God of Healing

"If an opportunity arises, take it. It if has the capability to change your life, let it." 

For the following couple of posts, I am going to do my best to write of my experiences in Nicaragua. I took a journal while I was there, and wrote down almost everything I saw, heard, and felt.

Yet, as I look at it tonight, words simply cannot explain the significance that this trip has already had in my life. Its impact was much more than I thought it would be going in, but thankfully due to God's grace my trip healed me in ways that I didn't even realize I was broken. 

So in order to begin describing my trip, I must begin with a prayer I began praying this summer. That prayer was a difficult one, but I knew that in order to grow in my faith I had to be pushed. I had to be tested.

So I asked for just that. At some point this summer as I worked at Camp Deer Run, I began praying that God would break my heart. I prayed that God would break my heart so that HE could put it back together in a way that would not only make me a stronger Christian, but a stronger person. In such a way, that my new heart he put together would pulse life for Him, and him alone. 

Prayer is a frustrating thing. Just as I thought God wasn't going to meet this request, he threw me for a loop. So much so, that I didn't even realize that he was working or that he was answering my prayer exactly as I had asked for it.

Only now, looking back, do I realize that God indeed answered my prayer; only now does it make sense to me and that all the pieces fall into place. The series of events since this summer were not "simple tests" of faith, but were in fact God's way of breaking my heart.

I had a great first semester. I truly did. A lot of college freshmen can't say that, but I can. I had a healthy balance of school, fun, and church events. Everything seemed to be going my way, but something didn't feel right. By "something didn't feel right" I mean that I always had an uneasy feeling that I wasn't acting like myself. At one point I talked to a close friend about this, and she helped me voice through my concerns. 

For as long as I can remember, my joy, my happiness defined me; as my smile physically defined my face. But this semester, I found that I wasn't always smiling. Not that not smiling is a bad thing, but for me, smiling is what defines my character. It's how I meet, greet, and say goodbye. It is what makes me, me.

While it might not seem like much, to me it was an inner turmoil. It also led me to believe that maybe college was changing me in ways that I wasn't prepared to handle, because if I couldn't smile all the time, who was I? 

In a previous blog, I talked about my hardships this semester. I truly believe now that God was using those hardships to break my heart, along with this unsettled feeling I had.

Anyway, with that background now, I can begin to tell you the healing I felt, I experienced on this trip.

God used this mission trip to put me, put my heart back together. Like I said, I didn't know it until now, but now everything seems to make perfect sense. All this is because our God is a good God, a faithful God who answers prayers. A God whose plans are so much greater than our own, a God who was capable of challenging me, breaking me, so that on THIS trip he could fix me.

For most people, leaving a mission trip, leaving those kids would break their heart. But God used this trip to heal mine. He used the love, the people, and his evident power to heal my heart and to make me stronger. Leaving was beyond difficult, but as will come in some later posts, I know it is only a temporary goodbye.

I will try my best to post as quickly as possible, to collect my thoughts and notes and share them. Still I would love to talk about my trip! It was revolutionary, and truly an opportunity that fixed my life. I look forward to sharing everything, including videos and photos. But for now I just ask that you will pray for my babies, my kids that I left over there in Nicaragua. Pray for their comfort and protection, but most importantly just pray that God will bless them and make his love so SO evident to them.