Finding Rest

I didn't want to write this post. As a matter of fact, it was an "avoid at all costs" topic and I would get hot and shaky when someone would ask me when my last post about Costa Rica was going to be up. I had a friend in high school who told me that she never watched the last episode of any TV series so she never had to face the end of it. Similarly, it seemed as though my heart was doing the same exact thing with my mission trip to Costa Rica-- if I don't talk about the end then it doesn't really have to be over.

During a car ride today, my mother asked me why I hadn't posted my last blog about Costa Rica and suddenly felt guilty (thank you--no thank you--spirit of conviction). How incredibly rude of me to bottle up what the Lord had done during the last week of my trip in Costa Rica. The Lord didn't send me all the way to Costa Rica for me to sit in my room and avoid telling people about what He did. In fact, He sent me there for quite the opposite. He called me to Costa Rica for the month of June so that I could come home and proclaim from the mountains how good the King of my heart is. So buckle in and get ready for the sappiest, "God is so good post" that you've possibly ever read because He deserves it.

 This past month, one of the girls on my team would say the phrase "I've learned to find rest in the fact that the Lord is [insert attribute here]." That's a weird thing to say. I'm not going to sugar coat it--that would freak me out. Me, being my busy and restless self, has never really found rest in the Lord (or rest at all, for that matter). Those of you who know me, or probably even those of you who don't know me can attest: I am a planner. If you asked me about my five year plan, I could speak it at you without a single second to think. Because of this, finding rest in the God who likes to wreck my plans isn't quite my forte. It makes me uncomfortable--and if anything, I'll sometimes lose rest over it. And though the Lord is still teaching me to give Him my plans (it's a process, y'all), He did teach me what it was like to seek Him as the God of my reality and guess what: I somehow found rest in that. And let me tell you...it was a fulfilling rest. 

What I mean of God being the lord of my reality is that He is going to work no matter the situation. I think of Jonah and his resentment towards Nineveh. The Lord was working in Jonah's heart and his situation whether he was in the belly of a fish or the city where he was actually called to prophecy.  I fully believe that the Lord is that present in our lives as well. Coming home from Costa Rica was hard because I didn't want to face all of the responsibilities that sat in front of me but I knew that the Lord was present. If He was on the move when I was doing yard work in the mountains of Costa Rica or leading worship in a language that I'm only 22% fluent in (thank you, DuoLingo), then He will be able to move in the plans that sat in front of me in Las Cruces. While I am still working on giving Him my future plans, I can find rest in His goodness and presence in my reality and my "right now."

I apologize for not having a long, completely-relevant scripture passage to enhance my argument but I also learned this past month that sometimes you just have to sit with a proclamation like this and receive it in the way that the Lord is asking you to do so. So I encourage you in this: embrace the God of your reality and live like He is on the move because He undoubtedly is.