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It seems that every year around this time I feel like reviewing the past year of my life. I still see life in the cycle of school years (though less so now that I haven’t finished a semester since last summer), and so around June 7-15th seems to be the time frame in which I get extra sentimental and want to draw things to a close.
It is June 15th, and I don’t really feel like going over all the major events of the past year. I’m simply marveling at these facts:
June 15, 2006: graduated from high school (age 16).
June 10, 2007: flew home from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for the last time.
June 15, 2008: experienced one of the most personally meaningful Seven24 services yet.
June 15, 2009 (today): working the front desk of New Song Community Church and programming services for Celebrate Recovery & my worship internship.
It’s amazing what God can do with one life in three years.
What will He do in the next three years? I really don’t know. I hope that by then (2012) I will be graduating with my BA in Music and preparing for seminary in the fall. I hope I’ll be paid staff at a church (which I hope would be New Song). I hope I’ll at least be in a serious relationship if not engaged or newly married. I hope I’ll be regularly leading worship and mentoring a couple of high school or early-college age girls. Or who knows; maybe I’ll be done with all He had for me here and it’ll be time to go Home (and by that I mean heaven, of course).
There are many things for which to hope, but all we know is what today holds. I’m not going to plan for anything more than what God would have for me here and now.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. James 4:13-15
~*~
Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! [...] For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Psalm 149:1 & 4
I can’t even tell you how much I am in love with the kingdom of God. Every time I talk about it, I bubble over with excitement. I start talking faster and faster, and my ears heat up and turn red, and sometimes my hands even shake. Today I even started crying. The kingdom of God does weird things to me.
I have learned so many things and grown in so many ways in the past week. I can’t even begin to attempt to share it all with you. God’s been weeding things out of my life lately, more than ever before you might say. He silenced the Enemy’s voice in my mind last week and gave me tools to combat it in the future. He healed a very tender open wound and purified my heart of any of its ugly remains. He removed my feelings of urgent frustration over an extremely difficult relationship. He reassured me that my basic needs will always be met. He revealed a couple of next steps in His plans for my life. He gave me confidence in my decision to stop being anxious for a romantic relationship and instead wait for Him to arrange it. He essentially took all the junk that’s been crowding my head and heart, boxed it up, and threw it in the spiritual woodchipper.
Now, to fill the empty spaces the junk once occupied, He is teaching me constantly. Lessons like the value of accountability and what it means to FULLY trust Him. I’m learning the simplicity and importance of casting all my anxieties on Him and what my identity as His daughter means. He’s beginning to show me what the scope of the ministry He has prepared for me is. He is asking me to give Him more: more trust, more faith, more love, more sacrifice, more worship. He is asking me to expect Him to show up everywhere, to expect Him to do miracles around me. He is asking me to set my eyes on Him and forget that peripheral vision exists. It’s exactly like the song (as of course I relate everything to one song or another):
The cross before me, the world behind; no turning back, raise the banner high! It’s not for us; it’s all for You.
That is the perfect picture of my life at this moment. I long for it to always be the perfect picture of my life. There is nothing else worth gazing at but the cross. I have not a single urge to look back and even consider what things would be like had I not chosen to accept this calling, had I never written “COUNT ME IN!!!” on my bedroom wall. Any beauty that my heart reflects, any wisdom that passes my lips, any love that flows forth from me, is all because of Jesus. None of that is Courtney. I absolutely love that fact. Dying to self is an incredible experience. Each time I surrender another part of me to Him, He grows my maturity, and suddenly I am producing His fruit. It’s a beautiful gift; He rewards us for our submission by making us look more and more like Him. There is no way we can lay any claim to that kind of character, because it isn’t us. It’s God in us! How awesome is that? The God of the Universe wants to be reflected in us!
My life has taken its craziest turns in the past 3 years. I graduated high school at the tender age of 16. I moved to Canada all by myself and lived there for a year. I danced among some of the greatest professional ballet dancers in the world. I returned home with a severe injury. I started college (something I literally thought would NEVER happen). I finally fell in love with Jesus. I discovered Christ-centered friendships and the importance and beauty of church. I stopped talking to my dad for 8 months. I received a call to full-time ministry. I changed my major a hundred times (or so it seemed). My relationship with my dad was miraculously redeemed. I moved out of my mother’s house (much to her chagrin) and into my father’s. I stopped dancing for the first time in 16 and a half years. I quit school and then decided to go back.
And then there were the firsts. I was surrounded by all non-Christians for the first time. I experienced truly having more than just a “crush” on a guy and then got rejected, big time. I flew internationally by myself multiple times. I didn’t dance for six months. I didn’t guard my heart and fell in love. I began to rebel against my mother. I got asked out on a date for the first time and then it never happened. I was at the heart of a major “drama.” I dated someone. I dyed my hair and got my nose pierced. I became a night owl. I miraculously got over my first love. I knowingly hurt a friend deeply. I dated someone again. I got a piece of my heart broken.
Through all of these events, I could have been completely broken. I could have lost my way and gotten caught up in the rollercoaster of action that seemed to be the new normal for me. Instead, God moved. He gave me a gift of faith, and that is the only way that my relationship with Him is where it is. He used each one of the things to refine me and grow me- even the blatant mistakes! He redeemed all of it. On top of that, I have come through all of that chaos peaceful and assured of God’s plan more than ever before. I am so in awe of Him that I hardly have anything else to say. My only hope and prayer is that someone reading this will begin to believe in His power for their life as well! There is power in testimony.
(Again with the songs) There have been 2 songs that have struck me as perfect descriptions of my life. The first is “I Will Waste My Life” by Misty Edwards. Word for word, I could have written that song. It is my experience and my heart. The second is “I Don’t Regret” by Barlow Girl. Again, a song I could have written. I don’t think there is any better way to convey everything I’ve been trying to say to you than for you to simply listen to these, so I’ll close with this (couldn’t find the Barlow Girl one anywhere, sorry):
Ahhh it makes me so emotional! :)
I’ve said before that poetry is an art-form near to my heart, that it helps me express myself clearly and effectively when I feel strongly about something. Well, I just wrote a poem. Hopefully, this poem will live up to its purpose. I needed closure on something that’s been going on in my life this year. It pretty much began in January, and it’s been breaking me down the last month and a half or so. I really can’t take it anymore. It was part of the reason I wanted to move to San Francisco- to escape it. But alas, I can’t escape it by running away. God wants me here in Oceanside, thus I must face it head on and choose everyday to be done with it. I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive and let it all go, but I know that I must. How dare I hold onto unforgiveness when God has forgiven me of everything I have done and will do against him! Compared to my offenses against Him, this one against me is nothing.
I thought I was done with it on Saturday night. I was up till 3 AM praying and reading my Bible (not the whole time, I had watched SNL too). I felt a tug on my heart to forgive, so I followed it- or so I thought. I woke up Sunday morning crying, because I had just been dreaming of the offense and was feeling the pain all over again. All of Sunday I held onto that unforgiveness again. I was simply honest before God. I know I have to forgive, and I really want to! But I just can’t. Not now, I told Him.
Monday night I realized that it was a choice. I realized I’ve been letting my emotions take me for a wild ride; back and forth, I’m over it I’m not, again and again, and if I’m ever going to let it go, I have to choose to do so. Even if that means choosing forgiveness one hundred times a day.
So today, I wrote a poem. I listed the facts, I reached my conclusion. I have to forgive, because I am called to do so. I have to forgive, because I cannot allow Satan a foothold in my heart. I have to forgive, because I can’t take the pain any longer.
The person I am forgiving probably wouldn’t know who they were if they read this. That’s ok. I don’t need to tell them they’re forgiven. They might even get upset if I did so because they probably don’t even think they did anything wrong. It’s more between God and I than anything else.
I urge you, if there is anyone you are holding a grudge against, anyone who has hurt you and you haven’t let it go, FORGIVE THEM. Yes, it’s hard, it’s sometimes the absolute hardest option there is. But it is the only option if we want to walk away in freedom.
