Deeper longings.

I am set ablaze like a fire wild in the wind. My heart leaps at the expectation of the coming season, and I can certainly feel the change rolling in peaceful violent on the horizon. This is the embarkation. Nothing will be the same.

I have started reading the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I have found what feels like the missing link to the puzzle I have struggled for years to piece together. In my heart and upon my lips, I am finding gratitude like a river rushing forward from my being. She calls it as the Greek Eucharisteo. Something even lays hidden in that word that longs for thankfulness. I can hear it every time I speak it out loud. Eucharisteo. Eucharisteo! The word itself means "to give thanks". And it is mentioned every time Jesus gives thanks. Thanks the Father. Gives thanks and breaks bread. Gives thanks and multiplies! This word of grandeur. This word of gratitude! How simple, and yet greatly complex. The fullness of the realization of beauty lies resting within this word. I have missed it. Most of my saved life I have missed the most important part! My gratitude towards the One who bestows all gifts!

I feel like Sherlock uncovering the mystery. My magnifying lens large before my eyes, searching for the pieces that lay waiting for me to find them. The keys to JOY!!! I have found myself with pen and paper, wide eyed and amazed like a child, at the gifts God has bestowed upon me in my every day. These little treasures that I have passed up in the busyness of life. The moments that I was sure to have lost in time. I have beheld God in His magnificence! In the HERE and NOW! As Voskamp says in her book. I am getting to know the I Am. The very present God. The God that resides in the now moments. The gifts He's just longing for us to acknowledge. Not once a year Christmas gifts, but everyday treasures that He's hidden in our self-proclaimed mundane. Beauty.

Call me a treasure hunter. For Glory! For the gifts that make my heart skip a beat. My heart has longed for me to commit to such simplicity! And so it has begun, my journal, my pen and I are embarking on a journey to find one thousand numbered gifts in my every day to give God the glory for. My eyes strain to find the simplest... my heart skips a beat when I find another one! Tonight #13 the way the clouds are set in wisps at sunset. coral hues and baby blues. So simple and poetic. Just like the sky He has strung before our eyes. Yet I gaze into sunsets 26 years and never notice like I do tonight. The beauty that's been there all along, just waiting for me to give thanks for it! Eucharisteo.

I suppose it's not even about the thanks giving that is being made, but rather what God is doing in my heart. A miracle! Only God can come and change the heart of man. And not the "try to change, but set in old senile way" but real, life-altering, gasping for air when you've gone too deep, change. Voskamp explains it cleverly clear in her book. Thanksgiving always precedes the miracle! "Father, I thank that you have heard me..." John 11:41 And then the miracle of a dead man rising! Thanksgiving raises the dead! Not to say that my heart has been dead, but it would sometimes begin to smell of the flesh that has gone without life for far too long. But there it is. The miracle. The life change. Who could say to Lazarus in the moment of blood surging life into his veins again, "Hey Laz, you're just a dead man, you'll never change!". Never! The man felt the rush of breath in his lungs after being emptied. He would never be the same. And oh, it began with the simple word. Eucharisteo. How beautiful.

I will try and post again soon as I travel further into the world of beauty and hunting for the gifts! Please get this book and see for yourself what I'm talking about. Your heart will not regret it. He's a good Father, and every good and perfect gift is HIS!

With all marvel and wonder,
Krystle

A burning and shining lamp.

We are the total sum of all the moments we have ever lived. Whether good or bad we reflect them all completely in our current moments. All the healed spots, wounded hearts and patched bruises. Sometimes the sum of our lives equates to something we never imagined. Moments in the sun followed by periods of extensive darkness.

My heat has been heavy lately for friends that I once knew and those I didn't quite know, but still loved dearly. I have been hit by the weight of the cost of following Christ. My eyes have been opened to the harsh reality of those I once knew who are actually still pursuing Him fervently. I am watching as men and women that I went to bible school with, and looked up to greatly, are no longer loving and following Jesus. I suppose that theologians and scholars would say that they were never truly converted if this were the case, but I see something else entirely. I see prodigals. I see broken hearts. I see wounds that have never healed... and I see sons and daughters missing the greatest relationship they will ever have. A relationship with their Father.

I am searching for words, through Holy Spirit, on how to pray and speak to these hurting friends. I can only wish that I would be in those moments of conversation like Jesus with skin on. My heart yearns within me for the returning of the children to their Father. Oh God, let them return. I know that sometimes we aren't quite as burning and shining as we would like to be as lamps to this world, but I believe that as a church our words can bring healing, or push these sons and daughters further away. I pray that our hearts would begin to cry, COME HOME!!

Imagine with me for a moment... brokenhearted and deeply wounded a son turns his back on his father. With a darkened heart he asks his father for everything he owes him. The broken son leaves with a chip on his shoulder to squander the wealth of his father who worked his life expecting his son to spend his inheritance well. The son spends everything he has within him during a season of rebellion and disgrace. One morning the son wakes up and realizes the hole that he has cultivated within his own heart, and he realized that the time spent wasting his inheritance brought him nowhere near happiness. The son wakes up within a new brokenness that he's never had before. Reluctantly he starts his journey back to his father. As he walks over the hill to his father's house he sees something that he could have never imagined. His father was standing waiting for his son with open arms... and as tears stream down his face he welcomes his son home! No words of condemnation are spoken, but rather love and welcoming comes from his lips. For his son's homecoming he throws a party, a bash to say to the world, "MY SON HAS RETURNED TO ME!!"

Come home, come home! He's waiting.

Beginning to see the light.

Well... here I go again, desiring to blog more frequently and finding myself revisiting after a nearly 6 month stint of absence. Fail. Yet, I decide to make a statement of re-commitment.

The last 6 months or so have been incredibly life-changing and strangely revealing. It's always right when I think I have everything planned out that life shifts and changes in matter of moments. None of the shifting, revealing or changing is negative in any means, but I just realize how infinitely NOT in control I am! Thank God.

During this period of great growth and expansion I have gotten engaged to the man of my dreams, and realized that the rest of my life could be spent doing nothing as long as I am with him. It wasn't easy for us during our early stages of courtship because of naysayers and unforgiving "friends" that believed they had a better opinion over our lives. But we found that there were a small band of people who believed in us more than we did at times... and inside of that small group of belief we saw the heart of Christ. Jonathan has shown me more love than any man that I've ever met, and he believes in me more than I could possibly ever ask for! If all my life consists of serving Jesus and him I would be perfectly content for the rest of my life.

Through my courtship with Jonathan I have cultivated a deeper desire for my Savior to come. I can hardly wait for the day that I see His burning eyes of desire gaze into the depths of my soul. Face to face. It seems as though the closer we get to seeing those burning eyes, the darkness rages more and more. I am so exhausted and tired of ministry the way that the church has done it, and I'm ready for the man Christ Jesus to take His rightful place as headship over the bride. My heart yearns within me.

There is a voice arising from the inside of me, and I can no longer be kept quiet!

Maranatha.