No Thru Traffic.

Woke up early this morning and decided just to sit. To be still and watch the sunrise. Best idea that's popped into my mind in a long while. Surely He who faithfully raises the sun each morning is worthy of my trust today...

I want to pray,
I want to love,
I want to GO.
Far, far away;
to a place where people need hope,
need Jesus.

I want to run,
I want to cry,
I want my heart to be for His people.
I want to be faithful,
unto death.
I want to break chains and sow seed.
Lots of seed.

I want to bear fruit.
I want to be rested by Him and be poor,
dependent on Him for my every provision.
I want to lie next to His river of life
and be composed of His power.
Really, I just want Him...

Dreamy.

I would like to be anywhere but here. Mentally, not physically. Although I would not be opposed to being somewhere, anywhere, else right now. I have a care plan due at 11:59 tonight and have been putting it off for a while now. So, why not put it off a little longer? :)

On Wednesday night, I had another dream. A telling dream, a trying dream. It started off like this...

I owned a piece of property. It was large, there were trees, everything was green. It was the piece of land I'd always wished for. I had a beautiful garden, lush, like the one I have plotted in my mind over and over again during boring classes. I had a family, some super cute kids, there was a guy in the picture, but his entire physique was blurry (the kind of blurry that they use on COPS -- to hide people's identities), so as not to be disclosed. I had a charming house and all was swell. I knew that there was money in the bank, and that I had security, or as much security as one can create for themselves.

Then it came, calm but powerful. A voice, asking "Kelly is this what you want?" In my dream, the tension began. This is everything I've ever thought that I wanted... but now that it is before me, something seemed off, something seemed wrong. And then I replied "This is not what it looks like to be faithful."

The next scene rolled out. As a movie is to be viewed, another picture played before my eyes (though they were closed with heavy slumber). This picture was different. A barren desert, hotter than hatch green chiles from the Farmer's Market, this land was dry. The people were hungry. Starving would be more appropriate. They were desperate for something. Next came illness, the land reeked of disease. This picture ended with a martyr's death.

Heart pounding in fear, the familiar voice came again. Burning, it asked "Kelly, is this what you want?" Shouting to myself I repeated no. This isn't it. This isn't comfortable. This isn't safe. This is scary. Again, I found myself replying "This is what it means to be faithful."

I woke up, my heart still pounding and began to pray: God grow me in faithfulness. I want to be faithful, even if unto death. What is death? Have You not already overcome it? Where oh death is your victory? I stand alive, alive because of the one who faced fear, faced death. Indeed, I am secure; not because of the plush lifestyle I've managed to create, but I am secure because someone, not just anyone, but Jesus Christ who -catch it- died for me. Once and for all, my sins have been forgiven and the chains that once held me have relented. I am free. Free then to follow Him, free to be faithful... even when faithfulness requires my life.

This dream has stuck with me. I process it often. It came only 2 weeks after God put 2 Corinthians 6 on my heart. When I read this a couple of weeks ago, I shared it with my brother and said "Kev, I feel like this is what God has in store for my life." How great is our God?

3We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Not Your will, but mine, Oh Lord…?

This blog will likely depict the most life changing moment I have had in the past year and a half. Let me begin.

I went to church tonight, to pray over the body of Christ as usual, and after corporate prayer, I had the joy of praying with my friend Ashley. Ashley will be in my wedding someday. I REPEAT Ashley will be in my wedding someday.  While praying for Ashley, I found myself full of truth from The Spirit, as if the words from my mouth were smoke from a fire, they just came. They came intensely. After our prayer, I began the long drive back to Phoenix. While I was driving, God spoke to my heart. He said “Kelly, those words you prayed over Ashley, they are MY desire for YOUR heart.”

I smiled and thanked Him for making Himself known to me, yet again, and knew instantly what I had to do. You see, I really liked this boy in my life and a year and a half ago, I made the decision (for external and internal reasons) to forcibly remove him from my life. While I was praying tonight that Ashley would seek God’s will for her life, I was convicted. I myself had not been actively seeking God’s will for my relationship with this boy – you see, up to this point in time, I had only ever acted on my own agenda.

For the past year and a half, I have been reluctant to let go. I really cared about this boy. Surely, I had placed him in an unhealthy place in my heart; center stage. For the past year and a half, I have felt the nudge of God on my heart, asking me to let go. Stubborn, I found myself refusing. In the car tonight, I realized that for the past year and a half, I have been giving the enemy EASY VICTORY in my life, and tonight, I realized that enough was enough.

So, I picked up my phone and called him. I’m tempted to feel bad now, because he never knew it was coming… but I started at the beginning; the only rightful place to start. I told him that I had not let him go, I told him that I had not placed him in a good spot in my heart. I told him that my thoughts still orbited around him and that I had been acting on my own feelings. I apologized for living out my own agenda – realizing now, that MY SIN affects MORE than just me (it ripples), I apologized for not seeking God’s will for my life, and our relationship. I asked him for forgiveness for leading him on, I asked him for forgiveness for all of the times I had acted out of selfish ambition, I asked him for forgiveness for not walking in the light of God’s will for our lives.

After talking for a while, we prayed. Once and for all, I prayed that God would take center stage in my heart, the role He rightfully deserves. Irreversibly, I prayed that on the altar of my heart, I would lay this boy down and offer him to God. I prayed that this boy would be a fragrant offering for the Lord God, my creator, my portion. I prayed that my heart would be liberated from the hold of the enemy, and for forgiveness – for every time I had acted on my selfish desires. He forgave me.

We hung up.

I had another phone call to make, this one, humbling. I called my mother. I apologized for all of the damage I had created in our relationship. I asked for forgiveness for all of the walls I had put up, and the destruction I had caused in our lives. Again, I was met with forgiveness.
I tell you the truth, liberation is worth it. I tell you the truth, my heart sings. I tell you the truth, the lightness of my heart is worth every hard phone call.

Father,
I thank you for today. I thank you for tonight. I thank you for delivering a round-house-kick to my soul tonight. I thank you for revealing to my spirit that which I have been blind to for the past year and a half. I thank you for the liberation that is felt when we deny ourselves and intentionally follow You. I thank you for Jesus and I pray that His blood would be enough to atone for every selfish decision I’ve made. I pray that I would seek Your will for my life --and my relationships-- all the days of my life. I pray that You would be my all CONSUMING fire. I pray that You would continue to make Your will for my life be known, and that I would walk in Your will all the days of my life. Thank You for enabling me to find You – surely I have sought you whole-heartedly tonight. May You accept the decisions I have made in my heart tonight and may they please You. May I follow You all of my days.

Tonight was remarkable.

<3 Kel

Perspective.

(Body Pump. At the YMCA. Every Tuesday @ 11. Free Admission for ASU students! Yes, it's a very good idea ;)

Today, I received the grade from the test I took yesterday. Yesterday morning, I took my first exam as a senior in college, and didn't do as well as I had hoped. I walked out of the exam confident, feeling like I had done well, and this morning discovered otherwise (okay, I got a B -- but still).

This morning, I was upset and I felt the tears beginning to well up. This exam happened to cover a topic that I am greatly familiar with and I felt well prepared going into it... I felt like I should have done better, much better. While rationalizing my tears away, I began to think "why does this even bother me? A 'B' isn't so bad."

It was then that I made the decision to live in the light of FOREVER. Nursing school is just a season. In the light of eternity, this test grade won't matter. The fact that I worked out at the gym today won't mean a thing when my earthly body ceases to exist and my spirit is met with a NEW body, a body that resides at the feet of my Creator. My name won't mean a thing when I am gone and given a NEW name -- a name that will embody my identity and reason for existence.

My encouragement to you, my encouragement to me, is this: Measure your current (difficult) circumstance with eternity as your yardstick... and be prepared to watch your disappointment, tears, worries, stress and pain melt away. May that bring you to a place of worship.


(Just before clinical last Thursday... it was out of focus, but then again, so were we! We were sooo tired)

It's official...

I can't remove staples!

Ahhhh. So embarrassing! The first time I watched staples being removed, I quickly excused myself from the room, ran to the bathroom -- with sweat pouring from my face, puked in the trash can and felt like I was blacking out. I stammered up the strength to make to the nurse's station and made it there just before passing out! Someone had to crack ammonia and wave it infront of my nose to get me back!

Since then, I've witnessed lots -- I mean several, staple removal procedures and haven't had any problems. I attributed my first meeting with staples to having an "off day" and was excited, thinking that I had overcome my fear of staples...

BUT THEN

I was in clinical yesterday, and a nurse asked if I wanted to take out staples on a woman's C Section incision. I smiled to myself and said sure! I then walked into the room, calmed the highly anxious mother (keep in mind anxiety is contagious), laid her flat and lifted up her gown. What I found was non-reassuring. Her incision line was sloppy. It wasn't crisp, the skin was beginning to grow over the staples, and a yellow crust covered the rest. AKA: the staples were covered by some form of human excrement/protection. SO, I began with the ones closest to me, and broke of the crust, dug the staple removers (similar to the ones on my mom's office desk) around the skin, grabbed a hold of the staple and pulled.

The first 6 weren't too bad.

The seventh was a totally DIFFERENT story. After watching her fresh incision bleed around the steri strips, I began feeling a little "funny." I proceeded, and when I tugged on the 7th one, the new mother yelped. THAT WAS IT. I placed the staple remover on the mother's abdomen, looked at my nurse and said "I'm just going to step out for a min."

Quick, I thought to myself, make it to the restroom before you vomit on the floor! After a lovely 10 mins of stripping down in the bathroom (to cool off -- I was COVERED in sweat by this point in time) and kneeling over the toilet, praying away any feelings of nausea, I emerged victorious. No vomit, and I hadn't even passed out! I suppose I've made improvement from last time, but the tally remains the same:

Staples : 2
Stomaching Staple Removal : Zero, Zippo, Zelch.


(Sample picture of a good looking stapled incision: thank you Google)

Purpose.

Do you ever have days where you wonder what your purpose is? Today has been one such day for me. I have known that my purpose in life is to worship Him, and that abiding in Him all the breaths of my life is enough... but today I found myself wondering what my days are to look like? And my months? What is His purpose for my life, my heart, my skills? How will He use those in my life to accomplish His will? My mission for today: remain steadfast in prayer for an answer.

As I was cleaning up the remnants of what remained from entertaining last night, the answer came to me. Elbow deep in dirty dishes, I heard as clear as day:

"Kelly, your heart is to be for MY people."

That is it. Upon hearing those words speak my soul into purpose, my eyes couldn't help filling with tears. Great is His faithfulness. Surely, He can be found by those who seek Him.

Father,
Here I am. Arms open wide, I am Yours. May you pour my heart out among your people. May you spend it recklessly. May You, who provides me with care and compassion, empty the stores of my heart on Your people, just to be filled again and again. Surely You are good. Surely You are the Lord God. All the days of my life may I be in awe of You. I give you that which is most precious to me, my life, and certainly my heart. May You have your way with it, and may my dreams not interfere. May I forever pray have Your way.
Rejoicing,
Kel

Deliverance.

No, not the du-du-duuh-du-du da-da-daah-dah-da kind. I'm talking about the life kind. Deliverance is a word that was brought up in my prayer group tonight. The word intrigued me.

This week, I helped birth a baby. It was great. I had all kinds of fun with the family, and the baaaby was so cute! After this delivery, I began thinking of delivery in a whole new light.

Tonight, it manifested in prayer over the lives of the people in my church; the people who make up my local body, who form just a small member of the collective BODY.

Tonight, as I was praying, God gave me a word picture. It looks like this:


No, this isn't a joke. Yes, I am in nursing school.

But His word picture for me was similarly illustrated. The uterus (I picked a picture that was labeled for all of you who are understandably in the dark about female anatomy :) represented my body. The fetus represented my life; the daughter-of-eve, fallen life that I was born with. The umbilical cord and placenta represented how closely intertwined the two really are. Without my body, my life would have no chance of survival. Without the uterus to supply blood to the placenta, the baby would have no way of surviving.

Moving on, I feel like God impressed on my heart tonight that he wants to deliver me of me. He wants to deliver me of the fetus growing inside of me (not literally guys, I'm not prego... it's a word picture. I repeat just a WORD PICTURE). He wants to deliver me of every manifestation of sin in my life, He wants to deliver me of simply that: of life. Once I am delivered, He wishes to clean me out -- placenta and all -- so as to leave no remnants of my prior life behind.

Once He has delivered me of myself, my life, then He will be capable of implanting a new life in me. A life of joy, of hope, of mercy and grace. A life of forgiveness and everything new. A life that can thrive and grow and develop -- The life which costed Him his Son, He gave for me to attain.

He wants to deliver you of you, and in return, He wants to fill you with something beautiful. Something living. The great news is that while the delivery might be painful -- after all, epidurals aren't exactly available for repenting and turning away from sin -- the delivery isn't up to us. All of our attempts in the world couldn't amount to the delivery of our old life, our old way of living. Only He can do the delivering.

May you live in the light of His deliverance. May you bid farewell to your old manner, the fetus that used to thrive in you. May you allow Him to deliver you from that and may you thrive in the NEW LIFE that He implants in you. This is my hope. This is my prayer for my people.