What a crazy month. So much has been going on, I don't even know where to begin! Things are starting to get busy at work (ahh, the joys of retail during the holiday seasons), then there's Christmas parties and budgets and cards, conferences, trying to pin down a final date for the Jesus School Reunion, booking flights, bills to pay, yada yada yada. And it's definitely winter, too! BLAH! Freakin' -20 weather and snow and ice and bad Calgarian drivers, whom we can thank for the endless accidents and traffic jams. Okay, rant is now officially over. However, one nice thing about Calgary in the winter is how awesome it looks. The other day I was on my way to work and I noticed how snow sparkles so much when the sun hits it first thing in the morning. It was beautiful! I felt like God was so close - He is the original artist by whose work all other art is inspired.
So amazing!
The other night I went skating down at Olympic Plaza and I had so much fun! I think having simple, child like fun has been my saving grace during this season of my life. Like an oasis of refreshing in a desert. I have felt so under pressure and stressed out lately, struggling to get everything accomplished and juggle a bunch of projects. And yet I have felt so much refreshing poured out on me through just having simple fun. It's been really neat to just do silly things like have spontaneous snowball fights, or seeing Christmas trees and houses decorated with lights, making a scrapbook, playing at the park by my house, going skating, playing Nintendo with my brother, going to pet stores on a Sunday afternoon and playing with ferrets and puppies, going for rides on the C-Train or even just going for walks. It's strange but really neat because I feel like I am discovering the playful side of God. I just feel so close to him when I'm having fun. Argh! I feel like I am somehow not quite communicating what I want to. I have always had a child-like sense of awe, but I've never had it like this. Let me say it this way:
At different seasons in my life, I feel God's grace on different things. For instance, 2 years ago when I was just starting to lead worship at church, I read "To Know You More" by Andy Park. I would physically feel the presence of God come over me while I was reading and I knew it was because I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. At Jesus School I had that same feeling when I would be sitting in morning prayer crying my eyes out. Because I knew he had called me to be in a deep place in my spirit and receive healing in those places. Or when I would sit outside on the porch and play my guitar and watch the way He would make Mount Paul glow a different color every second in the evening sunset. It's an amazing feeling, really. Like the liquid favor of God being poured over you. And you just know that you know that you were created for that moment. As if God in His divine plan had perfectly aligned time and creation and your entire existence for that one split second and there's such an understanding that echoes throughout the entire universe and then it hits you: you're exactly where you are supposed to be.

So I finally broke down and admitted how hard these last few months have been for me. In some emails to Amy I poured out my heart about how I've just felt kinda beat up and alone latley. There's a lot I can fight my way through, it's just the lack of community that's wearing on me. Jesus School was such a powerful community that I forgot what it was like to not have people who really knew you and who were fighting side by side with you and available 24/7. And then I came home and remebered. Quickly. And it's been really hard. It 's teaching me about my own weakness and the total dependancy I have on God, though. It's forcing me to try and stay vulnerable and to use the people God has put in my life as resources and support, even despite the tendancy I have to clam up and pretend everything's okay. (Any of the girls from Jesus School will know what I mean. Ugh...CARE GROUP!) And it's been a mega crash course in boundaries, too! All in all things are going all right. Nothing to panic about and no casue for alarm, just learning to walk it out day by day. I am really looking forward to the reunion! Please pray for me...and phone calls are good too! :)
May the Lord bless you and keep you. Thanks for reading. Peace!
Cha.