Skip to main content

Travel Journal: Cuenca, Day 9

     Today's post should be short and sweet. I slept in and stayed home all day. It was good. I needed a "pause" day before this weekend hit. Tomorrow we'll spend the day delivering Christmas goodie bags and presents to kids in Suscal, and then I'm teaching at youth group tomorrow night. (Please pray that I get completely out of the way and there is at least a seed planted in each heart - something that's tucked away to spring up later, or is held tightly now for encouragement.)

Quick photo timeline of my Friday:

I decided how I want to cut my hair when I get home.

I worked on the painting I brought with me.


We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas with the kids.


In between those things there was some lounging around, some message prep, some making PB&J, some more lounging around, and then some homemade spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner. After the kids went to bed (we have to leave the house at 6:30 am tomorrow morning...) we watched another movie. A really cute family movie, so I'm all nostalgic and stuff now. 

     I had a great talk with Jeremy and Tiffany earlier this evening. It's going to be really hard to leave on Thursday. 

     I don't have a lot to say tonight because my head is a swirl of thoughts right now. I haven't thought through enough of them to be able to condense and share yet. I've talked and worried and prayed and written a lot this week about family and future and purpose and calling. I'm just extremely grateful for the confidence that God has me exactly where he wants me. If he wanted me somewhere else, I'd be there instead of here. I do a lot of dreaming about that mysterious season in the future where I'll be operating in my calling and confident in what I'm purposed to do and who I'm placed next to so that I can open up the heart floodgates without restraint. But I'm in this season right now for a good reason. A God reason. And I do believe that my Father is working me toward a fuller manifestation of himself in my life, so this part of the journey is obviously important, or else we would've skipped over it and I'd be "on my way" by now. 

I know that in my lifelong walk with God, there will never be a moment where I feel like I've "made it." I'm glad there will always be room to grow and learn. I am thankful for this time of putting down stronger roots and building up a sturdier foundation. And I am so thankful that my Papa does have something specific in store for me. He knows precisely how to get me there, and he has promised to do so! I'm blinking through tears right now, overwhelmed at the blessing that he calls my beautiful inheritance. I have no idea what that future territory looks like, but I know whose hand I'll be holding through the whole ordeal and I know whose voice will be leading me into deeper peace and more abundant joy. 

"The heart set to do the Father's will need never fear defeat. His promises of guidance may be fully counted upon. Does it make sense to believe that the Shepherd would care less about getting His sheep where He wants them to go than they care about getting there?"
- Elisabeth Elliot
     
"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all of his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice...
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me."
- John 10 

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..."
- Isaiah 49


Buenas noches. Dios te bendiga.
Mucho amor de Cuenca.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Travel Journal: Cuenca, Day 12

Post a Comment
Read more

Travel Journal: Cuenca, Day 2

     Apparently my body needed more rest than I thought it did, because I didn't get up until after 9 today. And even though we did less throughout the day, I seem more tired than yesterday. Probably not caught up yet, but I'll be on my way if this post doesn't take too long! (The morning view.) This morning I reached for My Utmost for His Highest to do my devotional and accidentally read the wrong page. It must have been a Holy Spirit thing, because the November 11 message hit home real quick: "The sacrifice is gone through in will before it is performed actually. When God spoke, He did not confer with flesh and blood, i.e., your own sympathies, your own insight, anything that is not based on your personal relationship to God. These are the things that compete with and hinder obedience to God. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. ...in the crucible you learn to know God...
Post a Comment
Read more

March 4, 2020

Tonight while Nick and I were having good conversation over dinner, he asked when I last read my Bible. I said, "Not that long ago," to which he replied, "Was it before the weekend?" and I had to say, "Yes." He likened it to fasting for five days, which he rightly pointed out that I've never done in the natural, so why would I deprive myself like that in the spiritual? The conversation stirred up some old confusion and hurt regarding my difficulty with staying engaged with Scripture, but it also stirred up an old hunger to know the voice of God - to be steeped in the history of his speech, to be enraptured by description of who he is and rejoice with the authors of the Bible about his goodness. To know how he talks, to hear it inside my head as I read and become more and more familiar with the cadence of his conversation. I remembered being a freshman in college, newly exposed to the Pentecostal tradition and desperate to hear the voice o...
Post a Comment
Read more