on impossibilities :)

As I type, my journal pages are also open as I am quite relishing jotting down some lengthy list of impossibilities. Yes, you read that right! I'm making a mental note, keeping track, and jotting down all the impossibilities that I can think of in this stepping-off-the-shore dream of a lifetime. So here I am, looking at the items on my list and already imagining how I would relish even more when I cross them out, one by one - in His time, when He has opened the closed doors, has made rain come down in a parched land, has stopped the sun from going down..

You see, looking at the 'impossibilities list' turns my eyes on the God of possibilities. I can now laugh at the days ahead and bask in the Lord's peace that He is going to do more than what my little mind can ever imagine, all to make His plans for my life come to pass. And in His time, these little phrases of impossibilities that I've written down will have to bid me goodbye - they will all gloriously turn into praise testimonies of the Lord's hand prints! And oh, what an awesome thought - the God of the universe, the One that owns Iloilo City, is the same big, great God that owns Haiti, New York, Liberia, Reykjavik, and Vienna! Nothing, absolutely nothing, is difficult for Him! (which, by saying this, I may sound a wee bit exaggerated along these lines, but that's the astounding truth of it and what my soul knows so well!) 

Outside my comfort zone is a whole lot different place. It is where I'm not my own, where my self comfort dies, where my personality isn't "great", where I'm not even a tad smart, not talented nor gifted, where I'm not strong nor brave..But it is where I love to be entirely - it is where absolute dependency on the Lord becomes an everyday theme, where my "taste for prayer" increases, and where only and ONLY my King is seen and glorified (John 3:30).

"It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is at the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place." - Elisabeth Elliot 

And no matter where He takes me, I know the Lord is faithful and will make me adaptable and ready to follow Him anywhere, that I may find myself there at home, because He is with me. Amen and yay for the days, weeks, months, and years ahead! ♥  

A Mother's Wisdom

What a marvelous month and day to share this excerpt, of a mother's God-given wisdom as she explained to her young son just how it does matter for a man to guard his heart for the glory of the King. To read the whole testimony of her son's love story, here it is :) 

However, rather than handing me a rake or a trowel, she gently led me to a precious, little rose-bush my parents had given me. It being early summer she pointed to the tender buds just beginning to form and said, “Ben, these rosebuds are like your heart. You could pluck them now and give them to Sally. Then, when you’re bored with Sally, you could give some to Teresa, and then Mary, Patty, Tina, and Terry. And then one day, when you get married you could give your wife the leftovers. You know, the leaves and twigs and thorns. Or, you could save these buds, keep them, defend them and don’t give them away until they blossom forth for one woman. Ben, the reason we gave this rosebush to you is so that you could learn to save your heart fully so you can give it fully to one woman. You see, if we were to pick off these buds right now, they wouldn’t be very pretty, and then when God brings the right girl into your life, you wouldn’t have anything left to give her. So save these buds, and let them blossom at the right time and then you can give that special girl all those lovely red roses.”  

(Now I know another good use for rosebuds! :)

It's a story that that only Heaven can script, but requires one thing from us: dying to ourselves, our selfish desires, and our self-glorifying notion of a love story (which we are always unaware of.) Their testimony left me looking closer to Jesus Christ, in awe of the Lord's beauty. It left me more grateful than ever for what I have at present, grateful for how He has preserved my life, how He has owned my single years, grateful for the freedom I am enjoying living in His boundary, oh just so grateful that there is more to Jesus Christ than being the Savior and the Writer of heaven-scripted love stories- He is the Lover of my soul, my all in all, the very picture of earthly romance itself, the One that meets and fills each and every longing of the human heart..can you just imagine if I had been married and not fully surrendered to Him and missing everything that Jesus is? I am grateful for His own perfect time, the joy of waiting, the joy that He brings each day..I know I haven't said enough..♥ 

Finally, here's something to ponder: 
"A truly Godly set-apart guy will go out of his way to protect your standards. He will esteem your standards, he will even make himself uncomfortable to preserve your standards. He will be far more interested in guarding your purity than in living for his own selfish pleasure in the moment." - Leslie Ludy