Heaven on Earth, in my backyard.

"I just know that things like this are going to happen in Heaven and I'm excited about that."

Fall is EVERYONES favorite season this time of year.  And yes, it is my favorite season for the same reasons it's everyone else's favorite season; the changing of the weather, the colors, the scarfs, pumpkin everything, football, chili, fuzzy socks, flannel and candy corn.  What people don't see when I say I love fall is the goose bumps my heart gets at the sight of a pretty orange tree, a cold breeze or the sighting of pumpkins on porches.  I have a true, indescribable, I-wish-I-could-put-into-words joy that comes around this time of the year.  

All day long my house has smelled like fall.  Pot roast was cooking in the crock-pot, candles were burning and the windows were open; allowing the cool breeze to fill the house with all its fresh outside goodness.  I am absolutely sure my heart rate was through the roof!  

We hung lights in the backyard, covered the tables with pretty table cloths, laid out mason jars with tea lights and had The Autumn Film albums on repeat.  Friends started showing up with yummy dishes around 6 o'clock.  We were all gathered in the kitchen, laughing and telling stories about our day as we waited for the green beans to finish cooking.  The sweet, sweet boys set the table and handed out drinks as we all snapped photos and marveled at our hard work.  

The ten of us stood in a circle, hands held, thanking the Lord for good friends, good food and His plan for our futures.  

We served ourselves then all went outside to sit down under twinkling lights.  We laughed with each other, gave each other a hard time about funny comments and embarrassing stories, we shared our plans for after college and encouraged each other with smiles and fist bumps.  We took pictures and complimented the food.  

The area of my life I feel like I have been most blessed in is the amount of incredibly wonderful people I've gotten the opportunity to build friendships with.  The Lord has been more than generous in surrounding me with people that love Him and strive to live a life that is glorifying to Him.  He has given me friends that like to enjoy life in the same ways I like to enjoy life; people that appreciate the tiniest of things and seek out adventure in their day to day lives.  I am thankful that He found me worthy enough to send His VERY best do to life with me.  

As this season of my life is on the verge of wrapping up I have been thinking a lot about the people I will keep in contact with after college.  I know that I won't always be good friends with even half the people I am now, but that's okay, because I am going to get to see those people in Heaven one day and I cannot wait.  We will sit around a table in the middle of October and catch up; sharing all the things the Lord did through us, where He took us, who we met along the way and how incredibly thankful we are for His love.  

Tonight was a lot like what I think Heaven will be like.  Cold weather, unhealthy food, pretty lights and kind hearts gathering around a table to rejoice in the joy of the Lord together.  

After finishing up dinner our sweet gentlemen friends cleaned the dishes while we made cinnamon roll waffles.  We then gathered around the TV to watch a movie that we sang along to, quoted and laughed at while self indulging in candy corn.  

My heart has a sweet smile on its face.  Tonight was perfect.  

Humility.

Sometimes I have to go back to the basics.  This month has been one of those months.  The other day I actually sat down and started making a mental chart of the places the Lord was showing up, where I did not feel Him at work, the areas of my faith I needed to strength, what I was doing "right," what I was doing really wrong, what He was teaching me, what I felt like I needed to learn more about and the list goes on.  While making this chart I became incredibly frustrated with the fact that I could not find a place to fit everything I wanted to categorize.

"Hey Heather.  Guess what?  I will never work within the walls of your chart, so cut the crap you dumb human."

I have been trying out this whole "Be still" thing and it has proven to be very difficult.  It involves a lot of me laying on my bed, closing my eyes and not talking.  My mind wanders and I do my best to refocus, but more than anything it made me feel like I was not a disciplined enough Christian to simply sit with the Lord.  (This fell under my "need to work on" category).  Guys, this is a load of freaking poop. This past month I have been a fundamentalist Christian.  I have defined myself by my sin, I have only allowed myself to feel righteous when I was having a "good day," I was struggling to accept grace and lost all understanding of God's love.  This is not a fun place to be.

Essentially what all of this means is I lost sight of the cross.  Grace, righteousness and redemption had become such casual thoughts, and what was done on the cross is EVERYTHING but casual.  I got to this place because I was making myself bigger than God; I was telling Him that I was not good enough to be given FREE grace.  I wanted to earn it; I wanted to be God's friend, like we were exchanging favors with each other.  I thought my obedience to Him on Wednesday would make me more righteous than my mistakes on Thursday.

Humility is proclaiming who God says I am, not who I say I am, so basically I was being everything but humble.

I was doing that be quiet thing again yesterday and at some point God placed it on my heart to watch the Passion of the Christ.  Uhmm, okay God.  There I was eating my sandwich, watching my Savior die on the cross while sobbing like a mental person.  The whole movie I kept hearing God say, "You were worth every single bit of it."  I needed a real image of what was done for me, not just words on page, I needed to physically see it.  God has grace and understanding for that.  

Understanding the basics is crucial.

Being broken is more than okay.  I will always be broken.  I will never be unbroken. 

I cannot attain who God has destined me to be until I understand that I will never be the woman of God I was ORIGINALLY (before the fall of man) destined to be.  I will never, ever, ever be free of sin.  EVER.  Christ did not die on the cross for an already righteous person, He died for a BROKEN person.  Being at peace with my brokenness is a breath of fresh air.

 I am redeemed.  I am freely given grace.  I woke up this morning because despite my broken self God has a mighty work to do in me.

I have asked God to spoon feed me His word this week.  Yesterday He re-illustrated what was done on the cross for me.  If the cross has become mundane to you then ask the Lord to refresh and renew your understanding of what exactly He did for YOU on the day the veil was torn.  

Praise God, even on the days I try to categorize him on my DUMB chart.  

LOL at my life.  LOL.

My summer in the mountains.

Cheers to Weathervane Coffee for providing me with the most peaceful and beautiful atmosphere for writing this afternoon.  

Days like today remind me that I am way more sentimental and nostalgic than the average person, and I guess I'm okay with that until I realize that I'm struggling to say goodbye to a ROOM I know I won't ever see again. The night before I moved out of my apartment and home for a week before coming to Denver I wrote about how I was having a hard time leaving the four walls I had called home for two years, but how, in a sense, I was ready to leave. When chapters end or pages turn I am normally ready for them, but not this time, I am not ready and I've been praying big prayers that God would make me ready before I leave this city on Tuesday morning.  What was it about this summer that makes it so hard to leave a place I had never visited before March?  What was it about this summer that makes it so hard to say goodbye to seven people I did not know existed 2 and a half months ago?  What was it about this summer that makes water gather in my eyes when I drive down Colfax knowing that the days of driving down that street are coming to an end?  

We've talked about this as a staff a hundred and one times, but what a summer of serving with CSM does to you is impossible to explain and that's where I am stuck.  I cannot explain how cool it was to hear my students use the word "gentrification" in casual conversation.  I don't know how to put into words the joy my heart was given when I sat down at Senior Support Services to have a conversation with my friends James and John.  Then I try to describe why such a big smile gets brought to my face when a street friend hugs me after I serve them a meal.  It was more than just a summer of serving the Lord and being excited about it, it was a summer of realizing that I absolutely love and adore and want to be in relation with people who are not loved, adored or in relation with anyone.  I just want to be all of their friends and I want to encourage them and let them know that they are just as treasured and loved by the King as I am.  

Some of my students being incredible.  

I knew I had an adventurous spirit, but this summer has inspired me to take life by the hand and just run with anything and everything.  I have discovered a new side of a myself and being surrounded by people with incredibly adventurous spirits encouraged me to dig inside of the person I am still becoming and decide that it's okay that I don't exactly who I am yet.  People bring out different sides of me and working alongside Keysha, Jay, Drew, Jordan, Chris, Lexi and Brittany all summer helped me discover a side to myself that loves deeper and cares more intentionally.  When you're thrown into a group of people and forced to be with them every waking second for two and a half months straight you create a bond that is unique.  We served together, saw hearts change together, experienced belly aching laugh attacks together, but beyond all of that we had an unspoken understanding for each other and that is harder to describe than anything.  My heart was transformed and softened in the presence of these people and I had no other choice but to turn to them in times of stress or frustration.  When we would try to describe how we were feeling and couldn't, we would just know and that's probably the second hardest part of leaving; I'm REALLY going to miss these people. 

 

The absolute hardest part is leaving all of the people I've built relationships with at ministry sites.  I've seen people improve, I've seen people relapse, I've seen people commit their lives to Christ, I've seen people enter into life changing programs, I've seen people refuse help and I've prayed with completely plastered people along Colfax in hopes that something I said would stick.  I know what state I am leaving the people I've met this summer in.  I do not know where they are going to end up and coming to grips with the fact that I may never know where they end up is tough.  However, I have complete confidence that God used me in the conversations He made available and I believe that He has placed His sovereign hand over those people.  God is bigger than their addictions, He is bigger than the label society has placed on them, He is bigger than mental illness and stories of failure after failure after failure.  My prayer is that my friends understand those things too.   

Every group that I got to work with this summer inspired me in one way or another.  It was such an encouragement to see them on Sunday after the prayer tour all nervous and not willing to talk or pray and then to have them super pumped and excited about talking to anyone they see or praying with someone they just met by Friday.  Their willingness and the way they all embraced me was beautiful and it was a HUGE honor to get to work with each of them.  

Kansas City, MO. 

Fontana, KS. 

Abilene, TX. 

Austin, TX. 

Pampa, Idaho. 

Bellingham, WA. 

McPherson, KS.

I'm convinced that I'm never really going to find my place in the world and that's because God is always going to pull either a new desire, a new dream, a new passion, a new place or a new person to the surface of my heart and responding to those things will put me somewhere new and those things will completely change me.  I'm more than okay with this.  I don't ever want to stop growing; I want to continue to find who I am through adventures and building relationships with people.   

People need to be loved and encouraged and pushed.  People need to be told that they are beautiful and wonderful and desired.  I am convinced it is my job to intercede on the Lord's behalf to remind people of these things.  I would like my life to be filled with compassion, love and adventure, where those things are not, is where my work lies.