calling out in the darkness.

It's crazy that it has been over a year since I last posted.  But per usual, the Lord is doing something in my life that feels significant and I need to document it.  I also find that many times when the Lord is teaching me something, it's not just for me but to be shared with and encourage others. 

This past year has been a roller coaster ride.  It's been so good and yet so hard.  And in this year, I have found myself in this very interesting cycle.  I don't really want to go into the details of it but it has left me paradoxically devaluing myself and being reminded of how much God has grown me/being more confident than ever in the woman He's created me to be.  Thus, I've been left wondering why I can't break this vicious cycle.

Recently, I decided that I'd had enough and acted in a way that I thought could hopefully break this continual sequence of repeating events.  And with that, I found myself not quite ready for the repercussions it brought.

At first, I felt surprisingly okay.  I took it in stride and I busied myself with other things.  I kept a positive attitude, citing those God promises that I've so often heard and known but not fully understood or at times even truly believed.  It wasn't until yesterday that I realized I wasn't okay.

I've been really blessed within the past couple months to find myself in a wonderful church home and place where my worship leadership gifts are being used.  Yesterday, before the evening service, I found myself caught up in an image as we circled up to pray for the Lord's presence in the service.

Weirdly enough, I saw a bat. 

Now let's go back to elementary science and have a little lesson on bats.  Bats have terrible eye sight so they use echolocation when they're flying around, trying to find something tasty.  They create a sound that goes out before them and bounces off of things, essentially giving them an idea of what's in front of them.  You're probably thinking at this point, "Sara, this is a little ridiculous" but I promise it will make sense.  And to be honest, when I first had this vision I didn't get it either.  I saw the bat and I could see the sound waves coming from it's open mouth.  The sound moved out in front of the bat, but it didn't hit anything and kind of died off.  Yet all of sudden, there were new sound waves coming back to the bat, ones that it had not created.  Again, I wasn't quite sure what to really make of this but stored it in my head for later.

Worship was incredible yesterday.  The Spirit was moving and the Church was feeling it.  It was a little slice of heaven.  And thus, I was distracted by the Holy Spirit high during the sermon. Still, I managed to get the summary of it because it hit me HARD.  As the Message was being wrapped up, the pastor recapped by saying, "God is for us, God. Is. For. Us."  And all of sudden the emotional numbness, the facade of being okay, of having it all together fell completely apart.  In that one instant, I couldn't believe it at all and yet it was completely comforting and precisely what I needed to hear. 

How could I possibly believe that in the heartsickness I was feeling that God was truly for me?  After multiple letdowns, I still didn't understand the reasoning for these events.  Why?

So there I am, preparing to lead worship again, crying my eyes out.  That's when I hear this voice say, "Sara, it's okay to cry out to Me. Whether it's in anger or sadness or disappointment, I UNDERSTAND."  That's when I understood. 

I will be the first person to tell you that my prayer life is the hardest part about my walk with the Lord.  I often feel overwhelmed in how to even approach the throne and constantly feel at a loss for words.  And I know most of you who know me find that surprising!  So the last thing that I would be compelled to do is really cry out to the Lord is my misery.  Yet here is He was, telling me that's exactly how He wanted me.  And not only that, but He knew EXACTLY how I felt.  He could empathize with me.  He carried that burden.  How often is that what we truly long for?  We seek out people who can be on the same emotional level as us and so often forget that the Lord has felt all of it.  He knows all of it.

As I stood there, crying, I caught an image of the Lord bringing me into His arms and crying with me.  Yet, as He cried and held me, He reassured me that it's all for a purpose and for His glory even though I don't understand it.

Then the first image of the bat made sense.  God was calling me to just cry out to Him.  To let Him hear my sadness, my rejection, my pain and promising me that He would answer.  I'm not supposed to see what's in front of me, it's not supposed to make sense.  I'm supposed to let His voice guide me and He promises to bring me out of the darkness.

Pretty beautiful, huh?

This is one of my favorites and pretty much wraps up this post:
"So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them.  For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you.  He will neither fail you nor abandon you". -Deuteronomy 31:6

change. part 1.

It's pretty obvious that I haven't been really keeping up with this blog, but I really wanted to make sure I got to share the incredible story of what God's been up to recently in my life.

I guess I need to start back in December of last year.  Once I graduated from JMU, I knew that I wouldn't be finding a teaching job right away and had accepted the fact that I would be doing some subbing and odd jobs until the right thing came along.

GRADUATED!

 Anyone who's really had a chance to sit down and chat with me over the past couple of years has known that more than anything, I wanted to move away from Harrisonburg after graduation.  But, no one tells you what it's going to be like to be a real person or that it's really expensive, especially when you're up to your eyeballs in student loans.  The pressure of even being capable of paying those loans is compacted when you spend the first three months of your newly graduated life unemployed.  It was an extremely frustrating time.  I went from being a busy-body with a consistently full schedule to spending my days in my pjs watching an entire season of 30 Rock in one day.

Needless to say that an invitation to spend some time in Texas with one of my favorite family couldn't have come at a more perfect time.  I spent a week in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington area in early March and began thinking about a possible permanent move there.  While I was there, I received a couple offers for jobs back in Harrisonburg and I finally ended my unemployment streak.

Hanging out at TCU with the lovely McClelland ladies

 I ended up spending the next couple months working as a substitute teacher, waitress, and wine pour-er, all the while dreaming and semi-planning a move to Texas.  I even begin telling people that was my plan.  I was essentially putting myself into a position where I'd have to move, afterall you can't go back on your word.  My timeline to move was sometime at the beginning of August and I'd even applied for teaching jobs in Texas.

my voice, your voice

i don't know where i'm going.
do you hear me asking?
do you hear my voice?
it's a small, quiet voice but in my heart it's loud and fierce.
can you hear the cry of my heart? the cry to hear your voice?
i hold the loud voice in. it's hard because it wants to be heard.
i'm bursting at the seams.
i need to hear your voice.
help me understand.
i need you.
i am empty. fill me. hold me.
i am lost. find me. guide me.
help me understand.

bigstuf(f).

I am constantly amazed at how good our God is.
This week I had the honor and pleasure of attending a conference called BigStuf in Panama City Beach, Florida with our high schoolers from church.  I knew the week was going to be good but I didn't realize how much the Lord was going to rock my world.

It's funny because I don't even think I understood how much the Lord as was working in me this week.  On the surface, I was participating in incredible worship that was probably the closest glimpse to Heaven I've ever experienced, I was completely confirmed and encouraged in being an intern at First Pres for the summer, and I was being blow away by our youth who was thirsting for God in a way I never could of imagined.

It wasn't until I got home and began the transition process of coming from a spiritually high week that I realized the astounding amount of process God had been doing in building me up and transforming me.

i thank you God for most this amazing day.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings

and as if it couldn't get better: 

arrangement of this text to music by eric whitacre

the arrangement we're singing in my women's choir

i don't believe i need to elaborate.

for today.

my heart feels so full
my lips search for the words to describe
my legs wanna run
but where?

where do i go from here?
my mind screams go!
and my heart wants to follow suit.

but i stay.
if only for a little while longer.

i try to breathe in patience.
breathe in peace.
breathe...my heart feels jumpy still.

Lord I can't stay.
there is so much more than this.
please show me the way.
show me.
show me.
show me...

i wait, resigned, impatiently patient.

[Image: http://granula.deviantart.com/art/somewhere-a-clock-is-ticking-152564936]

i can always tell my story through music... 

it's time to recognize.

So this has been a long time in coming, but I'm finally getting you all in the loop.  This is something that has been on my heart for a while and I've been trying to be patient and allow God to move in the process. 

About two months or so ago, I was having a conversation with a couple friends about the health of our church.  We all felt this need to DO MORE.  We felt that as the youth of the church, we were being complacent and not using our gifts to the fullest.  But then as we talked more, we realized that this wasn't just an issue within the church but the community as well.  That's how Recognize came into being.

Recognize is a 5 hour prayer meeting/worship service scheduled for January 29, 2011 with a vision to bring not only our church closer together and seeking Christ's plan for us but for bringing our community together to have a more united pursuit of Christ as the body of Christ.

The service will alternate between worship, talks on community, discipleship, missions and spiritual gifts and times of prayer.  Recognize was inspired by a prayer meeting that I attended while in Philadelphia this summer.