But right now I am here. When I was in high school I thought it would be really cool to start an orphanage. But to be honest with you I thought it was a phase just as all the people around me thought it was. So I planned my life to live here in America. I choose a school due to it's warm whether, dual admission PT program, and the scholarship I had received. I started in the fall of 2009, and quickly began to see why God had brought me here. I was utterly alone as a Christian, for two years I did not have one friend that lived the way I did. I also did not have a home church for the first year or so. I had to make the faith I had claimed for 11 years truly and only mine. I had to decide whether I wanted to continue to follow Christ, or if I wanted to go the way of every other college kid. But now I couldn't just claim it, now I had to study it, learn it, and live it on my own. I couldn't rely on my parents, my church, my group of christian friends to sustain my need for that community. For that period of time the only person who I could go to for that aspect of my life was Jesus, I would spend Friday nights in my room crying. Not understanding why he would leave me alone, trying to tell myself that I was not alone, He was there. That's when I realized my relationship with him was one of knowing, but not continually experiencing. I did not believe that he was enough. I wanted a tangible person to run to, to get advice from, to just hang out with. I was so lonely that I wanted to go home, but luckily I had enough pride that I would not give in and tell many people I hated it. I told my dad, but he either told me I needed to stick out the semester, or the year (I don't really remember). I remember after that I hung up the phone and was truly MAD. I wondered if I had made the choice to come to Florida selfishly and now I was being punished. But that year and the next I truly began to understand what being sustained by God in times of need is like. Nothing to the extent as going to a foreign country, but still for me it was more than I wanted. My life was nice and I had never felt the NEED for God in my life. Again in my head I knew I needed him, but did not have to experience it before.
But right now I am here. Right now I live in the midst of thousands of people that know the name JESUS, but they know him as well as you know me, probably even less. They know he is a figure of the church, but they think of him as a list of rules, not as the love of their life. So here I have the chance to show that the real Jesus loved life, and he knew all the secretes to pure joy here and pure joy and happiness for eternity. Today he is sitting at the right hand of God going to bat for you and for me. Every time I sin, every time I question why I can't go where I feel he has been calling me for years, every time I misrepresent him to a classmate, teammate, co-worker or professor he sits there and says "forgive her for she knows not what she does." He has this power because he came to this earth and avoided all the temptation I so easily give into. Then he committed the ultimate sacrifice of Love. He laid down his life and bore all the sins you, I , and all creation have committed. The people here in this community need this truth and need this love as badly as the orphans that I long to be with.
But right now I am here. He put me in a dual admission program, He knew if he didn't by the time I graduated from undergrad I would be done with this. I would move to another country and do as I pleased. But for some reason he wants me finish my education. Maybe it is only to be discipled and grown by my home church here, maybe it is only to be part of starting the on campus ministry, or maybe it because he has children somewhere that he knows need a "healing touch" by someone who had the opportunity to be educated as a physical therapist. So right now I am a student. Right now I expect God to use this time for the present and the future of my life and others. Many times I lose sight of this and so I start to write these blog post and he reminds me that I am not forgotten. He didn't forget about these 3,4,5,6 years of my life. No he is well aware of his plans. I know he wants to see how I deal with what he has entrusted to me now. On the same CD Matthew West wrote a song called Wonderfully Made for a Special Needs child named Tim. This is Tim's favorite verse
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
John 9:1-5
I will always be not only the creation of God, but a beloved child. He knows me, and He knows my heart even better than I do. He knows where I need to be, and I don't need to worry about where I will be, if I will just focus on him, if I will just focus on what I can do here the future will become the present and I will be right in the midst of where God wants me. This is my prayer for myself and all other children of God. I think we have heard it so many times... concern, worry, anxiousness, or stress are all just products of not trusting that God has planned our next step, day, week, month, year, decade, or however far out we are focusing on.
^Rachel
