Pruning.

When Aaron’s mom came to visit us last fall, she helped me around the house with a lot of painting, but she also gifted us with some beautiful plants - a couple of hibiscus, croton, bougainvillea, and a bigger tree item whose name is escaping me right now. She planted them all in new pots and we set up a little corner in front of our house creating this little "Garden of Eden" as I called it, I guess because I think everything needs a name or a nickname of some kind.

I’m not really good at keeping plants alive. Several years ago my sister and I planted little terrariums of succulents because the whole internet says succulents are impossible to kill and yet, somehow, I have managed to kill many of them. The whole terrarium was dead in short order. I think it would be a lot easier if they would just speak audibly to me and let me know that they needed some water or some light, otherwise I get overzealous and water them too often, or I get lazy and never water them at all. All this to say, Joyce gifting us with the Garden of Eden was so nice, but left to my gardening talents probably wouldn’t last very long.

There was a short window last fall where these plants were gorgeous. I don’t know if it was the constant rain we had here in Hawaii, or if she just picked good plants but the blooms on our hibiscus were huge. We had a new yellow or red flower almost every day. And I get that there are seasons for plants, but Hawaii is pretty even-keeled – never too hot or too cold (all you need is a light jacket! Ha!). So we had these big amazing blooms on both the hibiscus and the bougainvillea. The tree was standing tall. And all of this with very minimal effort on my part. I just kind of walked by it every day and marveled at how nice it looked and then walked away. If it felt particularly hot or I realized it hadn’t rained in a few days, I would drag the hose over and throw some water on them, never knowing how much was too much, of course.

It was earlier this spring that I noticed the plants start to change. It was a slow change – at first I noticed that we weren’t getting any big blooms. We had a couple small flowers here and there, but not as often and not nearly with the same brilliance. I noticed some kind of white stuff on the end of one of the hibiscus branches, but everything else looked fine so I didn’t pay it much attention. Over the course of the next weeks or maybe even a month, I noticed how our plants were looking more sad. The leaves on the tree were all drooping. We had no blooms on the hibiscus or bougainvillea. The branches of both hibiscus were completely bare except the tops where there were some green leaves, one single tiny flower bud, and then a lot of this white business I mentioned earlier. Except now the white stuff was on most of the plants.

So I went outside one day with the intent to handle the plants. I was going to figure out what was wrong with them. I got closer and inspected the white stuff. I still didn’t know what it was – it looked fuzzy, like a mold. So I went to the internet and asked it what kind of white fuzzy mold grows on plants in Hawaii and it turns out it wasn’t mold, it was FLIES. White flies! Gross! Apparently they attach themselves to your plants, attracted by bright colors, and then suck the sap out of the branches – essentially sucking the life from your plants. And they’ll spread to all your surrounding plants because they are not content to simply destroy one.

I went to the garden center at a local hardware store to figure out how to get rid of these white flies. Tell me what I have to spray on them, immerse them in, cover them with to make these flies go away and the hibiscus can get back to blooming! I was directed to a weed killer product which contained a massive warning that basically read, “DO NOT LOOK IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF THIS BOTTLE BECAUSE YOU WILL BE POISONED.” So I left empty-handed, because I have a will to live, and went back to the internet to see what I could learn about pruning.

Pruning is cutting back what is bad so that the good can flourish - so your plants can get back to health. I've never pruned anything before but after a five minute, elementary-level reading about pruning, I headed out to our garden with a rusty pair of shears – the only ones we have. The internet told me I could do a hard prune, which is basically just cutting off all the branches down to nubs, as long as you leave a few buds left on the branches. I also read something about scratching the branch to see if it was green underneath. So I scratched my branches to see that they were bright green – ALIVE! – and then went to hacking away at the tops that looked dead. I didn’t discriminate – I just cut off what looked bad. White fuzzy flies, be gone! By the time I was done, I had some bare sticks growing out of our pots. Aaron got home and I told him I probably did a bad thing and showed him how our garden was now just potted sticks. Whoops! But I watered them anyway and I waited.

If you’re wondering what this story is about it’s not about hibiscus or white flies, it’s about your life and it’s about God. It’s about sin and cutting it back. It’s about the necessity of community.

The pastor at our home church in Nebraska always says, “No one wakes up one day and decides to ruin their life.” They don’t look in the mirror and think that today is the day it all comes crashing down. Rather it is a series of choices – habits that creep in, start small, and take root. It is an action that is rationalized, a feeling that goes unchecked, a bent of your heart that remains unquestioned. You don't just wake up one day to dead plants. It takes lack of care and attention to the small things. 

I recently read, You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith and in it he discusses how humans are liturgical beings – we participate in love-shaping rituals that then become habits that inform our lives. It’s far too much to explain here, but the gist is,

“To be human is to be animated and oriented by some vision of the good life – a picture of what we think counts as ‘flourishing’… We adopt ways of life that are indexed to such visions of flourishing, not usually because we ‘think through’ our options but rather because some picture captures our imagination…”

So our imagination is captured by a story of what it means to live well - what it means to flourish - and sometimes those stories are lies masquerading as truth. So if we’re not careful our loves, and therefore our lives, will be shaped and molded and influenced by sin, lies, and the devil, all the while we're thinking we're leading ourselves into flourishing. So we have to be cautious about what we allow into our lives – who we allow to shape our hearts. 

White flies start small – just one little fuzzy dot that you hardly notice on your plants. Your choice starts small – I’ll just look at this one thing, read this one thing, watch this one thing, participate in this one thing, look at this one profile, scroll this one hashtag this one time. But before long it can become habit. And our brains love habits. They love to push actions to our subconscious so we can do them without even thinking. So we make automaticities out of actions and then we do it without thinking and we are influenced without thinking and we suddenly love without thinking and before long the sap is being sucked from our lives by an influx of white flies.

Who do you surround yourself with? What influences do you allow in your life? How are you speaking to others and influencing their lives? Who speaks to your heart and what are they telling you? What vision of flourishing are you believing and living toward? We’re teleological beings – our relationships are teleological meaning they’re always moving toward a certain end. To what end are you moving? Which way is your social media, your friend group, the news directing you? Are you letting white flies move into any area of your life without even acknowledging it?

Proverbs bids us to guard our hearts for from it flows the wellspring of life. Sometimes in order to guard our hearts, to take it back from what has hijacked our loves, requires a hard prune of our habits. Our very lives depend on it. I hacked away at our plants until they were sticks. They looked stupid and bare for a week or so. I thought I would probably have to throw away the whole garden. Well, it took some time but you know what is happening? Every single one of those sticks is growing new leaves. Both hibiscus plants are growing new leaves and new blooms. The bougainvillea, which never had white flies but was only suffocated by their nearness, is blooming again. Even the leaves on the tree that looked dead are standing up again and new leaves are forming. I had to cut it down to nothing in order that health might return.

Since the prune, I watch the plants every day. I check the leaves and branches for white flies. Just this morning I pulled a single white fly off one of the leaves. I water the plants every other day. I check their progress. Maybe we need someone like that in our lives to check in on us, to move in close and make sure we’re okay. To see if there are any areas of our heart where bitterness, anger, jealousy, wrath, or lust has moved in and is attempting to suck the life out of us.

Sometimes our lives require a hard prune. This probably means you'll have to stop hanging out with people who negatively influence you, stop visiting those websites or watching those movies or going to those same places you've always gone. It might mean cutting off people or ideas or thoughts or feelings. I guess I just don’t want you to get overrun by white flies. I don’t want something to come into your life looking harmless enough and then one day you realize that it’s sucking the life from your soul and you don’t know how to stop it. Sometimes our friends can help us prune back what’s bad in our lives. Sometimes God will do it for us. But pruning is for our good – for our health – and I think we all want that for our lives. I just completed Gracelaced, a beautiful Bible study by Ruth Chou Simons. One of the sections was about pruning and she said, “It is merciful and good of our loving Father to prune what chokes us.” It might suck for a little while - it might hurt and make us look like stupid sticks for a minute - but it's ultimately for our good so that we might bloom all the more. 

Don’t get choked out by little habits you think are harmless. Look at your life, at your heart, and see what needs to be cut out. See if you have any white flies hiding in your heart. Ask friends to get around you and pray for you – to check in on you. To move close and make sure you’re on track. Do the same for them. We need community that pushes us on toward goodness and holiness. In fact, I think that’s the only way we really have a shot at living well.

Religion.

In his book, On Writing, Stephen King opens with a section he calls his C.V. It is filled with short anecdotes about his life and how he grew up and what led him to be a writer. At one point he mentions that he believes in God but has "no use for organized religion.” I highlighted this line in the book because I kind of wonder what he means by it – what anyone means when they say that. The internet will tell you that organized religion by definition is, "religion in which belief systems and rituals are systematically arranged and formally established." But if you believe in God on some level, well then I would imagine you might want to talk about that sometime. And if you talk about that and have any really good thing to say about it, other people might want to join in. And when you have a group of more than about 20 people coming together to talk about anything, well then you have to kind of, well, organize it. What’s this going to look like? Is it a meeting? Who gets to talk at the meeting? There has to be a beginning, a middle, and an end to this gathering so what will each contain? Are there rules for the meeting? Any organization has rules. So there have to be rules for membership. Well then all of a sudden it looks like you’re organized - you've got rituals arranged and established. So you're gathering to talk about God and there are rules for doing so.

So if that’s what they mean, if that’s what people have no use for, then maybe what they really dislike are the rules. Maybe you just don’t like the rules and rituals put in place by these groups of people that gather to talk about God. But one thing you might want to consider is that, if you find yourself fleeing from all “organized religion” perhaps you're fleeing because you don’t want anyone telling you what you can and can’t do. Maybe you want to be God and you believe, instead, in yourself. You can tell yourself what to do – you don’t have to go to an organized meeting where they might press on you - on your ideas about what's right - or tell you that you’re wrong about this or that. In speaking about a critic of Christianity, G.K. Chesterton said, “The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be.” Perhaps you are that man and the restraints sadden you - they press on you just a little too much. E. Paul Hovey said, "Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them."

Christianity will always press on you and me because we are not God and we will be constantly sanctified - shaped, molded, growing - in some way until Heaven. I wrongly believed that becoming a Christian meant you were done - like it was this one time moment and from then on you were ready for Heaven and everything was easy and there was no sin and no struggle, only perfection. Like maybe we just went to church because we wanted to glory in our perfection in Jesus. But the truth is I wasn’t perfect – I was a mess (and still am! Ask my husband!) And I didn’t know how to wrestle with my sin. I didn’t know about sanctification at all. I didn’t know that the whole of the Christian life is more of a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Belief in the gospel is an everyday need, not a one time prayer. I missed that in Sunday School. I think they left that part out. 

So, if I grew up in church and didn't understand it, then I wonder about people who didn't grow up in church. When people say they don't like organized religion I wonder what gospel they've heard in their life that has made them flee. Because if the gospel is good news (and it is!), then it shouldn’t make you flee, it should make you cling to it, white knuckle death grip on those crutches carrying you through til glory. And if it’s not, then why not? What have you missed?

A lot of people have too many doubts to trust a god other than themselves. They'll tell you, "I just feel a lot of doubt about _____." Well, welcome to the club. We all feel doubts sometimes. I listened to a sermon on the plane ride home last month and he said it’s okay to have doubts, but instead of sitting in them, you must doubt your doubts and ask Jesus for clarity. It’s okay to have doubts. It’s okay to not get it. Jesus’s disciples walked with him in the flesh for three whole years every single day and still didn’t get it. It's what you do with your doubts that matters. Criticize them. Turn them over in your hand and ask why they're there. Dig down to the roots of your doubts and find out what it is you really believe. Don't just trust your doubts because then you end up believing in them over believing in Jesus.

Growing up in Christian circles and working in a church for several years and also just being a Christian myself, I find that a lot of times we have doubts because we think we can control God with our behavior and then one day it just doesn't work anymore. We follow Jesus and think it’s all great because everything is going just how we planned, and then one day it’s not and we’re left blindsided because we thought we were in control of this bargain. We start to doubt because the god we trusted didn't trust our plan. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus. Who do you think you are? Didn’t you see how I tithed my whole life? Didn’t you see how I helped that homeless guy back there? Didn’t you see me when I went to church every week? Didn't you see how I always obeyed my parents? Hello? Didn’t you see my perfect family? Things were going great for us according to my plan, so what gives?

I believed for years that I could control God with my behavior. In 2011 I wrote, 

“For YEARS and years I have been pleading with God. Begging and pleading with him for peace and comfort and all the freedom he offers. All the things he says he’s going to offer and give to those who love him. I do love him. I have loved him and tried to follow him, sought after him, tried to point kids toward him, given my money and time to him, prayed my guts out to him, read about him, tried to know him and understand him, listened for him, tried to listen to him, had discussions about him, cried out to him. AND YET, I feel I’ve been drowning in sadness and unmet desires and broken dreams.”

I believed that if I did all this then God would owe me - that somehow I could put God in my debt. Why the unmet dreams if I've done all this work for you, God? If that’s not bargaining with the Lord, I don’t know what is. But the thing is, God doesn’t do bargains. He doesn’t take negotiations. There’s nothing you have that he doesn’t already own. What could you possibly give him? He made it. Out of nothing. The breath in your lungs. The ability to read these words. These are things of God. 

So I realized it’s not about actions and behaviors and bargaining chips. It’s about Jesus. It's about every person, circumstance, trial, or victory leading you to more of Jesus. I just wrote about this in one of my last posts. It’s not about your story or what you want or what you think or feel. It's not about the rules you follow or don't follow. It’s about Jesus and your choice is if you’re going to join in on the epic adventure he has written for you or pull back against it.

I was journaling on that same plane ride and I wrote,

I hope you know at the end of the day it’s really just you and Jesus. He’ll bring people into your life and you’ll invite people in along the way. Some won’t always stay. Some for a season, others a lifetime. But at the end of it all it’s just about you and Jesus. 

What you believe about him, what you say about him, what you think about him, these are the things that are going to matter at the end of it all. It will shape your decisions, your thoughts, your actions, the leanings of your heart. What you think about Jesus will be the only thing that matters when you die. So you can pass on "organized religion" and that’s fine. But what are you going to do with Jesus?

Stephen King's book about the craft of writing was really pretty good. I think he wanted me to get more out of it about writing than about his one sentence worth of thoughts on religion, but for some reason that's where my heart was stuck. So he doesn’t believe in religious rules but neither does Jesus, so that’s pretty good news for all of us – for him, for the doubters among us, for me, for you. Oh, there’s value in the gathering of believers, yes. But forget the rules. Jesus just wants you, not your good behavior. He's after your heart.

Unrequited.

Aaron and I just started watching Friday Night Lights on Hulu. It originally aired in 2006 so it's decently old now but it's basically all about a high school football team in Texas. I watched the whole series a couple years ago, but Aaron hadn’t even heard of it so I told him we could watch the first episode to see if he liked it. Fast forward a couple weeks and we’re in season two now and it’s usually Aaron who suggests we turn it on. The best part is the way he has picked up a sporadic southern accent, calls Tim Riggins “Skeeter” for I don’t know what reason, and will now randomly offer up a Riggins-like toast to whatever we’re doing: “Here’s to God, and football, and ten years from now _________.” Fill in the blank with anything. All in a southern accent, of course. I love him.

The other night we were watching the show and if you know it at all, you know that Landry Clarke is desperately in love with Tyra Collette. He has done everything he can think of to prove that he loves her, and while she has sometimes reciprocated, it is a drama series, so it’s mostly unrequited love. If it were reciprocated, viewers would get bored. We love the drama, the uncertainty, the little bit of possible chaos. It’s what keeps us coming back for more.

So Landry is in love with Tyra and one night at a party he’s talking about relationships with another friend, Julie, and Julie has a little conflicted love story of her own but she has decided to give up on hers. To which Landry says, “You don't just give up, though. If you really care about something, you don't just give up. You do whatever it takes." And it took me a fraction of a second to respond out loud to the TV, “That's the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard.”

Here’s why: I used to live on that kind of dating advice. I used to follow all the rules of putting the other person first and not giving up and holding out hope, all in the name of love. I was interested in what they liked. I supported their hobbies. I jumped at the chance to cheer them on because, you guys, you don’t give up when it’s love! And you know what happened? Nothing. I just became the desperate, pathetic girl who thought of dumb things to say in the hopes of eliciting a response – ANY response. “Dude, you were in my dream last night, how weird is that?” I wish I could go back and tell myself to sit down and put my phone away.

But when I had the slightest inkling they were interested in me, I tried to do nice things for the boys I liked – ran errands, bought presents, left surprises for them to find, wrote notes, called, texted, emailed. I tried to keep it breezy, but honestly, it was never breezy. My heart was on the line 100% of the time, and 9 times out of 10 I received little to no response. The text went unanswered, the call unreturned. The gift unacknowledged until I asked about it and then, “Oh yeah, I saw that. Thanks.” Apparently that somehow translated in my mind to, “I love it and I love you.” Hahaha I am the worst.

So this was the entirety of my twenties. If it wasn’t one boy it was another. They offered me just enough of themselves to keep me hanging on and holding out hope, enough for me to think, “When you love someone, you don’t give up on them,” even though everything about the situation was a massive red flag. I wasted time and energy and love and tears on boys who were interested in one thing and it was not my heart.

But the truth is if they don’t love you back, you can’t make them. If they don’t love you, no amount of nice gestures or bending over backwards will make them change their mind. You have to let go of the notion that you are in some kind of romantic comedy or drama series where eventually he’ll come around and notice you. He usually won’t. And if he does, you better make sure he has made a complete 180 in his attitude, his heart, and his life before you ever let him in because otherwise you’ve just re-entered the same cycle. 

The book that changed my perspective on dating was The Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler. It was this book that helped me see I was wasting all of my time on guys who did not like me, did not desire to see me flourish, did not want to see me grow in the Lord and pursue what was good, but rather use me for their own gain, their own ego, their own pride. I know a lot of women who can say the same thing. After putting their whole selves – heart, body, and soul - on the line, they realized his heart was never in it.

In the book, Chandler says, “If you are in a relationship where the other person refuses to acknowledge openly his pursuit of you, delight in you... then you are not really dating. You are being played. You are caught in a game in which your heart is going to lose.”

My heart lost enough to know this is true – enough days and years of my life to tell you that it’s legit. If he’s not openly acknowledging you, delighting in you, shouting from the rooftops that he’s with you, then goodbye. You are not a secret. You are not an option. You are not a side chick. You are not a possibility. You are more precious, more important, more valuable than that. You are not a burden, you are not in the way, you are not a hindrance. You are beautiful and worthy and you do not sell yourself short.

This is your permission slip to cut ties with unrequited love. It’s not sexy or romantic or cute. It thrives on chaos and drama and you are above that. When it comes to love and possibly marriage, you’re looking for steady, reliable, reciprocated, and lasting. You want durable, not dangerous. You want secure and devoted, not distracted. If you’re holding out for someone who is showing minimal interest in you, barely reciprocating, acting like they don’t know you in public but texting you at 11 pm, then you need to remember that there are seven BILLION people in this world and you are better than waiting for that one moron to realize your worth. This is not an episode of Friday Night Lights. This is your life.

Later in the book, Chandler writes,

“Those of you who are pursuing a dating relationship right now, if your attraction has given way to a relationship that’s making you miserable, a relationship that’s emotionally exhausting and spiritually compromised, a relationship that’s a culmination of mixed signals and tears and confusion, I think you ought to get out. If the relationship is wearying, life sucking, or lacks clarity and intention, or if someone is just playing games with you, I would hit the brakes hard. The harsh reality is that behavior in these kinds of relationships doesn’t get better over time; it gets worse. Familiarity will not breed better behavior.”

That might sting a little bit, but it's true. If it starts out bad or goes bad over time to where you’re justifying his/her bad behavior to the people who know you best, I would also advise you to take a step back. Dating should be fun, not confusing! It should be open and honest. He should be available and kind and seeking your best interests. He should want to spend time with you. And listen, I'm not trying to verbally beat up the guys I pursued. I have to believe we're all doing the best we can with what we know and they just didn't know any better. Neither did I and I was part of the problem. 

I’m about to step down from this soapbox, but before I do, let me just acknowledge that not all guys are like this. Some girls are like this and that’s a problem of equal proportion. Relationships require reciprocity on both ends. Commitment on both ends. While it might seem romantic for Landry to hang on to Tyra and hold out hopes for her, he’s wasting his time and his life and his heart. Are there times when it works out? Sure. But that’s usually when there’s a writer who is creating fiction for entertainment purposes. One of the reasons I knew it was finally right with Aaron is because he called when he said he would. He responded to my texts. He initiated. He pursued. He was interested and showed it. He asked what I liked or wanted to do and found ways to make it happen. No drama. No confusion. Because while unrequited love might be entertaining in a TV show or a book or make a catchy song (looking at you, Taylor Swift), it's not for your heart. 

So start praying against drama. This has been really helpful for me recently in other areas of my life, but it's even more important here. Pray that you would not seek it out or encourage it in your relationships. Ask for eyes to see where you might be allowing chaos to thrive and that you might be able to discern where and how it can be removed. Maybe that means walking away from a relationship. Maybe that means setting the right boundaries before you begin the next one. I know for sure that it means rehearsing the truth about your infinite, eternal worth.

Listen, we're not quitting the show over one comment by Landry Clarke. It's a great show. I love the relationship between Coach Taylor and his wife. There are little truths tucked into the show in some places and humor in others. But I will try to stop taking it so seriously to the point where I write ridiculously long posts about it. I just figured if I believed that lie for so long, someone else might be hanging on to it as well. "When you care about someone, you don't give up," except you do - you walk away when they're treating you like dirt because you are better than that. And I want better for you. I believe better for you. Believe it for yourself. 

Oh, and Texas forever. 

More.

A few years ago I decided that if there was anything worth being an expert in, it was the Bible. Obviously there are plenty of other things you can be an expert in, but I had this fresh desire to know more about God in a way I hadn't previously. So I started listening to more sermons and podcasts, reading books and blogs, following different pastors and trying to glean as much knowledge as I could from people who are smarter than me - who knew more than me, especially in this area. I just knew that after very blatantly running away from God and finding no satisfaction in that, I finally wanted to listen and lean in to what he wanted for me. 

Through all of this study, I came to a place where I felt like maybe I was too comfortable. I don't believe we should purposefully make life difficult - it's hard enough on its own sometimes - but what I mean is that I felt like I wasn't really putting myself out there. I wasn't being stretched. I wasn't at a point where I really relied on God every day because every day was pretty easy. I had my friends, family, community, church, job – everything was in order and I had a neat little circle drawn around my comfort zone. Still, in the deep part of my heart, I wanted to know if God had anything else for me so I started to pray that he would show me where to go next. I wish I had my journals here to show you but I wrote, “God, I think maybe I’m a little too comfortable. Break me out of this rut. Help me see where you would have me go.” A couple of lines later, I wrote, “I know that’s a dangerous thing to pray… .”Dangerous in the sense that when you open yourself up to God and ask him to do something, you better buckle up. I've been around long enough to know that he doesn't let those prayers sit idle. 

When I moved to Hawaii last summer, I wasn't shy about how hard it was for me. I wrote about being in a new city and feeling out of place. I shared on Instagram about how life was so unfamiliar and I constantly felt like a lost moron. I've was pretty candid about how moving across the country was no walk in the park. But one day, as I stood at the sink washing dishes in my new house in Hawaii so far away from my friends, family, community, church, and job, I remembered that journal entry from a few of years ago. It was one of those illuminating moments where things suddenly come into focus. I was 4,000 miles away from all that I knew for 33 years, and my heart wanted to complain about being homesick. I wanted to cry out to God, “Whhhhyyyyy!” but in that moment, standing at my kitchen sink, I knew the answer. I'm standing there asking, "Why?" and God's like, "Um... remember how you asked for this?"

I prayed for this exact thing three years ago! I asked God to make me uncomfortable - to break me out of a rut - and guess what! My days were suddenly filled to the brim with uncomfortable. Moving was like a dropkick to the outside edges of my comfort zone. It's particularly funny because I used to tell people before Aaron was ever in my life, "I'm never moving (from Nebraska). The only way I would move is if I had a husband and his job took us somewhere else." I have to believe that God really busted a gut over that one when it happened because one of the reasons I moved here to Hawaii is because I married a man who already had a job here. LOL, God. I see you. 

But when I wrote that prayer out three years ago, do you know what part of me thought that it would mean moving to Hawaii? Approximately zero percent. It wasn’t even a thought in the far reaches of my mind. I didn’t even really know Aaron at that point. When I wrote, “God, make me uncomfortable,” I thought maybe he would ask me to volunteer somewhere, give a little more money to a charity, branch out in my friend group a little bit, or go to a Bible study - certainly not pack up my entire former life and move to the middle of the ocean! 

The thing about God is that he always desires to give us more. I was reading in Ephesians 1 and that part of the Bible reads a bit like a paper you start writing at 11:00 when it’s due at midnight. You’re trying to meet the minimum length requirement and it starts to sound a bit like, “I personally believe that the awesome, great, wonderful God who is magnificent and amazing, created us to be unbelievably…” throwing in as many adjectives as you can to maximize your sentences. We've all done it. But that’s how Ephesians reads - as if Paul couldn't possibly use enough adjectives to describe God and what he has for us.

“…blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing…” (v.3)
“…according to the KIND intention…” (v.5)
“…according to the riches of his grace which he LAVISHED on us…” (v.7)

God desires to give MORE, not less. The devil would have us believe God is withholding, that he wants to take from us, but any amount of time in the Bible would show you that’s not true. God works in abundance – not scarcity. I could choose to believe that I’m out here in the ocean and have lost a lot – connections, familiarity, friends, etc. But instead I choose to believe that God has me out here to give me more – more of himself, more grace, more kindness, growing my compassion and empathy and understanding of where joy truly comes from. God made me uncomfortable in a way that I never saw coming - he answered that prayer - and I believe he is using it to give me more than I could ever have imagined. So even in homesickness, I know that he is using it to make me grow. God is pushing me to new things here, just like he can do for you in whatever circumstance you find yourself in. He will reveal more of himself to anyone who asks.

I have several situations in my life right now that I’m praying about consistently – specific friends that I want to see draw near to God, situations I want God to heal, places I want to see him move (I say see him move because he is always moving, even when we can’t see it) – and I know that he will. It might not be in my timing or in the way I would want him to, but I know he’ll answer.  His abundance will overflow into those situations, just like he’s doing here in my circumstances now. Like I said, the fact that I'm married to a total dreamboat and living in Hawaii is proof positive that he hears us and answers our prayers. 

So, what are you praying about right now? How do you hope God will answer? Write it down. My favorite thing is to write down prayers and watch for the ways he answers them in the coming weeks, months, and years. Some of mine have yet to be answered. Some of them have been answered in big, beautiful ways.

Newsflash: I'm still no Bible expert in any sense of the word, but I am consistently learning about who God is and what he has for me. And I know that leaning in to what he desires for you may not be easy - in fact it might be completely uncomfortable - but there is joy to be found in it. Your only shot at real joy is to seek him. Wholly believe that he is not withholding anything from you and keep your eyes open for the ways he is giving you MORE each day.

"...I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
John 10:10