Overwhelmed

I am laying in bed at 4 in the morning in a city with millions of people. For some reason my mind keeps replaying the events of yesterday, the people I encountered, the things I saw from the top of the 103rd floor of the tallest building.

And I am completely overwhelmed.

And it hurts.

My mind is trying to wrap itself around the fact that there are so many people in the world - and they all matter. Maybe not to me, or to you, but they matter to their family, to their friends, and to God.

Think of your eyeball. Now think of your body. Now think of your whole family, and everyone you know, and the whole world. Do you realize how small your eyeball is? How insignificant? Your eyeball means nothing to anyone else. Yet, your eyeball is so important to you.

I think that's like people to God. [[I meant in importance. I mean, I guess we can think about it like that. They're all like God's eyeballs. Body parts, really. And they all have a purpose. They can all be used. ]]

This place is huge. This city alone blows my mind, I'm forcing myself not to think beyond.

I am overwhelmed by things I cannot understand or begin to fathom. The sin, the bad - why things are "sin" or "bad". Why it matters who I am when there are 7 billion other people in the world. Why it matters who I am in love with. How God can know and care for each person. 

Right now, I am overwhelmed. I have never felt such a degree of overwhelming burden. I am consumed by the pain and the hardship of this life. The desperation, the brokenness, the need to work. The disease, the death. I am overwhelmed with the fact that every human on this earth is just like me and trying to find purpose and meaning. Trying to be loved. I am overwhelmed with sadness that I can't know them and love them...and that people lose meaning to me because there are so many and I know I can never know them all.

I am overwhelmed with an existence that seems completely pointless in every way.

And yet... I am overwhelmed by an awesome relentless God who gives it all meaning. I am overwhelmed that He loves me. That he hears my prayer. That he answers my prayers and continuously guides me and that things that happen are not coincidence but they are orchestrated by a God who has my best in mind and my future in his hands.

I am overwhelmed with awe of the details of the people. Of the details of the trees. Of birds and mountains and plants that provide food.

I am overwhelmed of his protection. His provision. Of his miracles that I see, but only when I look for them with my whole heart.

I am overwhelmed by his grace. By his strength. That he is the one who is the soul reason I can resist temptation and that I desire to. That His Spirit in me tells me things about people that I would never otherwise know. 

I don't understand. I hate this life, this existence, and I am overwhelmed. I have no choice to live it just like everyone else.

But as much as I am overwhelmed by the bad, I'm overwhelmed with the good.

Overwhelmed with pain and confusion. But overwhelmed by a faith in a loving God and overwhelmed by a trust that He is in control and will make all things beautiful when I surrender all to him,

Overwhelmed.

I have faith that God can and will do abundantly more than I could hope or imagine, in me and through me..but right now I can't do it. I can't do this life.

Beauty Rant.

Dear girls: You are beautiful for who you are, not how you look.

"Oh, so you got a guy to look at you by taking your clothes off? Congratulations. You and every other girl on this planet. I'll be impressed when you can capture his attention by being someone worth viewing for more than your body."

Realization: ANY girl can get attention by being naked. Push up your boobs just enough and angle that camera just right and you can have every guy lusting after you and 10,000 facebook likes.

Realization: Beauty isn't that important. It's likely that you've searched "hot girls" on google before. See all those girls? They have souls. They aren't just bodies. They have dreams, likes, dislikes, quirks. They want to be known, and maybe they think they can only get attention by taking off their clothes because that's what they've been taught. So that's what they do.

Realization: I don't care if I don't get that attention from guys. Do you know why? Because I am more than a body and I know it. If someone is going to like me, they are going to like me because I have more to offer than my body. Because EVERY girl has a body. Every girl can be beautiful if she plays it and dresses just right. I refuse to be condensed to nothing more than a body.

Realization: I don't want to be beautiful, "hot" to get attention. I don't want to need every guy look at me and make comments to feel good about myself. I want to be fit to feel good about myself, I want to follow my dreams to feel good about myself, and I want to be beautiful for one man - the man I will marry. Over the top? Maybe. But i'm not going to be like every other girl who takes her clothes off to get attention. And girls, we don't have to. 

Realization: What is physical beauty? If I am beautiful, I want to be beautiful because I love the unlovable. I want to be beautiful because I smile in the midst of pain. I want to be beautiful for more than a body that will likely someday become old, fat, and wrinkled. I want to be beautiful because I am becoming who God has made me to be.

Beauty captures attention, but personality captures the heart.

Beauty begins the moment you let yourself shine through.

Beauty is not in the face; it is in the light of the heart.

*End rant.

Growing in Grace

I love how God works. I love that I can't deny him and his love and provision, no matter how much I may want to; no matter how much I think life would be so much "better" without him, no matter how much I get angry at him and curse existence and question why He made it. Yet, in the midst of the mess, it is impossible for me to say that He is not somehow at work, orchestrating it for my good and his glory, making something beautiful from these ashes.

Today, Marya and I went hiking. We prayed together, praised and thanked God for everything we could think of - including our pain. God knows better than us, and we are choosing to trust him. We sat down and found a little inch worm. I'm talking TINY...

And you know what we realized? That little inch worm had so many intricate details, and God created him. If God could so lovingly and beautifully create the detail in a tiny worm, how can we not trust him to write our love story, even if it is not what we think we want right now? He knows our hearts, and the more we get to know His heart, the more we can trust His beautiful plan.

The last few days, I have been learning so much and growing so much with my Lord, that I can not understand why I have days where I choose not to take the time to REALLY get to know Him. There are two kinds of "Christians. There are those who just believe and continue to live for themselves, and then there are those who take time to seek Him, read his word, and trust His promises. I definitely have days of both. But even through my "lukewarm" and "selfish" days, I am continuously amazed that He has chosen to use me, to show Himself to me, and the blessings that come from taking time to seek His beautiful face..

...When I hurt, I have a habit of pushing God away. I KNOW He is good, has my best in mind, knows the end result, blah, blah blah. But when I hurt, I don't want to hear that. I want to do what I want to do. (Most of the time that results in more pain.) So through this whole hell, I have also been pushing away my Jesus loving friends. (Satan doesn't want me to be encouraged or to trust God! He wants me to run to the selfish arms of desire and "I want what I want now") So, I tried to get out of it due to my messy hair and tear-puffed eyes, but a few nights ago my dear friend Vickie in Panama called me on skype and for two hours we discussed God and his truth, his provision, and honoring Him. I could go on forever, but let me tell you, she spoke God to my heart. Things that God had told me that I had been trying to ignore, she confirmed. She reminded me of truths that I didn't want to be true. And this is the importance of having Godly people in your life - especially older Godly people who have been through life and have SEEN His work and can encourage and lead you in truth. I am so thankful for Vickie and her obedience to God and her willingness to speak His truth to me - even though she knew I didn't want to hear it. :) (It's another story, but Vickie fought God for quite awhile when He asked her to move to Panama. She knew He was asking her to obey, and when she finally surrendered, the amazing peace and God's miracles He has worked through her encourage me to always obey, no matter how hard the task that God is asking me to do.)

-"The Lord is not confusion. The Lord is peace and order.

-"Sometimes God lets us feel alone through hard times so we focus completely on Him, and talk to him, and not rely on earthly friends."

-"People can believe, but someone who is growing in the Lord will never be completely happy with someone who has no desire to know the Lord more deeply. It doesn't matter if you want it for them more than anything; if they don't want it more than anything, they can only pretend for so long."
-"God created romance, and He loves us more than anything. Why would we not trust him to create for us a beautiful love story, when He is the definition of love?" 

- The other day I was spending some time with God and I simply asked him, "God, what do you expect from people?" He just said, "Micah." So I read the book of Micah and found this in chapter 6:6-8 - What what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, Oh man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? Woah. Again, I could go on forever and dig that verse apart, but if you feel led, go for it. But is that not the coolest that God pointed me right there?

And it happened again today...

- I had unrest in my soul. Still, it is there, but I feel that the Lord is asking me to pray in faith without knowing why, opposed to showing me what I need to do or who I need to pray for as he often does. I was spending time with the Lord, sitting in the sunshine in a peaceful corner in a friend's cozy house and He led me to Psalm 88 and 89.

Psalm 88:18 - "You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness." Wait, what? This is my life. I can not think of a better verse to describe my life right now. I feel alone. I feel as though God isn't doing anything; isn't bringing me friends. But His words continue in 89 - (1)"I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever...(15) Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, oh Lord, in the light of your face." Through the dark trials and tribulations of the Psalms, David continues to trust and praise God because we know that He is faithful, always, until the end of eternity - "The faithful know there is no alternative but to continue seeking the Lord in prayer." And seek His face I will do for the rest of my life. Because there is nothing more beautiful in all the earth than to know the Lord and trust in His perfect plan.

Psalm 42.