i'm running to Your arms

People often refer to their Christian life as their walk with Jesus. Right now it doesn’t seem like I’m walking with Him at all. I’m running after Him, and He’s at the top of a massive hill. 

Lately I've been noticing something when I run, and I don't get it at all. While most people hate hills, I love them. It’s like the hill is challenging me and trying to slow me down, and I refuse to let that happen. But it’s more than me just wanting to reach the top without stopping. I start to run faster. Sometimes I’m practically sprinting. I may be exhausted by the end of a run, but I feel accomplished. It’s like I’ve proven my strength or something. Why am I willing to run hard to beat a hill, an inanimate object, but so unwilling to run up a hill to chase God, the creator of mountains?

Psalm 65:7

You are robed in power, you set up the mountains by your might.

This is difficult for me to understand, because isn’t He always supposed to be by your side? If anything shouldn’t He be carrying me up the hill? As I was thinking about this yesterday I remembered something I saw the other day at church. There was this guy holding his son, who was around one and just mastering the art of walking. The dad set him down in the front, and let the kid roam around even though he was on the edge of falling down the entire time. Then I started thinking about the process of learning to walk. First, your parent sets you down. They stop carrying you. Then they go across the room and call you to them. 

For a while Jesus was running next to me, motivating and encouraging me. For whatever reason that I don’t understand, He decided to run ahead of me and make me come after Him. The idea that I need to prove my desire to be with Him is new to me. It makes sense, but it’s just something that I’ve never thought of before. I still don’t really get it, but seek and you shall find, right?

Proverbs 18:10

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the just run to it and are safe.

You are the light to my soul

I’ve been wanting to write for a while now, but the problem was that I had no clue how to put my thoughts into words. My brain, but mostly my heart, was on an information overload. In the past month or so I have found myself in a weird spot in my relationship with God. I’m in the middle of a desert season/dark night of the soul/dry season/whatever you want to call it. This is something that I’ve never experienced before, but I will let you know right now that it is freaking me out a little bit. Don’t let the name trick you though. It’s not a time of despair or depression. It’s a restlessness because I can’t see where God is or where I’m going. You know, because it’s dark. What I wouldn't give for a flashlight right about now.

As much as I hate it, I know this really is a good thing. God is teaching me more about Him than I ever knew before. Turns out, He’s pretty big. Far bigger than the box that I thought my tiny human mind could contain him in. Numerous times during this night season I’ve asked God where He was and told Him I couldn’t see or hear Him anymore. Well in the past month or two His response has been, “Yeah, michelle? You can’t see or hear me? Well check this out!” And He then proceeded to bombard me with His Word, different lyrics, and words spoken in conversations with others, all of which has left me amazed and overwhelmed by His depth and perfection. He has also been using this as a time for me to learn more about myself. I’ve discovered the reasons behind why I do almost everything, and I’ve been feeling pretty humbled lately. 

Over the past year the concept of faith has been coming up in almost every single religious activity I’ve attended. It was a little ridiculous. So me, being the studious and logical person that I am, attempted to understand what faith was. Warning: the Bible doesn’t contain one definition for faith. During that time I thought it kept coming up because I needed more faith before my life could improve or in order for my prayers to be answered. Yeah, I was wrong about that one. Having faith is trusting that God is taking care of you even when He doesn’t do things the way you think He should. I think faith was coming up (and continues to come up) because God was trying to show me that I was going to need it in the months to come. And I do need it. Desperately. So this night that my soul is currently in is a deepening of faith.

I want more of God. I want Him to show me more about His heart, and what that means about my own heart. I want to learn as much as possible, and experience Him in new ways. The problem is that my faith needs to grow first, which means that it needs to be tested. That test is by fire, and that means that the proving of my faith is going to hurt. Some days I refuse to let God test me because I’m afraid of how much it will hurt, or my heart is just too tired to endure another beating. And so I don’t surrender myself to Him. I don’t understand what he’s doing, so I find it incredibly difficult to just hand myself over. But if I have true faith, then I will be more than willing to let Him use me in any way that will show others who He is. When morning finally breaks, I hope that my heart will be at peace with that kind of faith keeping it alive.

Micah 7:8

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will arise; though I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light.

Joy

Mi Familia Loca

This past weekend was amazing. First off, I ran my first official 10K. I will write about that at a later time, because all I can think about right now is the fact that my family was standing at the finish line. I did wonder if maybe a friend might be willing to get up early on a saturday morning and drive 20 minutes to where the race was. Turns out my family was crazy enough to do that. And their trip was a little bit longer.

Most people think they're crazy,
but I think they're the most loving people I've ever met.

Later saturday night we saw some friends at subzero (go there right now if you haven’t been there yet). They commented on how cool it was that my family came, and my mom responded with, “Well, how could we have not been there for her first race?” I hate to tell you mom, but there were a lot of reasons why you could’ve missed it. Such as: you would have to drive two hours to get to phoenix, fly to salt lake, get a rental car, stay the night in salt lake, get up early and then drive 30 minutes to the race. That’s about 800 miles, and who knows how much travel time. Not to mention my race wasn’t really that long. It’s not like it was a marathon or anything. So there were numerous reasons why coming here was a little illogical. But for reasons I don’t understand, your love is far bigger than any of those inconveniences. And I can only hope that my heart is capable is loving someone so much that one day it will seem like doing something completely ridiculous is the only reasonable option.