glittering eyes.

as i sit here in my bed, laptop sitting on my stomach, fingers resting on the keyboard, brain scampering down roughly 15 side streets; i find myself in the same place i've been about 100 times in the last 16 months. searching. not so much searching. wandering.
and then just like that. a light. a moment. a glimmer. a thought.
you see, my mind and heart have been on a journey together; a journey of endless night. wandering down moonlit alleys, checking every last crevice for some semblance of light. of life. traveling through miles of unfamiliar territory with what few stars remain guiding the way. and yet the wandering has been aimless and the findings have been few, leaving behind nothing but two tired shells of knowledge and emotion. but all is not lost. if the heart wants what the heart wants, then a heart set upon freedom will not quietly submit to schackles. not without a fight. and when the heart and mind set themselves upon the same goal, they make a nearly unstoppable team.
people are always quick to remind that the decisions you make today will affect the rest of your life. i am always quick to dismiss this.
and yet the niggling in the pit of my stomach demands i examine further the truth lying beneath the cliche. this is one of the darkened alleys that heart and mind wander down. and there, in a corner or a crack or a crevice or at the bottom of a barrel, smoldering, lies an ember. that glimmer. that thought.
the reminder that the thoughts, attitudes and actions that heart and mind choose today will indeed, for better or worse, affect tomorrow and the next day and everyday that follows.
a fork. a choice. the difference between hope and tears. the difference between angst and perspective.
the choice being glaringly simple and yet arduously puzzling. the two cannot meet.
thus leaving heart and mind, standing silently, with glittering eyes, over a single ember, attempting to make sense of it all, of that little glimmer. the glimmer which tells them that they must choose.
a choice is made, a thought is born, an ember burns on.
whether the today is good or bad, the day will not break any sooner because of an acceptance of the dark.
thus heart and mind press on, through the endless night, with a simple ember to remind of the joy found in the light. no matter how the light comes, be it a wildfire or the blinding beams from the sun, it will come. the wandering is not in vain, weak heart and mind. hold fast.
the smallest spark can start the largest flame. so burn on you fervent ember.

.a.

unknown

When I was young I would pray that God would make me famous. 

Now I pray that He makes me anonymous. 

you weren't made for that

roughly a week and a half ago i penned notes to three dear friends who were off on a missions trip toe Belize. though each note was different and specific to the individual, there was one sentence that worked as the string to bind them all together. the words that were in those letters were placed on my heart for reasons unknown by me at the time, but they seemed important and so, i wrote.
those words were:
have no fear, you weren't made for that.

it wasn't until Sunday when i was listening to a sermon from Louie Giglio on freedom that i realized that those words weren't just to my friends, they were to me too.

Jesus is really wonderful because He isn't afraid of anything, not even afraid of loosing our love by giving us challenges...and the thing is it works for Him. He gives me hard things to do, hard obstacles to overcome, hard people to love, hard roads to walk down, and at the end of the day i love Him more than i did before. so i'd basically say that He knows what He's doing.(which is the exact opposite of me, i have no idea what i'm doing. at this very moment i have completely forgotten what i'm writing about because i got sidetracked thinking about how we should never stop trusting Jesus because He seriously always knows what He's doing.)
ok anyway, back to Jesus and the road to sanctification.
so like i said, Jesus gives us hard things to do. the truth is that being a Christian, should be a hard thing to do and i think in the past few months i have seen that come alive. it's not like i'm being persecuted for my faith, i'm not being thrown in jail, but the reality is that everyday i too must pick up my cross and follow after Him.
Lately that has meant leaving behind, well, myself. I have most recently been faced with the wretchedness of my own sin and depravity. Jesus has allowed me to catch a glimpse of just how terrible of a person i am. how selfish, prideful, needy, power/attention hungry and all around messy i am. so, yea, that's been fun.
all of this has required me to face those demons head on.
i would say that for the about 6 months i let myself live in this weird state of fear, denial and panic because i could see the life that Jesus was calling me to, ahead of me, and i could see the life that my sin nature had always dreamed of fading away in the rear view mirror. for months i was doing everything i could to stall, to not necessarily turn the car around and run the other way, but just throw it in reverse to buy a little time before letting go. why? because i'm a creature of fear. i'm scared to throw myself into the abyss, and i know i'm beating a dead horse here, because i've written about fear approx. 1,000 times, but i guess its like, a pretty big part of my journey with Jesus and i think it gives Him glory when we speak freely about the sins that He uproots, piece by piece, overtime. He is faithful.
Anyway. i've been scared. scared of what's ahead and what's behind. scared to tell Jesus that it's ok for my dreams to be void if they don't align with His "good, pleasing and perfect will". scared to let go of my desire to be recognized, respected and successful. scared to live a life that doesn't line up with the expectations and values of society. i never knew that those were things i wanted, and now i see that they became things that i needed. they took the place of my Savior. what's worse is that i simply let myself get there. one fear turned into two fears, which turned into a semester of inward focus on all that i couldn't let go. i know that the future Jesus has called me to is ministry, and most likely church ministry. this realization has caused the longest, most annoying battle between the head and the heart. the head saying "abigail, are you crazy? where will that get you in life? you just spent thousands of dollars on a college education and now you're not even going to use your degree? you've lost it." and my hear saying "but abbie, this is the passion that Jesus has placed in you, for His name, His people, His body. there is no other future for you, this is it. don't walk away from the one thing that brings you true joy. don't walk away from your love."
so obviously the struggle to let go and fall into my post grad identity of college ministry intern at fellowship has been quite the israeli/palestinian conflict. the rational, logical choices for my future have been blitzed by the persistence of Jesus and His great will, and for a solid 6 months, it's safe to say i was doing everything i could shift the course.

But boom, just like that, the veil was torn and the Son of Man arose from the grave, putting death to death, wiping away the tears from every eye, and putting fear to rest. He came to save me not only from the fear of death, but from the fear of life. Not the fear of living, but the fear of a life lived FOR HIM. you see, i know that i'm never truly living unless i'm living in total obedience to Him, but satan tells me to fear that life. guys. that life is the only life.
i don't want my life to make sense to the world, i want the love of Christ to be the only explanation.
i want my life to be 100% His, today, tomorrow, forever.
for as long as i am on this dry and cracked earth i want my every step to glisten with the light of the Son. i don't want to dampen it's glow with my fears and insecurities.
i want to be insignificant for His namesake, never fearing a life without recognition, because my reality is the glory that is to come.
i want to live a life of reckless abandon, never giving this world a second glance.
and as for fear? well, i will choose every single day to have no fear, because i wasn't made for that.
neither were you, dear reader.
freedom is a choice.
choose wisely.

abbie.

Exhibition

so i have this little brother, and let me tell you he is truly a gem, and also not that little, he is in fact 18 years old and 4 inches taller than me. size aside, he is quite possibly the greatest little brother that a girl could ask for. of course we've had our fights, and then more fights, and probably a few more sprinkled here and there, but what siblings don't? Zach is so wonderful and has grown into an amazing man, who loves the Lord so much and pursues Him daily. He is an amazing individual and i love seeing the talents and abilities that the Lord has given Him, ones that are so different from anyone else in the family, and are so fantastic. He is wise and kind and genuine and funny and has really good taste in music. i cannot imagine life without him living it with me.

Yet as i think about my dear, sweet brother there is one childhood memory that resonates. Actually it still makes me laugh so hard that i get watery eyed. Zach if you're reading this i hope you don't mind me sharing this story. it's just too good.
so when Zach was about 2 years old, making me 5 and Michael 8, our mother would occasionally leave us at home alone when she would run errands. This one time Michael and I decided it would be funny if we trapped Zach on the balcony, stole his clothes(he was quite the exhibitionist anyway), and played a sort of monkey in the middle, where Zach is on the balcony, naked, while Michael and i were on the first floor below tossing his clothes back and forth to each other over the balcony. Obviously this was a mean game. totally unfair to the naked two year trying to hold to a shred of his dignity. The first time we played this game Michael and I laughed, hard, while Zach cried. But the next we played the game something changed, instead of getting angry and crying, naked Zach decided to make the most of the situation. This came in the form of him pretending like the balcony was a runway, and his little body strutted up and down that hall. He owned it and that image is the one that lives in my memory as one of the funniest moments of my childhood. Zach took a fairly unfortunate situation and made it new. He could have screamed(we wouldn't have listened), he could have tried to fight back(in vain), he could have told on us(only making us want to get back at him), but no, he took the moment and made it his own. The memory is no longer about what Michael and I did, even though our part was the initial joke, it is now about what Zach did, which is infinitely more funny than what his conniving older siblings did.

the more i think about this memory though the more i realize that Zach taught me something that day. you see there is a really extraordinary quality that naked baby Zach embodied in those moments of our childhood. in a big way zach chose joy in a situation which he had no control over. i have this tendency to be a control freak. i love plans. i tend to think that my way of doing things is best and my ideas and plans are superior to others. i especially love for things to go according to plan, but God in His great graces rarely allows that to happen to me, actually i think i can safely say that things never go according to plan in my life. It's taken me years to realize that this is a display of God's grace and love and even more years to begin to release my anaconda squeeze on my agenda.
Things don't go the way that i want them to very often and every time i lose control of a situation i have two options, self pity or joy.
knee jerk reaction? self pity. grovelling. giving up. storming out. fighting God.
what zach taught me? own it.
My little brother has no idea that he taught me this, but he showed me that even though it's hard, when we are faced with circumstances beyond our control, we can choose joy. we can choose to make the most. we can choose to change our reality. Sure he was still naked on a balcony, but this time his brother and sister weren't laughing at him, we were laughing with him. he made it new.

That being said, in case no one noticed it's a new year. a time for change and resolutions.
this year i want to try something new. Instead of approaching life with a vice grip on my plans and struggling everyday to "let go and let God", i want to spend my year as an exhibitionist of the heart, stripped down with open hands ready for the Lord to send whatever He wants my way. Somethings will be good, somethings will be hard, but all of them can be joyful if i choose joy. i want to be that toddler on the balcony laughing at the days to come, embracing that which i have no control over. turning the difficult into the beautiful, the joyful, the memorable.

this year i resolve to choose joy.
this year i resolve to be an exhibitionist.

thank you zach. 
thank you for choosing Jesus.

-abigail.

the goals of 2013