This may very well be the end....

It's been too long. I have completely abandoned blogging. I guess I've traded it for living.

We started The Well recovery ministry in October and are still going strong, even though we've taken some blows. We have a group of incredible leaders and I couldn't be more thankful for them, and I have learned as much from our members as they have from me, I'm sure! It's an awesome thing to watch people grow in their relationship with Christ and see them bearing fruit!

The hardest part of this whole thing for me right now is that apparently I'm a control freak! At least that's what I was told yesterday. We've got a ministry full of hurting people facing various crisis's, or crisi, or whatever the plural version of "crisis" is. I pray diligently for them all, but I want to DO something. I want to help them, and the truth is, in most cases, I can't. I knew it going in, and I tell them on a semi-regular basis, I cannot help them, but I can point them to the one who can.

Fortunately, I learned a very valuable lesson this fall. I developed nodes on my vocal chords and had to drop out of worship for two months, and spend as much time in silence as I could. I really heard a lot from God in those quiet months. The main thing was that in order to serve God in the capacity that He has planned for me, I am going to have to spend more and more time on my face in prayer. We can serve God without a voice, or many other resources, but we cannot have a ministry as God designed it without the vitally important silence in which God speaks to us.

This has proven to be yet another beautiful example of how God literally carries me through life. I am realizing more and more how completely inadequate I am to be in the positions God has placed me in. So much so that if I take my eyes off of Him for a minute, I get panicked. The really awesome thing is that God has shown me time and again in these past months that He's got me and that I have nothing to fear.

I taught at this year's big youth weekend retreat and our focus was "dead man walking". We looked at the transformation of Saul into the new man Paul and what a total, all encompassing recreation that was. In preparing for that weekend, I really took a step back and looked at the last seven years of my life, but in particular the last four. Oh my goodness! I barely even recognize the person I used to be! And there is no way that this change could be attributed to anyone besides our incredible, awesome, holy, sovereign God. I so wish I had a Polaroid of my spirit then versus who God has transformed me into. It makes me want to follow all the more diligently after Him and beg for refining and purifying, and further transformation.

I actually came to my blog tonight to shut her down for good, but maybe I'll keep it up and running a bit longer.........