I've been looking around lately and noticing and really starting to think about how much of a transition my life has undergone….I find my heart internally asking the question…..how in the world did I get here…Ive been starting to notice the people I've chosen to surround myself with (recently mostly orphan kids)….the discomfort I've so blindly embraced….And with my own sense of permanence in "the mission field" becoming more and more apparent, I find myself wrestling on the inside. Wondering where I belong, and what is around the corner (for I have the distinct feeling that "something" is around the proverbial corner)

The other day I had a conversation with my dad over the phone, and he made the very loving and concerned suggestion "that I start being a little more selfish with my life…start doing things that benefit me…taking care of Davy". After I got off of the phone with him I started realizing with greater clarity how absolutely impossible his suggestions were. I am realizing how utterly and completely ruined I am. I've heard this term thrown around in many different circles and have never fully considered its weight. AIM likes to use the term "wrecked". WRECKED.UNDONE.CHANGED.RUINED for all forms of normality …..but with no explanations….I choose the term ruined….it's a perfect word….I AM RUINED

Not that I am against finishing my college education. Just like I am in no way opposed to a marketplace position, marriage, children, etc. But the motivations are different. I feel I have passed some sort of "point of no return." I can never have the motivations others maintain again: I've let them go, and they are gone for good…

there's really no where to go but deeper in the Lord, and without tenacity in regards to furthering and deepening the interior life, I don't have a chance. I can't go to college and convince myself that a career, a diploma, a lot of money, etc. will validate me as a person. I can't enter into a relationship with the idea that the deepest places in my emotions and heart are going to be fully met by a mere man…I'd be foolish to even consider filling His places with mere shadows. I cant convince myself that "pursuing my dreams" ( or what were my dreams) is going to increase the measure of happiness in my life….its as if I'm jaded…divinely jaded……and man does it feel good…

To be liberated from the worlds imitations of validity. And to be released to dream with God……to actually run with Him in His pursuit of every heart……He has stolen my heart……and like a convicted prisoner….I cant turn back….I've made this decision to partner with Christ until the day I see His face (which I'm starting to believe is sooner than we're ready for/ but that's another blog haha)……AND THIS IS MY GLORY! …..I really am stoked about it…..

But He never said it would be easy. This is the common misconception of the western Church, "God wants to prosper me, make me happy, make me successful, make me feel good, etc." Not true. God wants to wreck me, mold me, change me, transform me... God wants to make me look like His Son, and is willing to go to great lengths that I become so transformed……

Like literally this place that I've called home actually isn't home….and the only allegiance I'm called to in this life is an allegiance to Jesus and His Kingdom……and I'm continually going to be in a place of dying and rebirth, dying to my own details and being reborn to life truly IN Him……and it'll be the most difficult thing in the world some days…..to just die…but there's so much beauty in the death of self……

I wake up everyday and I say YES …again..and again and again…..I let Him ruin me with ideas greater than my own…and I just say yes. So this season its Africa but I'm starting to be less and less concerned about where, but how and what

Shane Claiborne said it so poignantly in
The Irresistible Revolution
, "I've become less concerned with what I am doing and more concerned with who I am becoming…which is a lover of Jesus"

I'm writing this blog because I know that there are so many of us that are feeling this pull of the Lord saying……YOU WERE MADE FOR MORE THAN THIS…….and I just wanted to blog in light of it…..and encourage anybody currently wrestling with pressures to be and do and give your heart over to something that…well…you simply weren't made for…………..trust the Voice within who is calling you to greater ( even if its low and in the dirt and in the depths)…your best bet is to set your eyes on Him….and adhere to His desires………….