We Could All Use Some Encouragement

To say that yesterday was awesome just doesn't seem to cut it. More like unpredictable, but still, absolutely amazing. I woke up feeling like crap. Pretty sure I had some kind of little flu bug, my head hurt extremely bad and I practically had to crawl because it was too painful to walk for a while. I had to go get my weekly blood work done, though, so I finally felt good enough to go do that. Blood work came back amazingly! My count has jumped again to 83,000 platelets! And that is since my doctoc lowered my prednisone by one pill a day, so it's even cooler. :) God has been working like crazy in my body and I am just so honored that he is using me through this, so awesome to see Him being glorified even in this. God seriously comes to my rescue every single day, in every situation, and that is AWESOME! Sunday night, I was talking with my best friend and told her I was going to write my Kenya support letter this week, but I wasn't going to send them until I had talked with my doctor to see if a surgery was still in my future. I don't want to plan this whole trip and then have it ripped from me. Well, then she quickly asked me "Do you still feel like God's calling you there?" Me -- "yes..." Deb -- "Then you should send them out whether you know about the surgery or not." Man, hit me like a ton of bricks! If God wants you to be somewhere, He will take every barrier out of your way to get you there. That's what I learned from the National Missionary Convention we went to a couple months ago. I can't shake the feeling that this is part of why God is healing me : because He wants me in the midst of all these things coming up in my life. He wants me to be there, to be apart of them, to be used for His kingdom. He is just so good, I can;t even believe how good He has been. Even though there are plenty of unknowns in my life, especially the huge hospital bills we have after the fact. I have no idea where that money is going to come from, but God does, and if He does, I'm okay with that. I will let Him take the reigns on that one. I trust that He will take care of me and all of the things I have no control of, which is, well, everything!
As I look at my class schedule for next semester, it would be easy for me to curl up and want to hide away for how busy I am going to be. It's overwhelming to see how much I will be doing next semester. Especially as I look at all my free time I have over break right now and how I've been able to draw so close to God already, I treasure it because I'm not sure what it'll look like next semester. Then, I think, that's silly! As long as I have this amazing passion for Him, I know He will continue to give me the time I need for Him. He is my priority and I want my time to reflect that. A group of us are going to do the 90 day read through of the Bible, 12 chapters a day, and I couldn't be more excited! It might be the biggest challenge in my faith, but lately I've been reading 9 chapters a day so I can finish it out in time to start it up again. I tell you what, reading huge chunks at a time is awesome! I can honestly say at this point that the Bible is my favorite book. I love reading it and it constantly opens my eyes to new things about my savior! God is all over the place and as long as I stay in His merciful presence for the rest of my life, I have all that I need. I'm not content with my life, I'm completely overjoyed with it! I can truly say that I haven't had a bad day in well over 3 months. I heard once of a man who hadn't had a bad day in over 20 years and I didn't understand why, until now. The power of God is just simply more than we can fathom and I am blessed to be able to witness it while on earth. I think of when I was younger and we were told about how even in your final moments, you can still find God if you truly believe in Him. You can have eternity with Him still. As amazing as it is that He literally gives us that chance until your final breath, I find myself feeling sorry for those people. Why? Because they missed out on God while they were here. They didn't get to experience Him in their earthly lives the way He yearns for us to. The best thing about God is that no one can take Him away from me. They can take literally everything I have, leave me with nothing, but not matter what, I will always have my Jesus, and that is the best gift of all. I heard a quote about Christmas which I thought was pretty profound. "Christmas for the nonbeliever is to feel for one day what the Christian feels everyday." What if we all had the spirit of Christmas every single day? I know for me, I've had that feeling for quite a while now, and you certainly won't see me complaining if that's the way I feel for the rest of my life! Life is not perfect, we are going to face a lot of bumps and bruises, we will be rejected and lied to and treated horribly and it will hurt, especially if it's from people that are close to us, which is usually how it goes, right? We're going to face death, financial troubles, busyness of work, school and life in general. Yet even in all of that, God is not going to leave us! All we have to do is cling to Him with everything we've got. When scripture said "nothing is impossible with God", we weren't being lied to, we were being promised that He would hold us. He's not going to let us go, even when the rest of the world does. If there;s one thing we can put our hope in, it's Him.

How Can God Be So Good When We Don't Deserve It?

These past couple of months have been absolutely crazy. Seriously, who knew being sent to the hospital could completely change someone's life? Okay, maybe that's not too far fetched of a thought after all, but still, for me and my faith journey, it's exactly what I needed. The short story is that my platelets dropped to practically none, which, if you don't know, platelets are what makes your blood clot so you don't bleed to death, more or less. Anyway, I was put in the hospital for a couple days and had this globulin stuff pumped into me to pump up my platelets. It was the first time I had an IV put in me, which was painful all in itself because my veins are not the kind the nurses like, so I got pretty bruised up from all of that. The coolest thing that I realized while I was there was how many people cared so much about me. I had way more people come to visit and call me than I could have imagined. God showed His awesome love for me so much just through that. I got some good time to myself while I was there, and really ever since then, my faith has just shot to a completely different level.
I don't want to sit here and retell you everything in my life that has happened, you can just read my journal if you really want all of the details. I decided I would just give you a list of all the amazing ways I have seen God at work in both my life and those around me since then:

* One of the biggest things has been in Christian Student Fellowship, our campus ministry at UIS. God has truly been changing us and bonding us together in a way that I have never experienced before. He keeps bringing more and more people and actually getting them connected! We even had an international student give her life to Jesus and get baptized before she goes back to China! How AWESOME!
* I've had the amazing privilege of praying for some of my closest friends every single day for God to intercede in their lives, for them to open up their hearts to Him. I have seen God working in them as I pray everyday, knowing that He hears our prayers and that He is using me to reach them. Again, just super awesome.
* The biggest thing would have to be my relationship with my mom. For most of my life, we really just haven;t truly gotten along, that is, until I gave it all to Jesus, for real this time. I finally let His holy spirit overtake me and He has been ever faithful through it all. I have gone from praying nonstop that my mom would encounter God in such a new way that she would truly see Him for who He is to seeing Him shining through her. God has allowed me to show her to Him and He has completely saved our relationship. I was actually just telling my friend the other day that I actually *love* going home and talking with my mom. She didn't even know what to say because that is so not like me. That's the cool thing, though, it's not me, it's all God.
* Okay, this is long, so here's my last one. This whole platelet thing has been a crazy roller coaster ride, and today I found out they are going UP. Without having any of the globulin stuff going in me, they are going up because of God, not because of my medication or anything else. I truly believe that He is doing a Holy work in my body and it is so awesome to be a witness to it. Whatever happens, I just want this to bring glory to His name. He has been so good in ways I honestly do not deserve or understand. He is such a great God and I really just can't wait to tell the world about Him! That's a new thing for me, too. I didn't used to get that excited!

To wrap it up, God is really the best, and I hope and pray that all of you reading this one day get to experience that for yourselves as well. If you want more detailed descriptions of what's been going on in my life, don't hesitate to ask, I love telling about my life, especially when it has to do with Jesus. :)