No Matter What...

Following Jesus for me has never been that difficult. There's been a few bumps along the road, doubts, fears, and challenges, but I've always had faith in Jesus. I think when life has always been pretty painless, it's easy to follow Jesus. My dad says I have a tendency to fall into a pile of crap and come out smelling like a rose. Oversimplified, that's been my life and journey following Jesus.

But what happens when life gets hard? Infertility changed everything for me. Through one diagnosis, my faith was immediately, wholly challenged. For the first time, my core beliefs, values, and desires were called into question. I was gently forced to re-question my faith Jesus and what he most desired for me.

God is not a giant 8-ball. He doesn't revolve around me. What I want most isn't necessarily what's best for me or best for the Kingdom. Ultimately, why do I love Jesus?

I remember a day when I was listening to a worship song (probably Chris Tomlin who was my worship leader for the year) and something clicked deep within. Through a lot of tears, these words spilled out...

I will follow you, Jesus, no matter what.
I love you because of who you are, not only for what you can do for me.
I will be obedient to you, even in my darkest hour.
I will trust that you will give me your best, even though the best to me looks different.

No matter what...I mean it.

I Am...Beyond Labels

I'm in D.C. this week teaching 1000 middle schoolers about who God says they are:

What God says about you is the most important and truest thing about you.

Honestly, I still regularly struggle with this truth. A lot of times I define myself by what I do or what others say about me, not what God says about me. I am a wife. I am a daughter. I am a friend. I am a pastor. I am a mama-in-waiting. I am a girly girl. But those are really roles I play or things I do - it's not who I am.

For many months after my infertility diagnosis, I struggled to let diagnosis that define me:

I am the infertile one. I am a woman with PCOS. I am unable to get pregnant. I am broken at the core of my womanhood. I am less than other women.

Identifying those false messages was a huge part of my grieving process. Become aware of those lies ultimately led to the acceptance of my diagnosis, but not accepting those words as my identity.

Yes, I have PCOS. No, I am not the infertile one. I am loved beyond measure by God of the Universe. I am a new life. I am worth far more than my ability to conceive a child. I am being restored day by day to be more of who I was created to be. I am chosen by God for a divine purpose to change the world. I am created very good. I am an inheritor of everything that is Christ's. That's the truth about me.

And it's the truth about you. I pray that you & I would see ourselves beyond the labels that we place on ourselves or that others place on us. I pray those labels - true or false - would not become our identity, but they would be used redemptively by God. I pray that God's voice we would be clearer and stronger than any other voice. I pray God's labels would be the strongest of all.

And I pray that these middle schoolers at DCLA would "get this" early on in their lives...what different lives they could live!

New Life - Our Calling

Kenya 2005 - New Life Orphanage

It was at this orphanage when Brian & I moved from "wouldn't it be cool to adopt a baby from Africa someday" to "this is a calling on our life to adopt from Africa!" Spending a day at this orphanage fill with babies who'd been orphaned, abandoned or left to die changed us. Implicitly. These babies captured our hearts.

In this picture - an assembly line for bath time. Each little one had to go potty on their chair before they were washed in the bathtub. There was a palpable energy and joy in that little bathroom. Brian and I stood there with our friend, Alex Wu, and just giggled, cried, and pointed at each precious moment from these babies.