I put my hands on my hips and attempted to look like I wasn't winded either, but couldn't slow my breathing down enough to pull it off. Plus, I was still super impressed by this guy's ability to speed and beat people up and...yeah and do pretty much everything.

"So who are you?" I asked impatiently.

My rescuer pulled his hood off, revealing spiky, unruly black hair. Then he pulled off his sunglasses, took off his mask, and grinned. "Heya, Li. I'm your brother."

He is Faithful

Taken by Cally Declan again

When that humongous trailer started tipping, my heart skipped a beat and I grasped at metal and tugged with all of my petty might and I felt the breath leave me.

Two were on the danger zone side. Two names that were beating with my pounding heart and for a moment there, I thought,

They're gonna die.

And in that abyss of my own thoughts, I saw a dark thing and I found that I could not pull this heavy weight in any way. I couldn't save anyone.

All of this was thought in a split second as the trailer full of furniture creaked and moaned and fell to the left--

And crashed straight down on a jack that wasn't supposed to be there.

And yet was totally supposed to be there.

Isn't it incredible how we serve the God who doesn't make mistakes? Who doesn't have little accidents? Who doesn't turn his back for one instant to let something happen outside His will?

And man, even if that trailer crushed one of us... it's all under His control.

Do I trust that? Not really. Not nearly as much as I should. Instead, my life is a series of cheap, predictable novels--in which the heroine jumps down off of the back of the suburban, puts her weight into pulling the tipping trailer, and saves the day.

Er, well, that is to say, I never actually save the day.

But I always think that I can, for some odd reason. Even though, dude, I don't even work out.

But God is faithful. Always, always, always faithful. And it always looks different. Whether it's a jack in the right spot at the right time, or the fact that He is well acquainted with our grief, or as we live our daily lives in this crazy promise of sanctification day by day.

God keeps His promises. He always has and always will. And boy is that an incredible thought.