My 100th Post: Stretching into Hope!

Hi my sweet readers! I haven't written here in awhile and I pray my return encourages ya! I had taken an intentional break to be met by the Lord. Things I didn't need to write on the web, but needed God to write {on my heart}. He has changing my life to breathe more hope. Yes hope! God's been working on building confidence in Him in me. The process has felt uncertain and unendurable, yet He is true and able.

In this stretching He's been leading me to new ways to connect with Him and with others, such as:

I've been singing songs to Him {in my car mostly if I'm being real} starting in 2013, in places my heart was formerly silent and cold as ice. I couldn't didn't praise Him for a long time, because I felt like I couldn't trust Him for a long time. But joy was birthed and I sang for Him. I did so, in slow and shaky travels as I learned to trust Him with each moment, each day. My heart became more free in Him. Through Him I was steady.

And then I felt called to sing in church worship. What, me? Who, me? Lord ask someone else. But He asked me still. And so with not a lot of confidence, I led worship again. And worried a lot about how I did. As if worship was measured by man. The next week He led in me that worship is not a show, it's a showing of heart. So I sang different, grounded and more still. I began to feel purposed singing for the honor of my King. Things are yet unknown again for how He'll call me to sing this fall, but I will trust.

I've also been stretched this year to look around. Yes simply to look around. In busy suburbs where people can go quickly and quietly unnoticed. Where in a minute you can find anyone looking for hope, looking for something to hang onto to. But you'll miss them if you're rushing by, caught up in this rat race. You'll see in the pausing that God's seeing us all, looking to fill the hearts of His kids. With goodness.

Finally, He's singing hope into the story. Hallelujah for this. When I'm broken over unmet dreams He's joining me in my tears. And so I let the pain fall into Him, for something He can use.

Joy awaits friends. Hope is blooming something here.

Until I am purified.

It's been a month. I haven't written for a month and it's been wearing on me. It's time to write.

Life's been boiling here, bubbling up rapidly and I really just need some simmer time, give or take twenty minutes. I keep asking God to refine my purpose, bring forth my gifts and focus my efforts and all this steam is rising, purifying. "Let go of this Rachel, let go of that...you can't do it all and I don't want you to, I don't need you to", He's been telling me. Stop trying so hard and so much. Be faithful, oh be faithful in the little things. I will heal your broken heart and I will deliver you. Be faithful, be faith-full. These things he whispers and shouts to me in books, in presence, in community.

I had been praying for mentors for the longest time and he's given them to me in authors, bloggers, local women's leaders, and new friends and for the first time in a long time I know who I want to be.

There's a lot of dust in our lives right now. It feels almost like a bomb went off in our transition back to Midwestern life and another one when I began working outside the home. It's confusing, cloudy and we don't know what to say about it all yet. I think we're in the 2nd stage of culture shock, or for us re-entry culture shock. It's time for us to dig through our Delta souls and our Midwestern DNA and figure out what we want to keep and what to sweep up.

Some days it's all I can do to say, "I'm listening, I'm tired, I'm here Lord. Let that be enough."

Jesus, be with all my friends who draw near here at Redeeming Her. May your presence be sweet and strong and may you fill them up. Amen. Love you, Rachel.