Reflection...

Yesterday, I took a day of reflection.

As a missionary, I am so blessed to be able to take a day once a month for reflection and recollection!! This means that I take a day off to spend all day in prayer (as in fasting and silence and hours of adoration) to reflect on my life and relationship with God.

In discipleship with my girls I ask them the same question every week: "How is your soul?" I love this question. It's the same as asking how someone is doing, but it brings their relationship with God into the conversation. We talk about their desires, their struggles, their values, the state of their soul and all of the things that affect it. This was essentially what I was asking myself and Jesus yesterday... How is my soul? How is my heart? How am I doing keeping God at the center of my life? Am I making this mission about HIM or about ME?

For those of you that have been reading my blog, I've been talking a lot about being busy and needing to reorder my life and priorities and being tired and how hard it's been to choose joy lately. You've also maybe noticed that I haven't updated in about 2 weeks. Two weeks ago, I got pretty sick. I was out of commission on and off for about a week. This is something that was extremely hard for me to deal with - I felt helpless. All I could do was lay in bed, sleep, drink some tea, sleep some more, answer a few emails, sleep some more... you get the idea. I couldn't do my bible studies, I couldn't get up for prayer in the morning, I couldn't meet wth my students for discipleship, I couldn't go out on campus and meet students... and all of this was made more frustrating because I was the one "in charge" for the week while our team director was in Rome. Power Hour didn't happen, women's night ended up just being a movie since I couldn't give the talk, etc... needless to say, I felt a little like a failure when Kelley came back and I had to recount all of this to her when she got back and asked how all of it went.

During prayer, I was praying with scripture and stopped to mull over for where your treasure is, there also your heart will be. What is my treasure? Is my treasure really God alone? Am I putting things above God in my heart? Not money, not worldly success, not what people think of me... Ah, yes. There was something. My idea of being "good", my plan for my holiness, reaching my expectations for myself. ME. I was putting more importance on what I needed to do to be a good daughter of God than the fact that I am a daughter of God.

So all this talk about busyness and such? Obviously I knew I needed to do something, but I hadn't. God kept tapping on my shoulder and showing me it wasn't good... and still I didn't. So what did He do? He slowed me down Himself. He let me get sick and stay in bed for most of a week. He allowed me the chance to be weak. He allowed me to see what was truly important. He allowed me the chance to not put me in the equation for what was done on campus that week. He allowed me to refocus on Him. He allowed me to trust Him and that He would be the salvation for the students at UNC. He gave me permission to have fun, to spread His truth in love and joy, to share His greatness through my own weakness.

God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong. - 1 Cor 1:27

God chose the foolish and the weak to be the ones He uses. If I want Him to use me, and make me perfectly into who He created me to be, I must allow that I am foolish and weak. AND I must give myself permission to be silly and weak in the eyes of the world (and myself!).

Thought to leave you with:

Let us think for a moment about the concept of vacation. We need to get away, relax, rest, enjoy life a little... so we go on vacation. Our lives have become so unlivable that we need to escape from them.

Living a life that takes time to enjoy spending time with our family instead of working long hours, tithing instead of giving ourselves a little more comfort, having true Christian values in America... looks foolish to our culture. We look weak. We look stupid. It looks inefficient and like we're not reaching our full potential or making as much money as we could. But I'll guarantee our lives are more livable. And that God blesses us with what we need.