This is happiness:

As I write, I am sitting in the main room of a small house in Buriram, Thailand.

A little disappointed for feeling under the weather, as that keeps me at the house instead of at school with the children that asked for me by name this morning.

The children that I have grown to love more than anything else in my life right now.

Listening to the Psalters. Sweating ridiculious amounts... even though I am only sitting.

Watching these beautiful, redeemed women that have become my family work and sew and talk and laugh... and even though I cannot understand them... I understand them.

I understand everything.

I understand nothing.

I understand enough.

Family is everywhere... here and home and scattered across various parts of the world.

Love is never in short supply, even though at times, I forget.

God is Good and constantly speaking.

He is teaching me to fight.

Life is lovely.

♥

Is this not what there is for us afterall

To sit in rooms

Unfolding love

Imagining the truths we're told

Almost apologizing for what's real

What's ugly and what's dark within and without

To sit and sip a life well lived

With each of us to take a turn

Spripping down and laying bare

Ourselves-

And not regretting for a moment

That spontaneous act of brazen will

To trust, to love, to simply be

To speak and speak and speak and speak these words of life and light

To ignite each others souls with crushing blows of betterment

The Lover, silent, sits and smiles

Within the vacant living space

The empty glass- my hand, my heart

The stem to spin until I move

To fill it up again

My head to spin until I move

To empty it again

You hunger after what I spill

And lap it up to have your fill

To savour every single drop you find in tired sighs

I take, you give

You make me live another night alone with it

And close our evening's dreaming as I close my heavy eyes...

"The Saint who is intimate with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but only the impression that Jesus is having His undindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has been satisfied by Jesus. The only impression left by such a lifeis that of the strong, calm sanity that Our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him."

-January 7, My Hutmost for His Highest

Lord Jesus, give me the courage to honestly and sincerely explore this terrifyingly beautiful concept of Grace.

It seems that there is this undefinble, unexplainable longing in every single one of us because we have not truly let ourselves we captured and captivated by Grace.

He not only agrees to do it for us, but then points to the cross and reminds us that it has already been done.

It is disappointing to Him when we attempt to clean ourselves us before coming into His presence.

His desire is to make us clean.

His joy is to make us new.

He wants the dirty.

He wants the broken.

He wants the honest.

Why?

Because His glory shines best through the cracks in the vessels.

The cracks are beautiful because they are honest.

But they are terrifying becuse they are honest.

But embracing them is dangerously important, because if we miss it, we miss everything.

We miss the whole point of being cleansed.

It is for freedom that Christ set us free.

No longer slaves, but friends.

It is the most freeing concept and that scares us to death.

It frees us to completely be who we are, but what we find is that we have no idea who that is...

And we would rather hide from the fullness of His blessing of Grace than open ourselves up by taking off the masks and letting it penetrate into the very core of exactly who we were created to be.

Where does the defining and analyzing stop?

Not at what I have done...

But what I have not.

What I could not.

I am nothing if not a Child of God.

And that is where it ends.

To seek to define myself as something other is to attempt to know myself as something less.

To rest in the transitory.

To name myself by what I do.

I am not what I do.

My worth is deeper still...

I am who You say I am.

And You have called me Yours.

So it is mine to simply rest and be.

So I will rest.

And I will be.

Yours.

"Love God and do what you will."

-Saint Augustine.

♥

If a Broken Heart is what you ask for, a Broken Heart is what you'll get.

Hey look, nice try and everything.

Snaps for effort.

But you seem to have forgotten one little detail...

I am not Much Afraid anymore.

My name has been changed.

I am Grace and Glory.

And I have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of self-discipline.

Power.

Love.

Self-discipline.

Remember that fight?

Yeah.

It's still on.

We are not giving up that easily.

My Beloved is a Warrior and His fierce heart beats within me.

I have so much more than victory.

I have authority.

I have peace.

I have acceptance.

I have love.

The fiercest love ever imaginable.

I have a purpose and this light is way too precious to go out.

Not now.

-----

Shepherd, You already know.

I'm sorry for doubting You.

I'm sorry for doubting myself.

Come quickly and let's keep moving.

Let's keep fighting together.