Life and Light

Today, as we were driving our respective road trip routes, MK and I talked about passion and plans and adulthood. It's a weird feeling to be in the stage of life where we can actually start accomplishing the things that have always been on our heart to do. It's also a weird feeling to realize that things don't always turn out the way you expected.

In the midst of our conversation, MK re-stated the passion the Lord has given her to fight for women and children, and we talked about how that might actually look much different in practice than she had once thought. But she cannot and will not abandon that dream. That dream that God wrote on the "tablet of her human heart" (2 Corinthians 3:3).

Tonight, before getting in to the bed I slept in for 9+ years of my life in the house where my childhood was scripted, I pulled out an old journal that was sitting on a shelf in my room. I flipped to the pages that were written on this time, eight years ago--Summer of 2004. On one of them in particular I had written some notes about Scripture I had been reading along with a short phrase in which I felt I might be discerning a heart for ministry with youths. Those years in the Oxygen youth group with the community of believers who would become my foundation and family until this day were some of the most formative years in my spiritual life. I remember a desire that began to stir in me at that time to affect the lives of kids for the Gospel in the same way that mine had been radically transformed. I found I wanted to share the reasons for the hope I have with people who needed it.

Here I am, and that dream--never lost but tucked away--has potential to become reality; in some ways, it already has. Certainly not in the fashion I might have expected, but only in God's perfect will and timing.

Do not abandon the words the Lord writes on your heart.  Possess them, nurture them, pursue them, and leave space for God to fulfill them in His own unique way.