Sweet Jesus,
Thank you for what you’ve allowed in this life which brought deep pain. Thank you for showing me a deeper, reckless love and intense joy. Thank you for fighting for me even when I felt your presence was far. Thank you for being gentle with me on the brightest day and in my darkest hour. Thank you for bringing meaning to my chaos.
I’ve recently been experiencing such sweet time with God and this world. I’ve had some really sweet reunions with family members, laughed really hard with friends from high school, and watched some of my favorite people pursue their deepest dreams. Call it the Christmas spirit, call it the tenderness of the Lord, I just really love this life.
I have been looking back at old journals through times when I really hated life in order to truly grasp this sweetness with the depth it deserves. I read over tear stained journal pages and words struck with loneliness and insecurity. I read over pages filled with a deep wrestle of desiring to be anywhere other than where I was. I wish I could tell you that in the moments of my wrestle I clung so close to God and trusted where he put me. I wish I could tell you I wrestled with such stamina, I saw the presence of God but I would indeed be lying.
God brought me back to words screamed, doors slammed, and feelings hurt.
God brought me back to crying on the bathroom floor over mean high school boys.
God brought me back to typhoid.
I am grateful for lies spoken over where God shows so much more truth.
I am grateful for deep hurt if it means experiencing such a deep joy.
I am grateful for the story God has given me.
I am grateful for the chaos of earth if it means holding on for His hope.
I am grateful for typhoid.
I want to take a minute to take about the intensity of thankfulness I feel towards typhoid. The deep pit of typhoid was not a beautiful
wrestle. The deep pit of typhoid led to a fall down some dirt stairs where I then yelled, “F*** you Jesus.” You see, I had rooted myself in this idea that when all else fails and there is control of nothing else I will have control of my body. When my surroundings were living in a tent wearing what I was told to be appropriate and waking up each day with a new task, my little brain ran to control of my body. That’s when I got typhoid. Imagine the kind of uprooting that does to someone. Now turn that uprooting up a few notches and add that I was convinced God hated me. No you’re there in the pit of typhoid. Within all of this, I am so thankful.
I’ve laid in desert valleys and now I dance upon mountain tops. I’ve experienced deep sorrow and pain but I’ve seen so much more joy. I’ve fallen down big time but by the grace of God I stand up. “God never said He’d eliminate the chaos from our lives; He just said He’d bring meaning to it” Bob Goff.
