This weekend has been great in many ways. I have had many good conversations with friends about God. I absolutely love spending time with my sisters in Christ talking about God and His love. I also got to see the kids yesterday which is always a blessing. I love those kids. This week we talked about David and Goliath and the kids loved it. Each week the kids interact more with the lesson and with the activities we are doing, which is exciting to see. A couple of the kids which normally have kind of a grumpy attitude and don't smile, smiled this week! Which of course made me smile, I love it when Sharon smiles and interacts with the teachers and the other children. There were also a few new girls who came to the class and are coming back next week. There were also more classroom helpers from within the community. A couple of the girls are teenagers who have children in our class and one teenage girl just decided to start helping, I love it. This week I tried interacting more with the helpers and the other teachers. I am not sure what God is going to do with this but I am excited to see what happens. Discipleship is something that God has been placing on my heart.

I am going to be very transparent so God guide my words as I write. A couple of weeks ago, there was a sermon in church about Hebrews 5:12-14....

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

This sermon really stuck with me and it still is. You see for months I have been struggling with God. I came here and thought okay God help me learn Spanish and train me for ministry and has He ever! Not only has He given me a language lesson, but He has completely ripped open my mind, my heart, and my eyes. At first, I will admit I was angry. I complained and called out to God, asking why in the world would He take me to this country only to bring up things that I didn't want to talk about. I stayed for along time in the dark dwelling in my own self-pity and crying a lot. I will admit I was completely lost and depressed. I just wanted to run and hide, but I am in Costa Rica and the only place I could "run to" was downtown San Jose. All of my security blankets in life had been stripped away and here I am in Costa Rica trying to pick up the pieces of my life and hold everything together.

The streets of downtown San Jose became my friend in the middle of my first trimester. I am not sure why God brought me comfort when I walked those streets but He did. In some way, He was using those streets to reach out to me. I would look around and see people smiling and laughing, but then I would look into the eyes of some people and see the same sadness in their eyes as the sadness that I was trying to hold inside. I felt broken and lost. In the midst of all of this, I would get glimpses of hope through words of encouragement that were spoken to me or that I would find in Scripture, but honestly I never really took those words to heart. I am not sure why, believe me I wanted to but as soon as that hope and comfort would come I felt like it was taken away. I had this spiritual blindness over my eyes and as much as I struggled and pushed my way towards God, I was growing weak inside. I knew something was wrong. Looking back I can see God in my moments of weakness and sorrow, and I know that in my blogs you can see Him to because all of things that I have written about are things that He was teaching me or trying to.

However, this sadness and darkness continued into my second trimester, this trimester. God gave me someone who I felt I could open up to and talk with, but I often felt guilty and shame for opening up to her. I thought for sure she would runaway or reject me at some point and then I would be left alone again, just me and God (who I thought was clearly not answering me). I thought I had to bear all of these issues myself. I thought there is something wrong with me and if I can't fix it then how is someone else going to be able to fix it. I wanted to be "fixed" as if I were in a truck that was broken down on the side of the road. I was just waiting for it (my life) to start back up again or for someone to pass-by the road and offer to lift me out of this state of mind. Well, there was no quick fixes. You see things got worst before they got better. God sent a few people into my life to help me but they helped me by holding me accountable and by asking hard questions (which is exactly what I needed but that was not what I wanted). They asked questions that frankly I didn't want to answer and that I thought I didn't have the answers to. In all of this, I failed to really acknowledge God as my master and as my Lord. I was trying to fix everything on my own, I was in some way trying to play the role of god in my life, as if I could have control over everything.

God has and continues to be faithful in all of this. The more I continued opening up my mind and my heart to others and the more I started being honest not only with others but also myself, the more God started revealing Himself to me. I started to see more of God for who He is (my Lord, Savior, Master, Redeemer, Friend, and First love) and who I am (a rebellious, self-centered, sinful girl who is saved by grace and seated in Christ in the heavenly realms, a child of God made in His image). I have for many years lived on spiritual milk and at this time when I should be teaching I have had to be taught the basic principles of the faith all over again. This was hard for me and very humbling. God has had to allow me to be broken down in order to lift me up in Christ. God continues to train me and guide me on the path of righteousness. I have always made excuses for my behavior and for my actions, but now I am calling them what they are disobedience to God. I no longer want to live in disobedience but in obedience. I want to live with an eternal mindset and glorify God in everything I do. I know there will be times when I fail, but thank God that my victory is Christ, whose Spirit lives within me. Guilt, shame, and worry will no longer control me but the love, grace, and peace of God will.

"Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only, that but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us". - Romans 5:1-5