prone to wander

Lord if i'm ever neglecting you, i pray that every ounce of my body can tell... 

that my spirit is not well if something comes before you... 

that my desire, my craving, is to fill that void with YOU.

This is the prayer i wrote in my journal while on an airplane {i adopted it from my adventure friend}. i returned to life in Austin with a refreshed spirit after our escape to sweet Tennessee.

i can't say that this prayer kicked in the day i returned to real life, but sure enough, God was faithful. He answered my request with tangible, unavoidable evidence that was so real it actually made me laugh.

i went to the UT football game this past Saturday afternoon with a group of my close friends, and afterwards we went to a house to order pizza and watch some more football. As we walked up to the front door, i realized i had been very quiet and felt off. Where would i have rather been? Who did i want to be with? What did i want to be doing? All these questions came into my head as i tried to figure out why i wasn't content. My birthday was a couple hours away, so i was even more confused why i wasn't excited and i blamed it on the lie in my head that it wouldn't be a fun birthday {pathetic}.

During halftime i abruptly stepped out of the room to make a phone call, thinking that would clear my head. Well, the phone call itself wasn't the answer, but going outside was definitely a godsend. It was just getting dark and the air was cool and clear... and so i just started walking away. Talking out loud, saying things i was thankful for {might sound cheesy but it was about as sincere as it gets} and praising Jesus for the gifts in my life. The cool part was that this wasn't me.
It was coming from my soul and i knew it.
And the next thing i knew i was singing,

"Come thou fount of every blessing,

tune my heart to sing thy grace.

Streams of mercy, never ceasing

call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise thy mount, i'm fixed upon it,

mount of thy unchanging love.

O to grace how great a debtor

daily i'm constrained to be.

Let thy goodness, like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord i feel it,

Prone to leave the God i love.

So here's my heart, Lord take and seal it,

seal if for thy courts above."

My sweet Savior knew i hadn't spent any time with Him that day. He plucked me out of my little world and tuned, bound, sealed my heart. i realized this as i sang, and without another thought, took off running. In my cowboy boots and everything. i ran until i felt peace flood my soul, and then i walked back, smiling at my Father's goodness and laughing at my own blindness to what was wrong. What a sweet reminder to pray big. Ask for tangible things, not just up-in-the-air, fluffy prayers, because if they line up with God's will for us He won't withhold them. He could just be waiting for us to ask.

sweet tennessee

A week ago i flew to Nashville, Tennessee to reunite with my Windy Gap family for the weekend. i believe that God can reach us in any situation, but in this case it took going to another state for me to learn a couple valuable bits of wisdom.

i cannot write this without talking about freedom, because that has been the theme of this current season of my life. And freedom is exactly what Jesus gave me as i drove down those Tennessee highways, surrounded by clean air and brilliant trees and friends who were hand-picked for me by my King himself.

Another kind of freedom dawned on me too... involving my relationship status. That Friday night we went to a concert where a significant percentage of the audience was believers, and i met some great people that reminded me of my community back in Austin. One thing about my wonderful community is our tendency to get caught up in thoughts such as, "Well this is it. This is our pool of people [to date]" and, "It's the ideal place to meet my spouse..." and, "i'm running out of time..." and, "What am i doing wrong?" 

What are we doing wrong? We're limiting God. i can't say i've gone off the deep end in these thoughts, but i'll admit they definitely apply to me. And last weekend God said, "See! Don't waste time worrying, planning, scheming, because you don't even know what is out there. I am limitless. My plans for you are beyond your capacity of understanding." And just like that, i felt free.

i got to fly home to Austin with one of those hand-picked friends, and she has a thing for letter-writing. In October she wrote me a note opening with this:

"Galatians 5:1– 'It is for FREEDOM that Christ has set us free. Stand firm and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery.' FREEDOM. I hope today you're chasing that instead of affection or self-righteousness or earthly crowns. Just freedom. Open-handed and playfully saying YES to spontaneity. 'You, my SISTER, were called to be free...'"

Open-handed, playful, unchained. He set you and i free two thousand years ago for us to live in freedom.