Well, I’m home!

Back in Tulsa, Oklahoma: the place I was born & raised, the place my family and friends live, the place I know inside & out, but somehow it feels very different.

My friend Kaci said it well, “once you say yes to the Lord you don’t really go back.”

When I said yes to leave home, I didn’t realize that the life I was leaving I would never really have back. And it dawned on me that I wasn’t going ‘back’ home but I moving foreword and it just happened to be home.

It’s been an interesting few weeks, and I’m not sure I’ve fully reconciled all the ways I’ve changed with my old familiar place here.

But one thing I do know is that the Lord has been so faithful in taking care of me. Even on the loneliest days he has sent people who understand, when I feel lost he has sent me voices of truth, and when I need to celebrate all that he has done he has sent ears to listen to the stories.

Home is another adventure that is unfolding, and I know that for as long as I’m here it will be good, because the Lord is good.

My heart is expectant.

A few weeks ago Brian and I were on a bus and I found myself watching the lady sitting in front of me. She was dirty and greasy and picking her nose and quite frankly I was a little grossed out. She was with a pretty handsome man and I wondered how she pulled that off, how she was able to land someone seemingly very out of her league.

Then I heard a very familiar voice say, “I think she’s beautiful.”

That ‘b’ word has been a hard one for me to accept and understand. I’ve come from a place of brokenness having eating disorders and low self esteem to a place of beginning to think that I actually am beautiful regardless of how I feel or how people treat me. Even if I’m not a certain weight, even if my legs aren’t shaved, even if I’m not wearing mascara, I am still beautiful.

I am not beautiful because the world says that I am, but because God says that I am.

The things that the Lord speaks over us may not make sense sometimes: like when he calls sinners- holy, or broken people- worthy, or prostitutes- pure. But it doesn’t matter if we actually are what the Lord calls us by the world’s standards, because the world’s standards don’t matter. They don’t matter and they aren’t truth.

The woman sitting in front of me on the bus is beautiful because that’s what the Lord says that she is.
The voice that created light, dry land, and living things says that we are beautiful, delighted in, treasured, pure, whole, worthy, beloved children.

Who am I to disagree?