I am Written...

"I like the part of the bible about God speaking the world into existence as though everything we see and feel were sentences from his mouth...I feel written. My skin feels written, and my desires feel written...it feels literary, doesn't it? As if we're all characters in a book...."

December 21, 2009 is the day I peg as the day I realized I am written. I am not writing...I've already been written. I am not my own author, I am merely a player in a story much larger than my own. I guess I'd kinda always known it, like you know the world is round or the ocean is deep...but I'd never really had anything that made me EXPERIENCE it. That made it matter. That put arms around it.

And then I picked up a book by Donald Miller and everything changed. The Lord used his words to open my eyes to a work he was about to do in me that would change everything about me, change everything about my story, forever.

At the beginning of this whole process, I'd been on Young Life staff for 4 years... a volunteer leader for 3 years before that.. and a total YL sell out in high school. So, needless to say, my heart has been in deep in this ministry for a very long time. There wasn't much I didn't love about my job. Lost and broken high school girls are the heartbeat of my soul. YL leaders are my heros and a joy to walk beside. Webb School will forever be holy ground to me. Sure there were days that were hard and moments when I wanted to quit, but the majority of the days I couldn't wait to get out of bed and do my job. I was the girl who always said I would never leave staff. Fifty years from now, I would be the old lady on the rappel tower with high school girls belaying her down. That was MY plan. That was MY story... But God had other plans... another kind of story. And he quickly started to show me that.

This story...HIS story broke over Christmas Break. It involved leaving YL staff, taking the GRE, applying and being miraculously accepted to PA school at South College, and moving in a totally new direction. Essentially leaving everything I had...everything I knew...and following him. I was terrified, confused, but couldn't escape the call. So, I put down MY pen and stopped frantically trying to write my own story, and resolved to start to live out of a story much bigger than me...one written by the One who knows me better than I know myself.

(If you haven't heard the whole story from beginning to end, ask me sometime, it truly is amazing.)

This blog is a testament to God and his amazingly creative "author-ship". I hope that as I begin this journey and attempt to record it, a story will form that has all the makings of a good story--interesting characters, conflict, transformation, climax, and everything in between. A story far better than anything I could have ever dreamed for myself. That when I look back I will be reminded of His faithfulness to me every step of the way. Here's to a new chapter...