Right now there are a million different things I wish that I could tell my mom.
How much I miss her. How I miss her voice. How frustrated I am that the device I could use to talk to her is five feet away, but I’m not allowed to use… for good reason (or so I’ve been told, haha). How much I miss my siblings. How much I miss hugs from my dad. How tired I am of hearing their voices over the phone and not in person. How much I miss all the little things that they do that seem to make my life complete.
I miss so much at home back in the United States, but somehow THIS is exactly where I’m meant to be. BECAUSE, at the same time I feel so ridiculously full.
God loves me! Isn’t that amazing? God, the Lord of all the nations loves me even though it was my sin that put Jesus on the cross.
God loves me, even when I doubt that love or go looking for it somewhere else.
God loves me, even though I try to put that love in a box to attempt at comprehending why.
And why does He love me?
Why did Jesus die for me?
Why would He give up all the glory of heaven for poverty and sacrifice?
Because He saw my incompleteness and my brokenness and wanted to fix that.
He wanted me where I was at because He is a GOD OF LOVE!!!
He knows that I’m not perfect and He doesn’t expect that perfection from me. I can’t let Him down, because I was never holding Him up in the first place. He holds me up and in Him I am firm and secure; he is my own personal anchor. He called me by name and has redeemed me as His beloved. And there is NOTHING that could ever separate me from the love of my Father.
That realization hit me at the top of Cerra Negro, a volcano here in Nicaragua. The climb made me want to die, but the view from the top was worth it. From the top it felt like you could see the whole world. I ‘ve never felt so close to heaven. The verse that hit me was Romans 8:38-39. Truly I saw great heights and low depths from the top of that volcano. I had felt heaven this week and I had felt hell. And through it all God loved me, and He still does.
My heads spins as I try to understand the purity and the depth of this love, that I could do nothing to deserve or match. I am surrounded by God’s love for me and I pray that I stay there!
