happy birthday, best friend!

Dear Jesus,

Happy Birthday! I woke up this morning to the smell of coffee and special Christmas breakfast casserole that my mom makes every year as we celebrate your birth. As I laid in bed thinking about your day my heart felt like it was a bit on overload when I think about how your entrance has changed the world and how thankful I am that my heart became yours many years ago.

I will fail today in celebrating you in the perfect way you deserve. I will fail again and again in loving you the way that you perfectly love a crazy girl like me. Thank you for that love. Thank you for the hope you give my heart on days that I'm sad and confused. Thank you for your grace that covers me all the times I fall flat on my face...it is by that grace that I am able to get back up.

On your birthday, I am surrounded by the gifts you have given me...a family so special that I often have to pinch myself in gratitude to realize that I get to be their daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece & cousin. A group of friends who have shown me your love in ways my heart never knew & the opportunity to serve you through a job that I love and a job that allows me to see you work and grow in the most amazing young people. On your birthday, I stand in awe of You and the gifts you have given to me.

Thank you best friend, for all the ways you are continuing to stretch me and mold me to know you more. More than any gift I could ever open under a tree, it's my heart to unwrap more of your ways for the life you have given me & to look less like my own desires and more like you. Thank you for using me when I feel inadequate and weak, for always being my strength.

On your birthday, I give you my heart and life--a gift I will strive to give to you each and every day. Thank you for being truth and grace and for being the Savior of the World. Happy Birthday!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

A little crazy...

Life has felt a little crazy lately. It's always pretty busy and I like busy but for some reason I have felt off and it has seemed like a little crazy snuck in somewhere. If my students are reading this they are probably thinking--"Well, Steph is a little crazy." And if I take a hard honest look at myself they are probably right but for some reason it has all felt a little crazier than whatever normal tends to feel like. My instinct when things start to feel a little uneasy or off is to try and fix each and everything myself...to reel it all in. And, usually somewhere in the beginning of that process I am reminded that there's no way I can reel in the craziness or find my center again on my own.

I am so thankful for God's grace with that reminder and that He never gives up on me even with my tendencies to initially try doing things my way at first. This time, He reeled me back in and reminded me as I was preparing for my high school girls small group, I was reading a passage from the book, God Girl by Hayley DiMarco and this really stood out to me:

"When you love the way God designed you to love, not only will you find more love for yourself, but your life will have less drama and destruction in it. People will be drawn to you, and even if they aren't you will be okay with that."

I think one of the reasons these words rang so clearly to me was because in the midst of things feeling crazy lately my people pleasing desires have been in full force. My bad habit of wanting everyone to be happy and for everyone to like me all the time has been apart of the craziness. What an awesome and freeing reminder it is to remember that God has designed me and created me in a special way to share His love with others and when I put all my trust in that it really won't matter to me if I can make everyone happy with every decision because my trust lies in Him.

One of my favorite parables that Jesus told is found in John 10:11-14, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then, the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me..."

In the midst of a little craziness it is so comforting and refreshing to remember that Jesus is my guide...my shepherd. To remember that He knows me, that he never runs away or abandons me instead he laid down his life for me...his crazy little lamb that gets caught up in trying to keep the flock happy.

Sometimes it's the times where things are a little crazy that helps remind me of what is most important & to rest in the freedom that the Great Shepherd is always in the lead.

Be devoted to one another in love.

We have been digging into the book of Romans this fall with our Wednesday night Bible studies. It's been great for me to hear our students talking about the verses we've been challenging them with. I love that scripture is the root of these Wednesdays together. Tonight, with the 5th-6th grade students we are going to focus on Romans 12:9-10. In my study Bible the topic header for these verses reads: "Love in Action." As I have prepared this lesson over the past week, my mind continues to settle on the people in my life who have been living examples of how this scripture calls us to be love in action to one another. "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves." When I think of these faces, I praise God for the ways He is changing hearts to look more like His love, what a blessing it is to be on the receiving end of the obedience and faithfullness of these disciples & to experience the unity of brothers and sisters in Christ with our eyes on Him. Here are just a few of the faces in my life that are living examples of love in action.

Love from Guatemala.

Agradecido.

If I've been studying my Spanish correctly...which is questionable, the word for thankful or grateful in spanish is agradecido. Now, we'll see if anyone really reads this blog if I am corrected or given confirmation. :)

Tomorrow morning, I am heading to Guatemala with a small team from CUMC. It seems pretty surreal. In the past 6 months God has blessed me with the opportunity to serve overseas, not once but twice. He has opened doors and given me peace at times that seemed shaky. Kenya & Guatemala in the span of 4 months. What God is stirring in my heart through these opportunities I am still waiting and praying over--but with every ounce of my heart I am thankful.

I am thankful for friends who fill my e-mail inbox with affirmation and encouragement in my calling to serve others in this way. I am thankful for my parent's & grandmother who want to have dinner with me tonight before we leave tomorrow. I am thankful for an incredibly supportive group of students & parents whom I am blessed to serve here at CUMC who have said to me over and over again..."We are so excited for you--we are praying for your time in Guatemala." I am thankful for an assistant youth director who understands my heart for missions and who will help keep things running smoothly the week I am away. I am thankful for a staff and church leadership that are standing behind their youth ministry and children's ministry directors so that we can sharpen our faith and learn more about God's Kingdom in this next week so that we may return back to CUMC renewed in the ways we are blessed to be His hands and feet to the youth and children of this body of Christ. I'm thankful for the friends who have prayed silently and out loud with me over this opportunity. I am thankful.

When my alarm went off this morning, I spent a couple of moments enjoying the comfort of my own bed. I started to think about how often I tend to lean towards comfort in my life...and my heart started to stir. I don't want to be okay being comfortable...I want God to stretch me and break my spirit and life to look less like the things that make me comfortable and more like a heart that looks more like Him. I am praying that the next week in Guatemala will be a time where I can allow God to mold me anew. It may mean hard work, it may mean being out of my comfort zone, it may mean keeping my mouth shut and listening. I pray it will all be used for His glory.

Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all peoples.
1 Chronicles 16: 24

Shiny & Bright

I can't seem to stop thinking about this sweet little face. This is the face of one of the children I met during my time in Kenya. Before I left for Africa I thought that once I had gone & spent time there upon my return home I'd change a lot of things in my life. I'm not sure if I thought I'd give away everything I own or adopt three more Compassion International children or what it would look like to live differently post Africa. Is this missions opportunity suppose to serve as a wake up call? Honestly, from the outside looking in my life probably doesn't look too different from the way it was before I went to Kenya. I'm still processing what my experience and journey was like there. I'm still sorting through the many ways God tugged on my heart those 15 days.

The truth is that my days are different now because of a change on the inside...my heart is not the same. There aren't many mornings that my thoughts don't turn quickly to the faces of the children. I was blessed to have met hundreds of those faces. I saw them sing, dance, play and worship. I was able to learn some of their names...but mostly it was just the faces. They all held one thing in common--amazing smiles.

Smiles so shiny and bright sometimes it would take my breathe away when they were all surrounding me to get a spot on my lap or to touch my hair or to look at my camera. Beautiful smiles so shiny and bright. Some mornings as I pray for them a saddness washes over me because I feel so far away from those shiny and bright little faces. In Psalm 82 there is a short piece of verse 6 that says: "Children of the Most High, all of you." When I read that this morning my mind turned back to those shiny and bright smiles. The comfort and joy in being unified together as God's children. When I think about the kids back in Kenya I'm reminded also of one of my favorite passages from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis,

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes everyday and eath of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and your find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

I am thanking God extra today for those little faces that remind me to continue to look to Christ first and formeost. They remind me that sometimes the greatest gift you can offer to others is a smile that shines the light of Jesus.

Every September.

Every year around this time I start missing my days as a college student at Hillsdale College. Anyone who knows me well or semi-well knows my love for the small school tucked away up in Michigan. My four years as a student were some of the sweetest years of my life. Without a doubt it is always so clear how God's hand orchestrated and blessed every struggle & joy that was part of the journey at Hillsdale during my undergrad college years.

It's also about this time of year that I start thinking back to how God led me to the beginning of my journey in youth ministry. I was a wide eyed freshman & somehow I found myself volunteering for the HFMC youth group with students who were just a year or two younger than myself. I am so thankful that God used my years as a volunteer to confirm to me that this was the path He was leading me on--because being a volunteer youth leader is hard. It's time consuming--always demanding more than just an hour a week & at the same time was one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of my life. Now more than ever as I am fully immersed in my 5th year as a full time youth director, I still remember what it was like in those early days as a volunteer. The nights that I would walk back from the church to my dorm room and pray for the students I had just played knock out basketball with...what a precious beginning in youth ministry the Lord blessed me with.

I was cleaning my apartment last night & as I was vacuuming my eyes drifted towards my back hallway. I've lined it with picture frames filled with pictures of mission trips & Youth Sundays from the different ministries I've served in since I began at HFMC as a college freshman. From Michigan to Mississippi to Indianapolis, I stared at their faces in those pictures & felt my heart fall in love with God even more. I am so undeserving--and He has richly blessed me by being able to witness His presence and work in the lives of all of these teenagers I've had the privilege to know & love.

I know as a freshman in college I had pretty big plans for myself. I'm sure by the time I was 27--I thought I'd be a mom & married & teaching the 3 year old Sunday School class. As I looked at the wall of pictures from so many amazing experiences..so many students I've had the honor to know... I thanked God for His plan for me...for His timing. I wouldn't change a single part of this journey.