Dear Aimee Miller,

Have you spent time with the Lord today? I believe He desires to direct you and show you the woman of Christ he is calling you to be. I encourage you my dear friend to draw near to Him and become intimate, to allow God to spur your wants. Always praying for you.

Peace&love

Things to be thankful for... one day.

Dear Aimee,

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope your day was filled with Turkey and joy. Mine was good for the most part. Family tension is inevitable but thankfully my brother and I were on good terms today; probably because I only saw him for an hour spread throughout the whole day. I had food poisoning this week so I wasn’t able to eat much today but portion control is always a good thing J… I figured I could write about why I’m thankful but instead I’m going to write a list of things I want to do before I get too old. In no particular order, here it is:

·      Take a year to live in France and write my days away like the Lost Generation
·      Spend several years doing mission work
·      Go cliff jumping in every continent (except maybe Antarctica because that water is COLD!)
·      Sleep on the beach
·      Visit New Orleans
·      Road trip America
·      Ride a camel wearing a tunic and turban in the Middle East
·      Make friends with an old man that will give me wise advice
·      Take a homeless person to dinner
·      Go skiing in the mountains and get snow in my hair
·      Figure out a place to serve within the church
·      Get married
·      Have a wife that wants to embrace change
·      Have children with awesome names
·      Become part of an activist group
·      Intern for a rad organization
·      Picture document my life
·      Learn four foreign languages
·      Own a cool shop, like a used book store or something of that sort
·      Graduate from college (but if I can do the rest of this list without this one then I won’t complain)
·      Do a backflip
·      Learn to play an instrument
·      Read an entire book in one day
·      See The Machinist
·      Make friends around the world
·      Live in an Earthship House

I think that’s good for now, I’m sure there’s more, I’ll keep you updated.

Peace&love

Oy!

Aimee,

It's 3:00am and I just finished three hours of resume and cover letter writing. I have a one on one at 10:00am, I'm too nervous to sleep. Not because of the one on one but because I just submitted an application for an internship but I'm not at liberty to disclose where to right now. I can tell you however, I put under my skills: "proficient in growing facial hair." OY!! WHY?!?! I don't know either. I thought it was clever and would make it stand out. They said they wanted to be wowed by my sparkling wit. I'm such an idiot!  Oh well my friend.

Oh, and again, I'm super stoked for you and making it straight to the final interview for Teach for America! That's so wonderful and such a great opportunity!!! I'll be praying for you.

...facial hair growing? really? oy! Oh, and I straight up said I don't have the experience. I STINK at this!

In Regards to His Plan

Dear Aimee,

Today, we finally got to catch up in person after what feels like a month of not seeing each other. It made me happy. However, there are a few things that don't make me happy: the fact that people leave the role they play in my life, worries, uncertainty, enmity, and sin.

The point of development for this tangled web of dislike starts with uncertainty. We are uncertain. Every single person that lives, has lived, and will live exists in a state of uncertainty. No one knows what the next five minutes of his/her life will bring. I could die or get a call from a friend or fall asleep before I even finish this letter. I believe that we as people can be certain of only two truths. We can be certain of the Lord and we can be certain that our lives will go on. If there is only two things we can be certain of then that leaves a lot to be uncertain of and this uncertainty leads to worry. But why worry? If we are certain of the Lord then we are certain that He is present. That He is in control. That He knows where our lives will go. Sadly, I know for myself I tend to focus on the other certainty that life will continue. This is a great thing but when we focus on the fact that life will continue then we focus on our earthly lives too often instead of our eternal ones. We begin to worry about how to control the things around us. We focus on the future, relationships, health, wealth, and time. We worry. We put into perspective how short our lives are and how fast they'll go by. We realize that our lives will quickly never be as they presently are. We realize that our friends and the people around us will one day be moved on to their own lives. But why focus on the leaving? Wouldn't it be so much better to focus on the people who will take up new roles in our lives? The people we will meet, serve, love, and learn from? Those people are uncertain though, we don't know whom they are or if there will even be there. We convince ourselves that we need to hold onto what is ours. Our friends. Our families. Our money. Our time. Our space. Our love. We become more compulsive hoarders than the ones on TLC. We hoard everything we are too worried to lose because we are so uncertain as to whether or not we'll always have the things of this present moment. We begin to form a sense of enmity. We become hostile to the world. We believe that the world is trying to take what is ours, trying to replace what we know. We oppose these attempts and close our borders to an extent. We focus on our things. We build our own community and create a division between the world and us hoping that in the end the world will not take from us. When we fall into this mess of a mindset we fall into sin. We separate ourselves from the uncertainties and cling to the things of this world. We spend more time with friends instead of in prayer. We read textbooks and novels more than the Bible. We search google and seek humanly advice instead of seeking the Lord. We put barriers between God and ourselves, thus allowing ourselves to revert back to our sinful nature. We become greedy and selfish, wanting all that we can call ours. We focus solely on the people we worry about losing and neglect all others around us.

We have to be certain of the Lord. If we are certain of the Lord then we can be certain of His word. We can take comfort when His word tells us that nothing is uncertain to Him. When He tells us we have no need to worry. When He tells us that he will provide for us. Where our uncertainty causes us to worry and our worry causes us to focus on people/things that are ours and our intense focus causes us to create a sense of enmity and our hostility causes us to sin; our certainty of the Lord causes us find peace and our peace grants us the ability to accept changes and our acceptance grants us the ability to love freely and our love grants us the ability to keep a guard up to sin. 

So, Aimee, while there are a few things I don't like in and of themselves I realize there are greater reasons as to why I do not like such things. I am also reminded just how important the Lord's role is in our lives is and how much better things would be if I gave him more of me. 

It looks like today was an even better day than I had originally thought.