a love letter to you

If all the disgustingly cute couple photos overflowing on your Instagram or the five isles in the back of Target full of sugar, red, and pink didn't remind you already, today is Valentine's Day.  Maybe you carelessly over-indulged on carbs and chocolate covered everything while binge watching all the cheesy, romance movies on Netflix or you took advantage of America's most popular date night and got dressed up and went out with your girlfriends. Or maybe I'm just too stubborn to admit that you might have actually had a hot date waiting for you with your favorite coffee in his hands when you woke up. But let's be honest here, you probably have a pint of ice cream waiting for you in the freezer. It's fine, me too. Whatever your plans were, wherever you are, I have a little something for you before you fall asleep.

I think that us girls focus so much on the idea that Valentine's day, or any day for that matter, is only worth it, that we're only worth it, if we wake up each morning knowing that we are loved and accepted by a man. We try so hard convince ourselves that we're okay without a man- boys sucks, right? Yet on Valentine's day, waking up to no roses on our doorstep sits deeper than just being reminded how single we are. It screams everything from rejection to simply not being good enough. Well, if we're so content without a man in our life like we've so easily convinced ourselves, why is this our reoccurring response to a day dedicated to love? Why are pictures of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively or Deacon Claybourne and Rayna James (If you haven't seen Nashville, get back in bed and start binge watching) the first things that pop into our heads when we think of love or being in love? Why has the idea of being in a relationship with someone become the end all, be all in our lives? The "good morning beautiful" or "I love you" texts, the cute Insta pictures, a guy showing you off all over his social media, everyday access to holding hands, kissing, and cuddling- all of these things clutter our minds and have made us believe that until this is reality for us, we will never be fully satisfied. Don't get me wrong, these little joys are well worth looking forward to. They're exciting and I would be lying if I acted like these sweet affections were never something that crossed my mind. But I think if we were to get down to the heart of this need to have a man in our life, we would find that we just want to be loved. To wake up each morning and know that we're unconditionally loved, adored, and wanted. Us girls have this deep craving to be pursued and so we wait... we wait for prince charming to come sweep us up off of our feet and carry us into the sweetest love story of them all. 


Picture this: Tonight, you pull back your comforter and there on your pillow lies a little white envelope addressed with your name on it. Anxious to know what's inside, you flip over the envelope and slowly tear open the seal. You pull out a perfectly folded piece of paper that reads:

  

          I want to tell you how much I adore you. You are beautiful, my darling, there is not a flaw in you. My thoughts towards you are countless as the sand on seashore. You are my treasured possession. I am able to more for you than you could possibly imagine. When you hurt, I hurt. When you're brokenhearted, I am close to you. I want to be the one you go to for comfort in all your troubles. I am slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abounding in love. I am patient, kind and compassionate. I want to be your provider and meet all your needs. When you're hungry, let me feed you. When you feel alone, I want to be right there next to you. When I look at you, my heart sings, you are so breathtakingly beautiful. I am so in love with you. I love you despite your past, despite all the little things you see as imperfections. You are wanted. I want you. I want to show you where your worth is found. I love you. I know somedays are hardert than others; I've seen you at your best and I've seen your at your worst... but nothing could ever be great enough to separate my love from you. I love you even when you don't love me back. I promise to be faithful to you. Through the hard days and the joy filled days, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. I promise to love you with no strings attatched. Don't waste your time trying to earn my love, it's already yours. Those guys in your past who have told you they loved you and then they left? I'm not like them. I promise to never hurt you, I will never abandon you. Please understand this. You keep searching in all the wrong places, in all the wrong guys, for fulfillment. If only you knew that no guy will love you like I do; that you will never be satisfied apart from me. Why do you keep running from the one who is relentlessly pursuing you? Stop running. When will I be enough for you? When will you be mine? I'm waiting for you... I'll never stop waiting for you. 

   

So here you are, left with a letter, an overwhelmed heart, a lot of emotions, a man who is madly, madly in love with you, and a decision to make.

The most purest form of love, the most perfect man has asked just poured out his heart to you, asking you to be his. All you've ever wanted is right in front of you and all you have to do is accept it, believing every word of this letter to be absolute truth. You have to be vulnerable. But every time you've been vulnerable, you've been hurt; every time someone has told you they loved you, they ran. So you're scared. You have been rejected and told you're unworthy of love for so many years that allowing this perfect man into your life, allowing him to love you, accepting the fact that someone has chosen you, is beyond your comprehension. You're scared. You have done nothing to earn this man's love; In fact, you've done everything possible to make him run away. But still, he wants you. You would be absolutely insane to say no to this man who has promised to love you unconditionally for the rest of your life, but still, you're unsure. 

You pulled back your covers and looked on your pillow and there was no white envelope.

This dream man isn't standing on your front porch with a dozen roses.

But what if I told you that this letter, though not found sealed in an envelope, was real? That this man exists? That every last word of this letter addressed to you is truth? That there is a man, right now, who calls you His. Though you may not know Him, He knows you- He knows every hair on your head, He knows when you wake up, He knows what your tomorrow looks like before you even get a glimpse. This man, this love, is real and is being offered to you right now. No, this man isn't going to tweet about you or take you on dates to the movies or kiss you goodnight, but what he offers is better than anything any man on this earth could ever give you.

His name is Jesus and He's waiting for you. You were created by Him and for Him and until you realize this, you will continue to chase after things, hoping they will fulfill you, and you'll just be left empty, wondering what went wrong, every. single. time. 

He's pursuing you, girl. Let Him pursue you.

goodbye 2016, hello 2017

If I'm being honest, 2016 was a messy one. It was tough. There were a lot of days where I struggled living loved; days where lies and words of rejection filled my head- "unloved, unwanted, unworthy." Through these lies, Jesus would speak words of truth over me: "loved, wanted. worth it." For every lie, He whispered truth. Yet through every whisper, a lie spoke louder. For weeks, I would crawl into bed every night feeling completely robbed of joy. "God, when will this end?" I found myself believing things about myself that I'd never have before. For the first time in my life, I was living out of a place of pain and rejection and I had no idea how to get myself out of it. Even if I didn't believe it, even if it took everything I had in me to not run back to that place of hurt, I would cling to truth- slowly but surely, truth won. For a while, I had fully convinced myself that this battle would never end. But as I'm sitting here reflecting on this past year, specificially these past few months, I'm overwhelmed by how constant Jesus has been through it all but how often I was so focused on allowing my circumstances to dictate my emotions that I forgot to just be still and find rest in Him. 

During these months of emptiness and confusion, I knew Jesus was working every little thing- every heartbreak, every "no," every unanswered question- for my good and for His glory. But waiting sucked. And even clinging to that promise day by day wasn't enough. Like taking an ibuprofen doesn't heal your headache, it just makes enduring the pain a little easier. In the midst of the hurt, Jesus was my comforter and my encourager... and it took weeks for me to fully allow Him to be my healer. Like C.S. Lewis said, "I am not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for me; I am wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." 

The long stretches of living out of a place of rejection slowly began to subside and little by little Jesus would show me little snipits of where He was and what He was doing during it all. 

Remember when I said no? I was protecting you from this.
Remember when I asked you to give that up? I wanted you to trust Me.
Remember that night where you felt an overwhelming peace? That was me.
Remember that blessing? I knew you needed that. I love you. 

Every little piece began working as a stich that closed each open wound. My brokeness turned into fullness, my hard heart became soft, and what I viewed once as rejection I now saw as His protection.

Through it all, I learned a lot about not only who I am but whose I am. But the two things He's taught me and is continuing to teach me daily are these: 

One, when He asks me to let go of something, let it go. It's for my benefit, even when it's hard to see that. Sometimes He's going to ask me to hand over things that I see are good for me, things that are extremely difficult to give up. But He's asking me to trust Him because He's proven trustworthy and faithful. I see so clearly now that if I would have just been obedient to what He was asking me to give up the first time around, I could have saved myself a lot of hurt. There are consequences to doing it your own way and it's not even worth it. 

Second, wait. My friend Tay and I were talking about what waiting and what following Jesus looks like and she put it like this: You're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, sailing on a boat, just you and Jesus. Even though He's the captain, you decide when you want to stop, when you want to get out and explore, when you want to jump out and swim. There's a person or a place that catches your attention and you want to chase that. So He stops the boat and you jump out. He waits for you. He keeps calling you back into the boat but you're too focused swimming towards that one thing that you turn back and yell, "hold on Jesus, I'll be right back." So He waits. And He waits. And you keep swimming. And as you're swimming the tide gets higher, that thing that you're trying to reach seems to get farther and farther and when you finally reach that thing, you realize that it wasn't all that worth it. So as you stand there empty, you look out and you see Jesus sitting in the boat waiting for you. Instead of making you swim all the way back to the boat, He sails towards you. You jump back in and you begin to keep sailing. Every direction you turn, all you can see is what appears to be a never ending sea. No destinations. No islands. No people. Just you, the ocean, the boat, and the Captain. You keep asking Him, "Jesus, where are you taking me?" But the only thing He responds is, "The more stops you want to take, the more times you jump out and swim, the slower it will take to get there. Just stay here on this boat with me. I know where we're going. Just be still and wait. We'll get there." 

There have been so many times where my impatience got the best of me and I craved what others had. I was tired of waiting. So I jumped out of the boat and did it my own way. I didn't completely abandon Jesus, I just told Him to wait. I selfishly knew that He would be there for me when I was done. And every time I would leave the boat I wish I would have stayed. So I'm learning to wait. I'm learning to just stop moving for a second and allow Him to lead... because wherever He's taking me, He promises it's going to be worth it.

With all the hardships of 2016 came a lot of joys. A lot of them. A year free of hospital stays and I.V. antibiotics (it's been seven years since this has happened.) A year of a stable 91% lung function. New friendships; friends who bring me immense joy, who speak life, encourage me, and love me so, so well. Ended both semesters with all A's (thanks to the excessive amount of iced lattes and iced coffee I consumed.) My best friend, Brenna, took a break from the twin cities and became my roommate for three months over the summer. I traveled to sweet, new places- Big Sur, Big Basin, Minnesota, and Wisconsin- and spent a lot of time (and money) at coffee shops and California beaches.

Well here we are, day one of a new year, and there's already so much I'm looking forward to. Yay to turning 21, my fourth year of college, and working my dream job all summer at Hume Lake. 2017, I'm ready for you!

if god is good, why is there suffering?

We live in a world full of brokenness, full of disaster, chaos, and immeasurable pain. Suffering is simply inescapable. We do everything in our power to prevent the bad from reaching us, but no matter how fast, how far we run, tragedy finds us and devours us. Every other magazine article, every newspaper front, every television broadcast screams the words fear, loss, and grief. Incomprehensible hurt seeps into our lives when we least expect it. So, If God is good, why does he allow me to suffer? If He is loving, why did He take my parents away from me? If He is merciful, why did He not protect those innocent children in that mass shooting? If He is good, why did my best friend get sick? If God is as good as He says He is, if He is as good as you say He is, why does He allowing me, His child, to suffer?

As a Christian, these are questions I get asked more than often. If I am being honest, I have even asked these questions myself. Through my deepest suffering and through my wrestling, I have concluded two things: suffering exists and God is all that He says He is: true, loving, good, sovereign, merciful, and all-powerful. Then I am left with the question of “if God truly loves me, if He promises good for my life, and if He is all-powerful, how can He be all these things yet still allow me to suffer?” I believe there are many answers to why God allows suffering, however, I don't believe any answer will ever be enough to satisfy you or me. For this is one of those things that I don't think we will ever fully be able to comprehend, but we can try.

The most logical explantion to why God allows us to walk through life with pain is simply

F R E E  W I L L.

Let us begin by defining free will: free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. In simpler terms, we have the ability to choose. Going back to the beginning of creation in the book of Genesis, we were created not as robots but as a people of choice...” And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden…” (Genesis 2:16). With choice comes consequence. It goes onto say in the next verse, “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Genesis 2:17). Adam and Eve were given options and each tree they could choose to eat from had an outcome attached to it; life or death. With life came a world free of pain, free of evil, free of impurities. This world is the world God created them in and intended us to live in. With death came endless pain and suffering, disasters, immorality, and separation from God, our Maker, for all human beings. 

C.S. Lewis put it best in His book, Mere Christianity (which I HIGHLY recommend) when he said: “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata- of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating”  Suffering exists because free will exists. There can be no evil, no suffering, without good.

Since we've defined free will, we have to clarify what we mean by suffering. Suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. When addressed with the problem of evil, St. Augustine asked the same question, “if God is all-powerful and good, why does He allow suffering?” He starts off by defining the cause of suffering: evil. For Augustine, evil alone is not a thing, it is a privation of good. The hole in the center of a bagel is nothing, it is not anything, it is just a lack of dough. This might sound like a silly analogy but likewise, where there is evil, there is just a lack of good. If this is true, if evil doesn't exist as a thing in itself, then God is not the cause of evil. God is the cause of all things good but we as sinful human beings make ethical choices that result in evil which therefore causes us to suffer.

If God is not the cause of pain and suffering, but He is indeed good and all-powerful, why then can He not prevent bad from happening? I would argue that just because God is omnipotent, does not mean He has the power to do anything. In C.S. Lewis’ book, “The Problem of Pain,” he explains that there cannot be independent laws of nature in a world where man is free. He argues that human reasoning has a disconnect. We tend to believe things are possible when they are intrinsically impossible. Try making a two sided hexagon, it's impossible. Just because natural disasters exist doesn't mean God is not good or that He is unloving. This takes us back to the issue of free will and the idea that evil is just a parasite on good. Good things can cause harm. Water has the ability to drown and cause diseases, sun can cause cancer, fire can destroy homes, food can cause health problems. But we would be foolish to say that water, sun, fire, and food are evil or that they are simply bad and need to be destroyed entirely. These things are good but because of the fall of man, because of free will, these good things cause people distress.

To end evil, to rid the world of pain, God would have to destroy the cause of it all; this means He would either have to completely get rid of humans or He would have to take away our ability to choose. God’s primary purpose in creating us with free will is that we could decide for ourselves whether to love Him or live life apart from Him. By ridding us of free will, we would be forced to love Him. But obligatory love is not love at all. To have a world in which love exists, we need free will, and free will is what makes any agony or sin present.

God being a loving, good Father doesn't just allow us to go through tragedy without a purpose behind it. Since suffering is inevitable and He cannot simply remove all evil, all types of suffering from Earth, He graciously uses our hurt for our overall benefit. But How is that a loving father would allow his children to endure such pain? Think back to when you were a child. Your mother and father would bring you to your doctor for your annual shots. Your parents knew the pain you would experience in that moment as that needle was forced into your skin. They knew beforehand that you would try to resist; they knew your tears would be streaming uncontrollably down your cheeks as you reached out for your daddy’s arms to hold you. They knew you would not understand why they would sit there and watch you get inflicted with pain and not do anything to stop it. However, what you did not know at the time and what they were well aware of is that the pain was temporary and the medicine that was being injected into your body would benefit you by preventing you from harmful viruses. In their loving you, they allowed you to go through suffering for your own good.

This is the same with God and His children. He sees things we don't. He uses the trials of this world to heal us, to strengthen us, to grow us. The pain we endure keeps us from a more serious physical or emotional hurt. Not studying for an exam and failing the test reminds you to study harder. Burning your finger on the stovetop reminds you to avoid touching hot things. Other's tradgedys show us what to avoid in our own lives so we don't experience the consequences they once did. Pain teaches us. Suffering as a result of our foolishness shows us that there are consequences for our actions. And whether we recognize it or not, unpreventable suffering reveals our desperateness for Jesus- the one who offers strength, comfort, and peace- and our longing for Heaven; a place free of suffering where we become one with our Maker. 

In the midst of our suffering, let us cling to Jesus and the promises He makes to us in Romans 8:18-28:

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

_______________________________

footnotes:

‘The Problem of Pain’, by C.S. Lewis An Outline (April 9, 2013), http://www.samselikoff.com/writing/book-outlines/cs-lewis-problem-of-pain.html

Robert Velarde, How Can God Allow So Much Evil and Suffering? (2009), http://www.focusonthefamily.com/faith/becoming-a-christian/is-christ-the-only-way/how-can-god-allow-so-much-evil-and-suffering

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 47-48

Augustine: On Evil (2002), http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine_evil.html

Sid Litke, Why is there Suffering? (2004), https://bible.org/article/why-there-suffering

Julie Phillips, "If God is Good, Why is There Suffering?" (November 1, 2016), California Baptist University

free people

Most define freedom as 'the ability to do whatever, whenever, without hinderance.'
Nothing or no one is holding you back. The ones who define freedom this way are usually the ones who won't fully commit to Christ. They look at Scripture as a list of dos and don'ts that prevent them from living freely.

But I want to challenge you- what is it that you so freely partake in that you feel like you can't give up for Christ? Maybe for you it's alcohol. maybe it's sex, or drugs, or pornography. You know what that thing is. Now that you have that thing in your mind, I ask you right now, "can you give up that thing and never go back? never look at it again. never interact with it. never think about it. can you stop?"

If we're being honest here, your answer is probably no. The truth is, you're enslaved to it. if you can't simply let go of it, you are bound by it. that thing is holding you back from living in the fullness God intended you to live. We've fooled ourselves into thinking we're free when we're actually enslaved to our own selfish desires. Your freedom isn't really freedom at all.
When you're enslaved to sin, you're free from righteousness; but what benefit do those things have for you? They just bring temporary satisfaction and then you're left empty again. But when you walk in grace and choose life with Jesus, you're no longer bound by these worldly things but you are slaves to Christ- reaping holiness and goodness- resulting in not only abundant life, but eternal life. {Romans 6 & 7}

The relationship of sin and self is a lot like a dislocated finger. When you look at the finger, what does it look like? A finger. But something's off. It may still look like a finger and it might even still have some function of a finger, but not to it's full intent. A dislocated finger cannot function properly or fully in its deformed state. It's not useless, it's just not working its purpose. It needs adjusting. It's only when the finger is popped back in place to its proper form where it can function as it was created to function.

Sin is a dislocation of creation. We were created with purpose, for a purpose. But when we step out of God's plan for our lives, when we follow our desires instead of being in alignment with His will, we create a dislocation. Each person, each created thing is to be used a certain way. Windex is used for cleaning glass but if you think you can use it to clean your teeth, you'll soon realize it wasn't inteded for that. Like eating soup with a fork or playing baseball with a football. Things are created with a certain design, for a special purpose, in a specific context. When taken out thier context and used improperly, it loses its purpose. That bottle of windex doesn't become toothpaste, it's still cleaning spray, but its not being used how it was designed to be used.

Choosing to walk under the authority of Christ, giving up those things that hold us back from Him, isn't giving up freedom, it's walking in it. In our enslavery to sin, we are no longer living in the fullness and in the freedom God inteded us to live. It's when we die to what once bound us that releases us from death and enters us into new life- a life free to be exactly how our Creator intended us to be: F R E E  PEOPLE.

Footnotes:
Dr. Todd Bates, California Baptist University, Apologetics.

seeking hope in the midst of tragedy

In the midst of tragedy, it’s so easy to become hopeless. It seems like as each day passes, this world gets darker and darker. Constant news reports of bombings, terrorist attacks, shootings, genocides,.. are just filling up our social media feeds. When will it end? Each devastating story reminds us a little more vividly every time of just how broken we are and how tight of a grasp Satan has on this world. We tend to get lost in the darkness and for a moment we convince ourselves that this world is too far gone from being saved. In those moments of doubt and hopelessness, we give Satan control. 

Today, my heart, and a billion others, are deeply saddened for our nations. “#prayforparis, #prayforparis, #prayforparis” - more than 10 million people have used this hashtag today. Think about this. In the midst of tragedy, people across the world- men and women of faith, men and women of no faith, people who pray and people who have no idea what prayer even is, ones who believe in God and ones who don’t are saying the words, “pray for Paris.” In this time of fear, oppression, confusion, brokenness, and complete desperation, our world is crying out for help, for a hope. Nations are turning to the power of prayer; seeking something greater than this tragedy- something that offers peace, hope, comfort, and healing when it feels like there’s none. This world is reaching for something more, something omniscient, believing that it’s going to do something. We’re so against prayer yet our only response to tribulation is prayer because we all know in the depths of our hearts that the One we’re praying to is real, able, and sovereign. This world is crying out for Jesus and they don’t even know it. 

Light will not be overcome by darkness. A sin-filled, lost world in desperate need of a Savior. Evil is present and Satan is active, but so is our mighty, mighty God. He gave himself for our sins so He might rescue us from this present evil age {Galatians 1:4}. Jesus wins every time. It's not over yet. 

Let us hold steadfast to the God of hope and let our prayer be this:

"Open our eyes, Lord let us see / All that you are, all that you mean / Open our ears, Lord, let us hear / all that you are, be loud and clear / please be near / As our praises rise, may your presence fall / Heaven, Heaven fall down / Spirit, Spirit pour out on us all now / Come, Jesus, come / come like the wind, fill up this place, we welcome You in / Come like the rain / Open the sky, show us Your face, oh, Lord, we wait / We’re crying out in desperation / waiting now in expectation / crying out in desperation for you / we’re waiting for you” Heaven Fall Down // Phil Wickham