Thanksgiving 07

My Quadmates: Laura,Me, and Lauren


Hey Everyone, How is it Thanksgiving already? September just flew by so fast. It started off really slow for me but it definitely sped off once classes started on their way. I'm only taking two classes this semester as I only need to take 4 second semester to graduate. I'm loving the two classes I'm taking and I'm growing a lot already. I'm taking Psychology of Counseling and Classics of Christian Spirituality this semester and I'm loving both of them. You're probably wondering what I do with the rest of my life if I'm just taking 2 classs (oh and I also sit in on a class just cause its with my favorite prof). Well Tuesdays are my busy day cause I have class all day then I leave at 4:15 for a joes place leadership meeting. then at 6pm we have dinner and do bible study with about 2-3 dozen youth who come out each week.

This week was awesome as we talked about self esteem and how we need to find our beauty in God and in inner beauty. I know this is something that we hear all the time but there is power in talking about it because its something that almost everyone struggles with and yet never talks about. Satan definitely uses it as a strong hold in so many peoples lives as He doesn't want us to live in the freedom of who God has created us to be. In our small group we decided to go around the circle and share one thing we would change about our physical appearance and our personality. It was interesting the things people shared. After everyone was done sharing we went around the circle again but this time everyone else got to share things about the person that they loved and saw as beautiful. I feel this was really powerful for a lot of the girls as they realized how many other people see them as beautiful and how the majority of the things people shared were about who they were on the inside. I know for me this week it helped me not to give into the lies Satan tries to convince me are true about myself.
Our Friday night small group with the girls has been going really well. I love these girls more and more each week. All three of the girls who are coming each week are at different stages in their walk with God and God is moving individually in each of their lives. They are hungry and longing to meet with God. Please keep them in your prayers.
Right now I am in Winnipeg visiting my friend Lynnette for the holiday. I drove out here Thursday with 3 other students from Briercrest. The one girls name is Megan and she is blind. I have spent some time with her before as she was my friend Angela's roommate last year. However, I felt so blessed to spend 5 hours with her in the car just really hearing her heart and getting to know her. Some ways she really encouraged and challenged me in was faith. When I am with Megan she really reminds me of the passage where Jesus says that we have to become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Megan has such child-like faith, joy, love and kindness. She has to have faith every morning that the people she meets will lead her with integrity. She loves God with all her heart and her greatest desire is to love and know him more each day. Thursday morning we went to a sunrise service at the edge of Caronport.
Megan can see bright lights and she was telling me how beautiful and amazing the sunrise was that morning and how she is more in love with Jesus today then she was yesterday because she met with him in such a new way. Through talking with Megan she really challenged me to recognize God's faithfulness and grow in my love for Him. She is so passionate when she speaks about her love for God and she just jumps and bounces for joy when she praises Him. I truly feel although her blindness can keep her from a lot of things I truly feel she is blessed in so many ways that seeing people are not. I wish I had the freedom to not care what people think of me when I'm excited and I wouldn't be reserved and keep in my passions in fear of what people will think. Megan just expresses herself freely because she doesn't care if she looks foolish in the eyes of others. Her God is all that matters to her. It is my prayer that the more I become friends with her the more free I will become in expressing my love for God even if the world says I look foolish. I want to become like a child in my Father's presence with each and every passing day!
This time with Megan made me think of 1 Corinthians 12 which says
12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.^[a] All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Some day Megan will see perfectly the beauty of our God with her physical eyes, but in my heart I feel as though she can see Him better than I can right now, because the eyes of her heart are focused on Him, and she lives so fully in faith that she is not distracted by the things of this world that keep her from keeping her eyes focused on Him.

May we truly learn to live in such a way that is in full abandon to the lover of our souls. May we all grow to be children of faith and live in that freedom so that we are not reserved to love God with all our hearts.