The Beauty in Brokenness

It's March 25, 2013 today. 

5 years to the day that Adam Carter passed away and my life broke. I was broken then and I'm broken now. But it's a beautiful brokenness. 

It's hard for me to feel sorrow when I think of him. Its hard for me to continue to mourn when he brought me such joy. Its hard for me to see all God has done in my life through his legacy and still be sad. Maybe thats wrong. 

But I choose to see beauty in the brokenness.

God's brought so many blessings to me through the pain of losing Adam, and He's not done yet. 

I'm at Urban Life, living with 4 other girls in an apartment and working as a team day in and day out. It isn't hard to notice when any one of us is a little off. When any one of us slips up. And its all in intentional community which makes you want to mask it all a little more than usual. We're all believers here, we can't have struggles, right?

Wrong. We bond in that. We, as a body, are broken and the only way we can be healed and bring Jesus into the center of our relationships is to be broken together and to receive His grace together. By HIS wounds, we are healed. And tonight I got to walk through that. I got to sit with my roommate, my sister, my fellow believer in Christ, and experience healing - in her, in me, and with Jesus. There isn't a praise high enough or loud enough for this moment. She laid out on the floor and confessed her struggle. The storm we've been trying to pray her through for a while, she was ready to surrender, and she was ready to heal. 

Her strength in acceptance of healing brings me to my knees. If I had only known what she knows sooner, how much pain I could have saved myself agonizing over Adam. If I had only stopped trying so hard to be strong and to work through the depression and to fix it myself, if I had only relied on Jesus to heal me right where I was. If I had only believed that He could sooner... But it comes now. In His perfect timing. And as I lead her through the processing of healing I'm preaching more to myself than to her. Thank you Lord for speaking beauty into my brokenness.

And 2013 years later on a Sunday that brought such rejoicing and acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is King so many years ago, we too bow to Him. We too lay out clothes and palms for Him to walk on. We too go after him and accept his teachings - we too begin this journey toward resurrection. His timing is impeccable, and I can't comprehend the gift He's bestowing on two roommates in Charlotte, NC this Easter season. Thank you Lord for allowing us to begin a journey to healing through this Passion Week. Thank you that we get to have a small small taste of dying to ourselves, to be raised to life in Your Son Jesus. Thank you for the sacrifice you made, Jesus, so that we may freely receive this grace and healing from our Father. Thank you that we hear your voice, and that we are experiencing Easter in a whole new way this year. Thank you for sending your son, to tell The The Greatest Story Forever Told. 

"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified." - Isaiah 61:3

All In A Day's Work

I made a comment today about how Urban Life isn't a job.
It wasn't well received - likely due to the place the comment had come from - which was my low-key saltiness at the brainstorming I've been having to do about what I'm "actually" going to do with my life, post Urban Life.
I don't want to be a ministry intern that comes out of her internship and falls flat on her face when suddenly removed from the environment where my passion for the last year thrived so easily.
But then I also don't want to be the intern that lets this one year of my life be "That One Year" that I truly lived for Christ, that forever lives in infamy as I strive towards recreating it.
In fact, to be honest I don't really know what I want after Urban Life, but I know who I want to be when this year winds down; And that is a woman of God who accepts the time I had with gratitude, and looks toward the future with hope in God's plan for my life.
God has been showing me all day that this lifestyle I get to live of living, breathing, serving Christ is a job and I'm uncovering what the gravity of my gratitude needs to look like.
My job description is basically to serve Jesus.
Day in and day out devoting all my time to ground-level ministry.
I have the opportunity to literally live out the Bible; To step outside my front door and feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the lacking, visit the sick, defend the fatherless and the the widows and to love them all with the love that Christ first gave me.
This is what "going to work" looks like for me.
5 months ago I had a passion for volunteering but no one to serve with me and no knowledge of events to serve at, this morning as an Urbanite we went to a Give Fifty One event and mentored homeless children as a team.

A year ago I was trying to learn how to pray, reading books and researching methods on how to communicate with God, today we prayed together as an Urban Life family, building each other up and interceding on each other's behalf. My prayers are growing more audacious and Holy-Spirit led every day as I learn more about my spiritual gifts and my prayer language and for the first time in my life I realize the true power of prayer.

A year ago I would have felt neighborly accomplished if I said hello to the girl who lived in the apartment across from mine, today I went across the street and spent 2.5 hours talking and listening to the girls home from school in the neighborhood, pouring out and being poured into. And as Shanice sat on the sidewalk in her Elevation t-shirt that she got from coming to our church for the first time this weekend, gushing about how much she loved the "Jesus concert" on Sunday, I realized that this is what being a neighbor is - its not a greeting or a pie, it's invitations and conversations and doing life together.

Just a couple weeks ago I was praying for God to move in my friends' lives. That the wonderful people that I had chosen to be a part of my life back at UNCC would experience God in their lives first-hand like I was here at Urban Life and that they would get it and turn from decisions that weren't God's best for them. I prayed for my friend Melanie in particular who was walking through a valley and trying to find the Lord in all of it, I prayed life change over her again and again and believed that the Lord would move in a huge way in her life, and I learned how to trust something into God's hands. I interceded, the cycle in her life repeated, and the Lord had me trust Him with her a little more each time. Today, Melanie showed up at my house full of grace and full of JESUS, pouring out joy to everyone she came into contact with. As she shared story after story of the life change that she's been experiencing and her courage to follow after God at every crossroads, I couldn't help but wonder at the emotion I was feeling. My heart sings! My girl is becoming a woman of God so quickly! The level she's been brought up to by living the faith she already had is nothing short of amazing! I've never been more proud and humble in my life - proud that I serve and belong to the God of restoration and life change and INCREDIBLE transformation!! And humbled in that I thought I could be the one to help her, that my solutions and my example could somehow lead her back to the path she was supposed to be walking, and I can't nor will I ever, but my Jesus can and I've now learned to trust Him to!

If Urban Life was the best job I ever have, I would be content knowing that I had the privilege of dedicating an entire year of my life to truly serving Jesus.
But that's not what God wants for me.
God doesn't want me to be content with just one year.
As crazy as it is for me to wrap my mind around, God doesn't have limits on the blessings he wants to pour out on me. There isn't just one year that He wants to bless me with a lifestyle that is centered around serving the poor and oppressed children of the world and living in a community of believers, its every year.
Although I may not have a college degree, or an impressive entry-level salary or the start of a family or a career path or anything else that the world tells me I should have by now - I know that I am not of this world.
And I will not be content to live my life at a worldly successful level.
So here's to my current job. 
Sure, it won't last forever, but for now, I'm grateful that every minute I'm awake, I'm clockin' hours for Jesus.