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.