What my Best Friend's Engagement has taught me

A little over a week ago I was so incredibly blessed to see the engagement of two people I love dearly. I watched Dustin, one of the best, most Godly men I know get down on one knee and ask Jen, one of my very best friends in the world, to marry him. I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up.

They have each found the right person. More importantly, they are the right people for each other.

Over the past year I've been figuring out what it means, at this point in my life and in my walk, to have a successful relationship. God has been putting couples and scriptures, and stories continuously in my path. Couples who's relationships are centered in Christ, that are beautiful because of it. Dustin and Jen have been a big part of showing me what that looks like, what it looks like for a Godly man to pursue a woman. What it looks like for a man to be strong in his faith and for a couple to grow in that together.

I recently listened to a fantastic series by Andy Stanley, The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating. One of the episodes focuses on "The Right Person Myth." When I find the right person, everything will be okay. Or if I can just find the right person, I'll be happy. Today we spend so much time focused on what that other person needs to be.

For me, he needs to be a believer. No question. He needs to be a traveler, an adventurer. I want someone that will try new things with me. Ultimately, I want someone that will love me and push me in my relationship with Christ.

But what kind of woman is that man looking for?

The point that Andy Stanley really drives home is becoming the person that the person you are looking for, is looking for. That having a successful relationship is less about finding the right person, and more about being the right person.

A friend recently told me that when he read my thoughts about being on an all girls team, he knew then that it would be good for me. He knew that having the summer to think clearly, and not be surrounded by distraction would grow me. He said that he had been listening to a podcast that said something along the lines of "you can't be the person God wants you to be, if you're with the wrong person." and that it is better to be single, and living in God's will for you, than to be chasing after the wrong relationship. I think am realizing that as a girl bombarded with today's world I am constantly seeking relationship. That right relationship. I rarely give myself the time that I was given this summer to shut the world out and hear what God is saying.

We live in a world of Happily Ever After stories, and media that tells me I need to find the one.

I am striving to live for my God that challenges me to be the one.

I truly believe that the relationships I have seen that are really working, relationships that are actively growing in God, are doing so because the people in them made sure that they were the right people for each other. In the past year or so, I have made it a point to pray for the man I will one day marry, pray for the man he is. But in the past month or so I have made it a point to pray that God will make me into the woman I hope that man is praying for.

God is constantly working on my heart, he is revealing himself to me in new ways all the time, and through that I am growing closer to him and, I hope, growing more into the woman I am called to be. Living for God, living against the way the world tells me to live, isn't easy. It's a daily decision to say, I am going to follow you, and not the world. Sometimes I fall on my face. But my God is so good, he is so good and he picks me up and brushes me off and says "Okay Emily, lets try this again."

I am so sinful, and so imperfect, and so ridiculously glad that there is grace for that. My college pastor recently said "It's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way." I know that daily, I fall far from being the woman I am called to be. But God is revealing it to me, and showing me his glory, and the opportunities I have to grow from the sinful person I am. Growth that comes from Him, from trusting in Him, and not from anything I can do.

At the end of the day I want to be a woman that is earnestly trying to seek the Lord. I can hope and pray against it, but I know that I will fall and sin. But my God is calling me to be a woman that is in love with him, and when I fall I know he will catch me.

God has been working on my heart. He's been showing me my worth so much lately. And I am thankful for Jen, because she has been so instrumental and encouraging in that. But he's also calling me to recognize my worth, and my potential that I rarely even begin to reach for.

I am striving to live for my God that challenges me to be the one. I can't tell you how happy I am for my friend. I know she loves God beautifully, and she has found a man that will lead her in that. She has found a man who loves the Lord, and loves her. She is striving daily to be the woman that God is calling her to be, and through that she has found a man doing the same.

Watching Jen and Dustin this past weekend I realized that yes, I want that. Whether we are always willing to admit it to ourselves or not, most girls want that. We want that coupley cuteness. But more than that, I want the confidence that they have that their relationship is centered in Christ. The confidence that Jen has that Dustin will always be a spiritual leader for her. I am confident that my friend is marrying a man that will push her to grow in Christ, that will challenge her and lead her. And I am confident that Dustin that is marrying a woman that will love him because he loves Christ. That their lives together will be lives of daily worship.

Realizing my Worth

The last few months God has really been working on my heart. He's been showing me what it really looks like to be his daughter. He's been showing me what my worth is. Looking back I realize that God began teaching me this before I even left America, but it wasn't until I was away from the distractions of home, and found myself really listening to him, that I began to hear and understand him.

I have found such beautiful, encouraging community in the past year. God has brought people into my life that have been intentional with me, people that have wanted to really know me. People that have poured into me in ways I don't think they even realize. People that have been quietly, but constantly teaching me to love myself well.

As a 20 year old girl woman living in todays world I am constantly told what the world thinks my worth is. I am bombarded by it. It is utterly inescapable. It is entirely overwhelming.

I can't open a magazine without being told what to wear, or how to act, or "how to get the guy."

Social Media has me constantly seeking the approval of my peers, because we all know that if you didn't get enough likes on that photo or that status, it just wasn't pretty enough, good enough, funny enough. We are I am constantly allowing, in fact eagerly awaiting the approval of my 'friends' and 'followers'.

In a society raised on Happily-ever-afters and Romantic Comedies, I'm told that I often believe that my worth lies in companionship. Finding the ever elusive One that is somewhere out there.

There are days, the majority, that the world leaves me self conscious. That cause me to question who I am. But I'm not like her. I don't look that that. I'm just not as smart as her. Days that the world does what the world does best; knocks me down. But when I'm letting my days be dictated by the world, the flip side isn't much better. When the pages of a magazine tell me I'm doing okay, or my 'followers' really like what I've been doing that day, or that cute guy at the coffee shop compliments me, I'm left thinking that this is where my worth lies. These are the things that are important, that define me.

As a 20 year old in todays world I have a am desperately trying to escape the distorted view I have of myself. It is a constant, daily battle to seek the Lord in the midst of a world that is yelling for me to find my worth in any and everything else. There are so many days that I fail, that I stumble fall flat on my face, and give in to what the world says.

Through the community I have been so blessed to have found, I have been slowly shedding lies about myself. Lies I have believed for too long.

While I was in India my team and I wrote out a list of lies that we believe about ourselves. It wasn't hard to fill my page. The strange thing about it was, I was acknowledging that they were lies. As I wrote each one on my page under the heading Lies, I knew that they weren't true... but I still believed them. I still measured myself by what they said.

We were then given a fresh sheet of paper with the heading Truths. We took every lie, and wrote the truth to it. The truths that, at least in my case, I really didn't believe. The truths did not flow as easily from my pen as the lies had. Even as I sat in a room with ten girls that loved me, and wanted to pour into me, to affirm me, the enemy was still in my ear.

We took turns standing in front of the rest of the girls on our team and read aloud our truths. Saying, not only out loud but in front of other people, positive things that we didn't necessarily believe about ourselves was hard. Really hard. Tearing down lies that have deep rooted themselves in you, is painful.

But it was also freeing. To know that you can say those things, that somewhere inside you they do ring true. To know that ten other women, your sisters in christ, heard you affirm yourself and love yourself and that are fighting the same battle along side you.

I am a young Christian woman whose worth is in the Lord. I am a young Christian woman who is constantly told that that is not enough, that the world wants needs more from me. I know I am not in minority. The world wants me to think that I am alone in feeling this way. I am not.

The past year God has blessed me with unbelievable community. Community that has accepted me and loved me and is showing me that those truths I don't fully believe about myself are just that. Truths. God gave us community to experience his love.

In his beautifully written, somewhat controversial book Washed and Waiting, Wesley Hill speaks a lot about how important community is. Hill struggles a lot with insecurities and understanding his worth in a world that doesn't always understand him. After being affirmed by a fellow brother in christ, Hill writes

"with that gesture, and hundreds of others like it that I have received from fellow Christians, I have sensed God's love in a way that perhaps I would not have been able to in any other way. The remedy for loneliness- if there is such a thing this side of God's future- is to learn, over and over again, to do this: to feel God's keeping presence embodied in the human members of the community of faith, the church."

Now that I am home, and my time with my team feels like a lifetime ago, I can look at the page in my journal where I taped in my Truths sheet. I can read them and know that I am not a slave to the lies that the world tells me, that I am free from them. That I am redeemed by my God that loves me through my flaws and my insecurities. My God that seeks after me daily, that surrounds me in community and covers me in love. My God that paid the ultimate price for me. That is my worth.

My wonderful, hilarious, dysfunctional team. 

When the Henna Fades

I've been back in American for a week and a half.

I have a toilet that flushes with ease.
My showers are hot, and never run out of water.
I have eaten meat, and salad, and ice cream made with real milk.
I have coffee. Real coffee. 
My house is air conditioned, and the electricity stays on all day.

I can fix my hair and wear clean clothes and look like a real human being.

I've been to church. In English. With worship songs and sermons that aren't playing through an iPod speaker.

I've been reunited with friends and family that I missed terribly while I was away.

I've been asked a million times "how was your trip?" or "what was the best part?"

How was my trip?
What was the best part?

Our last few days in India we talked about how to handle questions like that, how we could possibly sum up everything great and beautiful and heartbreaking and terrible that we saw in a neat little sentence. No one wants to stand in line in the grocery store, or at the back of the church after the service and hear you pour your heart out and cry and laugh for an hour while you remember the faces and the laughter and the love you found over the summer.

"It was incredible, God was so good. I fell completely in love with the kids there. I'm glad to be home, but I miss it so much, and I can't wait to go back." 

Thats what people want to hear. And every word of that is true. My summer was incredible. God was, and is, so ridiculously good. He showed himself to me in crazy ways this summer. My whole heart belongs to those wonderful kids at SCH in India. I am glad to be home. I'm glad to be with my friends and my family, and back in my community, but everyday my heart aches for my team, for my kids, for my beautiful, simple life in India.  That's what people want to hear, and its the truth, but it doesn't begin to cover my summer. It doesn't begin to cover the way my heart was turned over and over the past two months. 

I could talk for an hour about the way Melanie* giggles, and how sweet the sound is.

I could talk for an hour about carrying Palmer* on my back, running around the courtyard with him.

I could talk for days about the ways my team impacted me. About the love they showed me, and how much I saw Jesus in them. About how much they taught me about myself.

I could talk for days about the work that SCH is doing. The incredible way it is impacting these kids lives. The way it impacted my life. I could talk for days about the things SCH is doing and still not be done.

No matter how hard I try, I don't think I'll ever be able to really explain the way I felt at the homes. I'll never really be able to tell you about the moment that I realized I was completely in love with these kids. I can't find words enough to explain the ache I feel being apart from them. The mix of joy and sadness I feel when I look at pictures of their smiling faces.

A few days ago one of my teammates text me.

"India really happened, right?"

I looked down at my hand, the outlines of the intricate Henna, done so skillfully, fading to a light orange. A ghost left over from what seems like an eternity ago. It really happened.

Is it possible that less than two weeks ago I was in India? 

I'm glad for the carved elephant on my keychain.
I'm glad for the ribbon tied around my bible, a ribbon I found at the Faith Home while we prayed over the rooms the children would move into. 
I'm glad for the notes taped into my journal, notes of love and encouragement from my team. My family.
I'm glad for the paint on my Chacos, left over from days spent singing with my team and painting the walls of the girls home.
I'm glad for photographs. To be able to see those gorgeous smiles and remember their laughter. 
I'm glad that when I am curled up in my bed alone, missing the 20 girls that I shared a house with, I can pull my Indian quilt around me and know that, yes, it was real. It happened. 

I miss India. I miss my team. 

But I'm excited for this semester. I'm excited for my community and my friends. I'm excited for God to continue growing me. To challenge me and to reveal more of himself to me. I'm ready for Crosspoint, and Community Groups, and Taco Tuesdays. I'm ready for Pot-luck at Terrell's and days of too much coffee at Java Jacks. 

And I'm excited to pray everyday for my kids. I'm excited to check the SCH blog daily. I wait anxiously for updates from the long-term volunteers still there, stalking their facebooks enviously. 

I am so excited for what this semester looks like, for the things God has in store for me. Adjusting to being back is hard. Harder than I ever thought it would be. Its hard to be separated from my team, the only people that felt the things I felt this summer. But I am adjusting. I'm learning to love my kids from afar until the time that I can, God willing, return to them.