a little hell week reminder.

Father, you know every little thing about me - everything I think, everywhere I am, everything I do. You are always surrounding me, and there is absolutely nowhere that I could ever run to that would ever separate me from you. You continue to guide me with your presence wherever I may be. You burst forth from darkness in glorious day and light up the world around me. You know every intricate part of my being because you formed me in your glorious and wonderful image. Your thoughts are infinite and perfect, Lord. I will count those that are evil as evil. Search my heart and purify me from the inside out so that I may be a living picture of your love and faithfulness.

[rewritten Psalm 139]

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Lord, I ask that you continue to reveal yourself to me and give me eyes and a heart to fully understand these truths so that I may share them with the world.

being real.

To be honest, I have never viewed myself as an effective communicator. I have traditionally always held back from speaking out in social situations, too worried that I would embarrass myself or not make a good first impression. Being the INTJ that I am, I always have tended to be the observer, taking every little detail in and spending my time reading (and ultimately judging) the other people around me. I have always left events, meetings, and parties feeling like I know a lot about others but feeling like nobody really knows me.

But within the last couple of months, the Lord has been teaching me so much about the importance of simply being real with people and living a life of vulnerability in order to gain that much-desired intimacy in relationships. I am blessed to have some incredible roommates and friends to live life with right now, and I cannot wait to dive deeper into the Word with them and grow together. It's going to be messy, but it's going to be perfect.

The Lord is so good to me and continues to reveal Himself to me in many different ways. I used to think that I had everything together, but He continues to wreck my own thoughts and plans and ideas. I am finally realizing that He has provided me with people in my life that are going to love me no matter what and that I don't have to be afraid to open up to. And I know that is just a teenie-weenie picture of how much He loves me and how nothing that I could ever do could change that.

This being said, I wanted to have a space where I can put my thoughts into words. I never thought of myself as the blogging type, but I wanted to be able to share what the Lord has done and continues to do in my life. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Philippians 2. Verse 3 says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves". This is something that has really been on my heart lately and that I have been striving to live out every day. So here goes nothing.

The wonderful ladies of four-twenty-fly that I am blessed to call my roommates.