let it rain

It's a rainy afternoon preceded by a rainy morning in Athens. I had to get out early this morning and make a WalMart run before an 8 am meeting and I'll confess that the thunderstorm was so bad that I prayed for safety as I drove. I ended up having some sweet time with the Lord in the lightening and as I stood soaking wet at the bus stop with a backpack full of chicken biscuits (oh, my life...) I thought about the last time I'd gotten caught walking in rain that hard. I'm thinking it was the day we trucked through downtown Atlanta to get Passion registration taken care of... those were great days. There's something I love about the rain. Some of the best rain I've ever been in was in Brno, Czech Republic and I crave to be back in the daily downpour in Belize. Feel free to comment on how good we were looking in these high school pics, somewhere in the one road town of Armenia...

 

This one might still be hanging in my room somewhere...

I love that rain. I love how it washes the world clean and how vivid of a picture of grace it is. Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me. God's grace isn't a light sprinkling rain, it's a flood. One that pops up out of nowhere, that you can't escape, and that you might as well grab a friend and dance in. If you're gonna get wet, you might as well just get soaked. 

I'm craving to take my shoes off and go on another adventure, keep on dancing in the rain. As I flipped through those Belize pictures I realized that was the last time I've left the country. I got something in the mail today urging me to renew my passport under the pretense that you never know when you might need to spontaneously leave the country and chase adventure. I might do it. They might be right.

I just got back from Director/AD training weekend in Nashville for CentriKid. It was a huge blessing to sit with some unbelievable people and talk camp and laugh til you couldn't breathe for a few days. I got to hear some unbelievable stories and meet some unbelievable people. I got to hang out, talk spiritual direction with Mary, and pray specifically for our summer and our staff. I got to roast marshmallows, worship the Lord, and see all the secrets for the summer. I got to pray for a lady on an airplane. (What are the odds of sitting beside the same girl on my flight both directions?) I got to see old friends, spend sweet time with Jesus, and play an awful lot of card games. I got to put the crazy of the world behind me for a few days. I love getting to hear the Lord speak like that.

God's put some unbelievable blessings in my life right now... things I never would have imagined to even ask for. I find that as I desire more and more to ask Him if I can keep them, He more and more echoes back to me the desire to be willing to let Him have everything. It's a funny dichotomy and I love it.

DNow is this weekend at River Hills! Getting so excited... can't wait to see God shape the lives of these kiddos that I love so dearly. Mmm, gonna be fantastic. 

I'll close out this post of random thoughts with these words from Francis Chan:

"Life is too short. I don't want to speak about Jesus; I want to know Jesus. I want to be Jesus to people. I don't want just to write about the Holy Spirit; I want to experience His presence in my life in a profound way."

Amen to that. May the Lord continue to wreck and shape our lives. I don't want to write about it, I want to get out and live it. The Lord has been laying a lot on my heart... I promise to blog more coherently about it later.