Beloved

 Today I was going to write about the gift God gave me Thursday of being able to play softball and how much joy that gave me, but God seems to have other plans. Today, you will actually be able to read part of my own personal journalings in my Moleskine.

“Oh, today how I am blessed! Oh, today how God is with me! I hate that in the darkness I oft forget what God has made so plainly known! Oh, but I am a new creation and His mercies are new each morning. I do not want to leave this place or this moment, though I will move forward in joy. I will not always have these mountains or this sunshine, but I will have the Lord, who is with me always as He is now. The heavens are surely declaring the glory of God as I sit beneath this tree. The choir is practicing now and singing ‘Hallelujah!’ with my heart. The smell of the dirt and grass and the warmth are lulling me to sleep, but my senses are too stimulated for that; the joy in my heart is too great. The sky could not be more blue nor the clouds more soft. The new vegetation that has become familiar and the norm smile upon me with no hint of sadness at my preparing to leave them. We are now old friends who will never be apart no matter how much space separates us.

What God has in store for me, I don’t know. Mountains and jungles like I have seen here? The snow of the tundra? The cornfields of home? It’s no matter. I am the Lord’s beloved, a term I’ve somehow never felt appropriate for myself until this day. How have I missed His wooing me like this before? Is this what I came here to learn? A greater depth of God’s love for me? To be able to say honestly, ‘Lord, my God, I want nothing more than You. Let me know You more and that will be enough. If I have no friend or lover save You, it is more than enough,’? Perhaps. I cannot claim to know the things which He alone can know. But I know that I must continue to grow and change; I can never be the same.”

And then it gets into things not necessary to be shared with anyone but God, but I will let you know how my meandering ends.

“I do not want to leave PNG, but when I do, I will continue to seek the Lord in everything and strive to follow Him with all my heart. Life will not always be as picturesque as it is today, but my God will always be as loving and perfect as He has always been. I will always be His beloved, even in my darkest hour, and He will always be mine. I need not more than this, for I am already blessed beyond measure.”

I hope this makes sense to you all. I know it is a bit out of place without context and the middle, but those things are best kept off the Internet. Some things are too sacred to be plastered everywhere, especially when so fresh and new, but I did want to share with you all some of what I learned today.