Equality amongest Poverty

Today I was talking to Ricky and realized this semester hasn’t directed me to a “group” of people I feel God is drawing me to; but a truth every person holds while few allot attention to. I used to always feel drawn to homeless people growing up. I would cry whenever someone would pray over me for the poor, I would break whenever my heart would grasp the reality of their desperation and my God of restoration. I used to think God was preparing me for ministry with the homeless and was 99% sure I was going to be working with PATH (people assisting the homeless) this semester. Four months ago God told me Inner change, I didn’t understand, but waited expectantly as my mentor John said he could set up a homeless ministry for me in Mac Arthur Park. I have grown since then and learned many things about myself and others from observing the simple lives of the poor in Spirit, not just the obviously impoverished.
I have been blessed by new friendships with Latino kids from the ages of 6-14, my host mom Jisela, all the missionaries at Innerchange, and friends on LA term. Each interaction has revealed a similarity that all of us possess in the depths of or heart. Some will humbly admit it and others will burry it with pride. I have recognized that we die without relationships, authenticity, and we die without the renewal that comes when admitting our disparity.
I have been getting to know a 9th grader named Millie who has been more honest with me in the last month, than some longtime friends. Her honesty is powerful. Millie only lives with her mom. Her Dad is in jail and has been shot twice due to a life of dealing drugs. Millie’s memories of her Dad consist of being forgotten about at elementary school, unreturned phone calls, or letters she has sent of encouragement and love that still continue with no response. The second conversation we had, Millie had found enough trust in me to reveal the loneliness she feels since she has no friends who understand her. Each day feels like a repeat of the one before. Millie has a long list of goals she has combined of the years for her future. While this offers hope, her mom longs to continue living with Millie after high school, without Millie she has nothing. But without a hope for a new future, Millie has nothing. “Some days I wish I would just wave a magic wand and have a completely different life. I want to wake up in the morning and only think about what I have to wear, nothing else.” Yesterday Millie showed me a picture of her Dad holding her when she was one. As her heart longs for this relationship, she can’t remember a time her Dad has held her since. She continues to unconditionally love her Father who gives her no attention.
While my heart breaks at the fact that I cannot do anything to help Millie but love and pray for her, I have learned more through her testimony than she knows. Millie becomes an open book, because she literally has nothing else. She has to be real, she has to go deep, this is her cry for help. This concept challenged me when I asked myself… how often am I honest with myself, and even others. How often do I admit the true poverty of my own Spirit. In this society it is easy to pretend our emptiness is small enough to be quickly filled, we don’t admit the feeling of complete defeat. This only feeds the disease of spiritual complacency.
The other day a friend of mine said she has been trying to come up with ways to make her quite times more exciting. While I have also done this before when I have become board with my spirituality, this concept of “decorating” a “boring” God didn’t sit right in my soul. Why does God have to be amplified by the world to attract outsiders? Why do we feel the need to make our God more attractive to ourselves and others? Isn’t our God creative enough in designing the heart, mind and soul of every human being, along with all of creation? Why do we get board of God and feel that the “tingling” feeling of God can only come by regenerating our own heart?
These questions have been lingering in my mind over the past few weeks. I was reading in Matthew 25 where Jesus is speaking about our mandate towards taking care of the least of these. He finishes by saying, if you ignore these people, you ignore me. Besides the fact that those who have much should give to those with little, why does Jesus constantly draw us to the poor, hungry, and imprisoned? Simply enough, that is where He says He is, and I believe He desires our heats to be.
We so often let the world classify the amount of need we have. This lets us believe the lie that we are spiritually more stable than the homeless alcoholic or incarcerated. That they need what we have. Yes they need the resurrection of Jesus Christ live in their life, but don’t we all?

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
- Matt 5:3-6
Millie taught me to become honest with the disparity in my own heart. No matter how put together my life may look, the more God shows me the holes in my life, the more I hunger to be filled. The more I come to God with the knowledge of who I truly am, I am overwhelmed by the character of my God. His ever flowing mercy and grace, and desire to fill our hunger and release our imprisoned bodies. The Spirit of God unveils the ugly truth of our sin, but we can find comfort in the fact that we all have crap in our lives that will never stop. Jesus drew me to Millie because she possessed the gift of admitting the depth of her thirst, her need for people and her need for God. I want Millie’s desire to be comforted, healed and filled. That is where the radical true Spirit of God is found. If we want to daily walk with an extreme God, we have to become extremely real with the truth of our sin. The creative excitement of God stops, when we stop being honest with who we really are and what God wants to heal, mend and redevelop.

“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For you so not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart- these O God you will not despise.”
- Psalms 51: 15-17
The poor have filled my hunger for reality as I realize I am no different than them. I desire to be honest about the places in my life that need the reviving Spirit of God. This is a place every culture and class of people can be directed towards, for were we meet the poverty of our soul, we will meet the overwhelming power of a loving God of grace who desires to fill the hungry, not the full. If we are all laying flat on the ground, and realize that naturally we will always be there without the supernatural resurrecting blood of Christ, there will be no hierarchy of who has it and who doesn’t. We are all poor, in need of comfort, and righteousness, it is the honest that inherit the kingdom of God. I have learned from those who have nothing else to show but honesty, this is where I now desire to be. For it is truly the only place where God can be met by all people, the only place were we all equally seek and will be filled.

Peaceful Discipline

Everyone on LA term is just now beginning to process this entire semester. I’ve been watching my overwhelmed peers, teary-eyed with un-comprehendible emotions while they struggle for understanding. I stand in the midst of their busy colorful minds circling around me in slow motion. I feel still, grounded, searching but calm in my heart as God continues to unfold what my heart has been preparing for. There are lyrics to a song that I drew into a picture on the front page of my art journal this semester. It was past the third week and I felt God projecting this theme of longing to be made whole and real; the woman of God He envisioned before I was born. I desired this with everything in my soul. I was ready to give up all that I knew myself to be. I am humbled to say that I honestly think I have. God’s grace has strengthened me to give up things I love and have needed my entire life.
This “stripping raw” process has led me to look in the mirror some days, and not recognize the girl I see. She now wears no make-up, boy t-shirts, jeans and one gray sweatshirt. I look so different with my loss of muscle, pale skin, and budding acne, but I felt real! I feel bare before my God, nothing shows but my heart. There has been a change, deeper than I can realize right now, but I feel pure with clean water running through me. It took most of the semester to simply gut out my insides full of addictions and insecurities that kept my focus on myself. My senses are being stripped from observing the intricate things about myself towards observing the deep things in others. I am beginning to learn from communities, people, books, and the Bible. I have found that dedicated investment in relationships with people and God and disciplined study of the Word and outside resources is all I need to grow. I use to pray all the time for God to challenge me, break me, and automatically grow me up into a different person; this doesn’t happen without personal discipline that reveals the true amount of desire. It’s definitely not easy, and my body erodes away without it, but disciplining my human nature to develop new human needs has become the most important lesson I’ve recently learned. Without it I loose focus, I loose God, I loose myself.
I am naturally an extremely passive and laid back personality type, so discipline isn’t strongly ingrained in my nature, but without it I can’t freely follow the Holy Spirit. Too much freedom fogs my foundation, goals and ability to asses my present self so I can release the old and progressively grow towards the new. God has been recently teaching me how to train myself for the continuous spiritual race of life. I have to beat my body into training, so I can acquire self-control on top of knowledge.
I realized that I wasn’t really growing as much as I thought, I wasn’t applying myself as a student of the Jesus, I wasn’t searching for more knowledge of my God and Jesus my Lord. My eyes were opened while memorizing 2 Peter 1:2-8. For grace and peace are given to those through the knowledge of God. I was stuck in a rut of thinking my Spirit transformed as I spent more and more time with God, I was missing a very important component. So I have now been studying scripture as a student of my God, it is my duty as a disciple, for without it I will remain stagnant, and keep tying to listen to God through my heart only. He created me with a free spirit and a soul, but also with a mind. I believe God knows one part of our body can easily be left behind if our heart soul and mind aren’t syncly devouted and loving God in. So now I “beat my body into strict training, discipline, observance and action. I will become a slave to this so that I can preach to others and focus on God moving in them. This will enable me to meet people where they are at, instead of trying to pull people into understand my heavy heart of three months. I can only “become all things to all men” once I have become or am becoming all of what God is challenging me with. I will learn to talk more with God, learn with Him everything I am going through instead of searching for understanding or affirmation from everyone else. I used to doubt the power in the Word of God, and now I am realizing I was only defeating myself and smothering the strong voice of God, and missing out on the excitement in following His direction and revelation when reading it. Since this moment God has been steadily revealing more and more to me. It is a lot to take in, and a daily challenge to apply His word to my life, but it is only the beginning. I am trying to push myself towards a life of truly living the Word, not just applying it’s concepts to my life.
As my LA friends are now all scrambling to find understanding within themselves relating to the past three months… I rest. Daily discipline allows present understanding and peace. The divine nature of my Father truly has given me everything I need for life, as well as godliness. But it is only through the knowledge of his glory and goodness that I walk in this precious gift of momentary fulfillment that only comes from the divine nature of my Father in heaven, whom I love.

Powerful Void

I woke up this morning feeling numb to every emotion in me. There was no extreme joy, frustration or even contentment, I felt completely dull. It wasn’t that I felt far from God, I just didn’t recognize what He was doing inside of me. I felt disconnected from my heart, which usually leads me back to the Lord each morning. Even now as I write this journal entry, there is a hole in my spirit, so it feels. A loss of passion and emotion that usually is the driving force behind my personality, love and connection with life and people around me. I have been living each day with this uncomfortable disconnection for the past few weeks. The enemy has tried many times to inject doubt of if I am following God enough which causes me to question the work God has already done in my heart. I have been living each moment analyzing myself and trying to figure out what is wrong. At times I think I am back to where I was at the beginning of LA; insecure and uncertain about who I am and what God is doing in my life. This is an emotion God has now shown me to accept and see as a rebirthing and remaking of the foundation, which the rest of who I am stems from. God is changing my foundation. I am going back the start again, building upon what was recently laid and now fertile to grow more. I was talking to a friend of mine the other night that was explaining a similar process that she is going through. This is when I realized, I am so used to recognizing God’s present work inside of me, that I think something is wrong when I can’t tag an emotion or clearly see the Holy Spirit working inside of me. We worship a God of mystery, and sometimes forget the word “mystery” means “unknown”, and freak out when we can’t recognize God. I have now seen that it means we are caught in limbo between a dying of the things we hold on to that don’t belong and a rebirthing of which we cannot yet recognize.
After understanding this simple concept that easily throws me off I have decided to embrace this void instead of drowning in the confusion that naturally comes with my humanity when I feel empty. Emptiness is now a beautiful feeling that we’re not really taught to embrace. I see this huge empty endless pool with nothing but neutral shades. I will not stop seeking, I will not let myself sit in numb complacency just because the fire of God isn’t burning all around me. It still is, it’s a different flame. My God has not left or forsaken me, He is here, He is teaching me something completely new, only created by His spirit, not mine. I am still growing, and sometimes feel caught in-between two polar opposite cultures that are so much apart of me. I also felt a void in my emotion when I went home to Santa Barbara. I wasn’t ready for the drastic amount of culture shock that ignites when my heart feels so apart of two completely different worlds. I discovered that in one context with certain people I felt like a completely different person than the naive girl who moved into MacArthur Park. I am changing. I know I am no longer the same, but am still searching for who I am. So I will wait in expectation for God to fill this powerful void now empty of who I once recognized and ready for something fresh, pure and new.

Indefinite Desire Exposed

As I look off into the distance…
watching the sun roll on by…
beautiful colors all around me Lord…
painted all over the sky

The same hands that created all of this
created you and I…
What a beautiful God…

You know my inner most being Lord,
Even better than I know myself.
What a beautiful God.
What am I? That I might be called your child?
What am I? That you might know me my King? What am I?
-Shawn McDonald (Mymix)

I’m not sure if I actually want to use this song. It speaks to me, but God has also given me words. He’s given me a song to sing that overflows from the color inside of me and plays a beautiful harmony with the colors of others. Last night Melanie said she’s seen me change, in a still quite way. My life has begun to steadily flow together with everything around me. My God is breathing through me his passion, love, and understanding of people around me. I am becoming quietly overwhelmed by the continual movement of His Spirit everywhere I am. It doesn’t always feel good, sometimes it hurts, sometimes I feel like He reprimands me like my Dad would. But it’s beautiful. I feel undeserving of even this. I feel unworthy to be freely dancing in my soul, His Spirit.
Last night Kathy was teaching the kids about David and Goliath after tutoring. They love her; they love to learn about the Bible. I was lying on a beanbag next to my brother Jeremy with a younger friend Christian. I looked around at each kid God has placed in my ally to love. In the stillness of my heart I unintentionally felt my heart sing, “Father, I love them, I love them so much, I don’t want to leave, they need you, they need to be loved, they need to be held, they need to be told they’re beautiful and talented and cared so deeply by you. O Jesus, I pray that I can pour out everything you are inside of me… and even more. Enough so that your Fatherly love and comforting Spirit will stay here and build in their own heart.”
This went perfectly along with what I had been observing over the past few days. Jesus is on the move. I have received a commission. It is simple, but deep. A one word assignment worth much sacrifice. God knows we have to sacrifice parts or all of ourselves when He wants to do something. He understands our inmost being and knows we would never do it, unless we were compelled with overwhelming love and compassion. This is what I feel building up. I just want to hold Jeremy(8) when he’s sad, I want to rub Bryan’s(3) back and sing to him prayers of peace. I want Jenny(6th grade) to feel beautiful, desired, unique and wanted. I want Millie(9th) to know who her Father is. I want Rosemary(3rd) to see her gifts that touch people. I want Adriana (3rd) to know how her gentle spirit calms people’s souls. I want Charlie(7) to know He is smart, and that I see him. I want Chris(6) to know his smile brightens my heart. There are so many more at the Cambria building where friendships are beginning to form.
Through talking to Kathy about the reality of their lives at home and school, my feelings of their abandonment were confirmed. I am not saying that I want to love these unloved children, because I know their culture is different and their family life could never be compared to mine. But we have the same Father in heaven, and I want them to know and feel how much life our Father brings. This can only be brought by the Spirit, through prayer.
God has recently been injecting me with more understanding and love as I am compelled to pray, give, desire, and expect these kids to be overwhelmed by the feeling of love. I only expect as much as my Father wants. I can only be disappointed in myself for not listening to His call and recognizing everything that will come from all sides to defeat me. My body can be stabbed with doubt, but not my Spirit, not where my God reigns and dwells in His pure power and glory.
These past two months have been “me” time. God knows I would have never given it to myself. He knows the work both of us longed for wouldn’t have happened unless I was put in a place where I couldn’t intentionally serve. Relationships have been starting and beginning to build over the past two months. This naturally happened as I paid attention to God calling me to focus on my heart and his. I feel like I am now in the midst of an awareness shift. I am excited to see what my Father has planned for these last two months, that will go by too quickly. I want to pour myself out, I want these kids to drown in Jesus’ Spirit. It’s already beginning and the excitement of following the Spirit has been sparked as I watch relationships mend between the girls and unity begin to recreate.
Last night Jenny, Rosemary, Adriana and I skated for an hour. The night before Milie, Jenny, Jeremy, Melanie and I hung out in our room listening to music while I taught them how to draw palm trees, sunsets, and waves. It is times like these that will continue to deepen our friendship and the unity between these kids who have lived next to one another their entire lives and will most likely continue to until they get married.
So basically, life is beautiful, Jesus is beautiful, I feel beautiful when He is breathing colors of romance through me. Everything feels just right. I am not walking in the clouds, the past, or a dream for the future. This is reality to take in the depth of each moment. I have just brushed the surface of this concept. If we believe that Jesus walks by our side, has purposefully aligned our moments, days and lives, then there is much to be discovered in just the moment we’re living in. I used to find myself lost in dreams from before or aspirations for the future. When has God ever told me the depth of a mystery yet to come? Honestly, why would I care? He gives us keys to doors for this specific point in time. It’s up to us to desire more keys and unlock more sides of His unrevealed beauty. Wow I love Jesus, I love my God and feel so blessed to be called His own.

As I look deep in this moment
Watching your Spirit move all around
The depth of your beauty captivates me
Painted on faces of children
Connected to my heart

Your hands led me here; your hands hold me here
Indefinite love instills peace in my heart
I plead for them to know… feel… and love…

Embrace, enwrap them Holy Spirit
I give all given to me
Birth that which you gave to them
Open hearts, purge doubt, speak softly
Wait expectantly.
- me

that feeling called LOVE...

My weeks have been so packed that it’s hard to bring myself to focus on how I’m feeling about it all. It is only when I try to contain pressing emotion that everything spills out. When the top blows off I’m finally able to see everything inside. That moment of extreme emotion easily throws me off sometimes. I can only see the little kid that I’m mad at for kicking my bucket over, it isn’t until later that I finally see all the deep thoughts spilled out onto the floor. So now that I can look back on this past week with joy instead of overwhelming regret, I am able to speak of it in love.
I have been doing a lot of tutoring, making new friendships and trying to see how these kids want to be loved. It’s different for each one, but begins just as simply with them all. Love. One thing I’ve been pushing my focus towards since it is easy to become overwhelmed with my many obligations throughout the week. I don’t want six hours of tutoring and two of art class for these neighborhood kids to become an obligation, but part of my life that I love. Just as other things that have slowly become woven throughout each day, I want to see the good and the frustrating, but then let my love for the people overpower them both.
It’s hard having a long 9am-4 class day and then go straight to tutoring young rambunctious kids. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing left to give them. It is at that point that I feel like I am faking my love, pretending that I am there when I’m really not. I could continue going through the motions while battling inside with reality, but then I am wearing a mask. How can you really love when you’re not really yourself?
I’ve been praying about my frustrations, and realized this wasn’t something God could reprimand me for and then teach and guide me through. I needed to learn this on my own. Sometimes it’s easy to receive a revelation from God, and then write it in a journal to later be forgotten. I never mean to forget it, but I’ve grown up getting these daily revelations through various encounters. Sometimes they change my life, or I change my life for them. But this time it was different.
A few hours ago I walked into a surf shop at the grove. Despite how fake the grove may be, it gives me a sense of comfort. It feels somewhat like home. I walked into a Quicksilver surf shop and was overwhelmed with the feeling of joy. I felt a sense of belonging to the lifestyle that I loved. There is a connection deep inside of me ingrained of memories like sunset surf sessions with friends, the ocean and its natural beauty. I miss it so much sometimes it hurts. I was thinking about it after leaving the store and realized that this deep feeling of belonging was what I loved so much. It was a memory that has now become apart of me, but it didn’t define who I was.
The feelings from my past touch me so strongly because I loved everything I was in the middle of back then. Through this I saw my capability to develop a passion for the things I love when I truly surrender all of myself to them. This opens a door in my heart for experiences to sink deep and produce memories of rich meaning in my life.
The feeling I felt in that surf shop brought back so many memories of things that bring me overwhelming joy. The day I arrived in LA our class advisor told us to make a list of all the things that’s bring us joy. This was to be our “happy” list when we felt overwhelmed by our new experiences. My list was composed of things from my past that had, for whatever reason, made indelible marks in my spirit. These were memories that continued to bring me joy whenever I was feeling defeated by LA.
Today I decided to make a new list. I discovered that when I noticed what brought me joy, I held on to it and began to love it more. I want to belong to this new lifestyle and see my premature love for the simple things. Then I can deeply love my new reality instead of faking it. These are a few things from my new list of things that bring me JOY in LA.

Things that bring me Joy in LA:

- When I can make Brian laugh and he hugs me with no desire to let go.
- Watching Kathy teach ten kids about a God who loves them
- When the kids respond each time
- Kathy’s commitment, devotion, patience and peace
- Playing soccer with Jeremy. Letting him win
- Holding Brian in my lap while skating down the hill
- How Rosemary unconditionally loves and teaches, and how each kid is drawn to her because of it. She is 10
- The raw/real unveiled hearts poured out every other Tuesday at InnerChange
- The simple rich truth God speaks through John. It makes me want to take notes.
- Paul’s sweet Spirit, Fatherly heart of many sons
- Watching Oscar with His two sons. How He serves and takes care of His family. Silent servant.
- Laughing with Melanie
- Simple Reality
- A life of devotion that rises above doubt (seen in InnerChange)
- When Sue smiles
- When Paul sings
- Abby’s tender, humble, quiet spirit before the Lord
- Un-manicured lifestyle
- Walking up 6th street
- Men getting up for women to sit down on the bus
- Feeling like I’m part of the family, but they still want me to be more
- Journaling
- Listening to worship music through headphones soft enough to hear the city around me as well
- Searching for images
- Single people devoted to God
- Coming back to MacArthur Park and feeling home

Can we fear those we love?

The image that stands out the most in my memory right now happened last night. I was at my friend Casey's host mom's house for a birthday dinner that her host mom prepared for her friend named John. I was invited to tag along. Casey had previously told me that her host mom knew John since his partner Jim had worked with her at APLA. APLA is an aids foundation in Los Angeles that provides support for those living an HIV positive life. The moment I met John stuck in my heart and mind the rest of the night.
When Casey and I walked into the living room to introduce ourselves, I waited behind her to meet John and Jim. I have always had mixed feelings about homosexuality. Not the people, but the sin. Can you really love the sinner but hate their sin? Even if they feel it is everything that they are? I have been juggling this idea around in my mind over the past few weeks as I walk through the town of MacArthur Park. Can I love this community, but then fear it at the same time?
One of my favorite things to do is walk from Mac Arthur Park up 6th street back home. It is about a half a mile of street vendors, outdoor markets selling everything you could imagine never needing, and fruit. The streets are always filled with hundreds of different people. In a place where I am usually taken back to see another white person, I am beginning to love the unique culture that is so openly lived on 6th street.
Fear is the strongest barrier blocking complete love. Christ like love. What is sacrificial love, and can I push myself past my comfort zone to love like this? No. But I can rest in my God's ever present peace that allows my heart to feel as He feels and ultimately love as He loves.
"Is He safe? Most definitely not. But He is so good."
I have been learning to take myself out of my natural consumption of the moment, and retreat to this place in my heart. Certainty. That is what I find there. Certainty of Him. It is only when I am walking in the constant peace of my God that I am able to open up my heart to love. Wow, I am in love with my God and the grace that He pours over me as I am constantly struggling to figure things out. It has to be constant though. If I ask for God's peace and presence just when I feel like I need it, it means nothing. God then becomes a blanket I can carry in the dark instead of a living Spirit inside of me. This has also been opening my eyes to how much I not only compartmentalize my faith, but my relationship with God. Instead of thinking, " I only need faith when I am afraid and continue to doubt," I am realizing faith is becoming my life source. God wants to be deeply involved in everything, this is my way of desperately needing Him to be, but then falling in love at the same time. I never want to leave or forsake Him. I want open doorways of His rushing living Spirit flowing constantly through me with overwhelming love. I was blessed to feel a little bit of this Fatherly unconditional love last night when I met John.
I looked into his bright blue eyes, shook his hand and became overwhelmed at how much love I felt for him. It brought tears to my eyes. I felt God saying, "I Love him, O how I love him." I felt it deep in my stomach later as I told Casey about it. I don't know where I stand on the issue of homosexuality, but I know for a fact God loves John to the point of tears. Later that night I discovered that both John and Jim have been going to an Episcopalian church for the past 20 years together. Jim actually used to be a Priest. I know homosexuality is a sin, but how much do we push them lower than ourselves? Isn't the Jesus in the poor and homeless, the same in the homosexual?
I am realizing I have many insecurities that keep me from loving. I haven't been able to see them until I stopped fearing everything and began to rest in the peace of my God. It is here that His heart pushes through me and walks ahead of me to show me who and how much He loves. There is no way to completely love while fearing the very people you're trying to love. There is always a way with my God, and I will continue to run after His mystery as I fall more in love with Him each step.

The Beauty of Simplicity

"It's the Beauty of Simplicity
that brings me down to my knees,
I praise you for eternity,
and Lord I love you,
because you first loved me."
- Telecast

I felt that this quote perfectly captivated what I have been living in the midst of over these past four weeks. It all began the first night I got here. My parents drove me up to a large brand new apartment building expecting to move in. That was until I called my roommate and realized it was the more run down two story apartment complex across the street behind a large black spiked gate. Mixed feelings and emotions churned in my stomach as a small three year old boy ran out to me and wrapped his arms around my legs. My anxieties were put more at ease as my new three year old "brother" Brian wouldn't let go as I tried to walk into the house. I remember seeing my small bedroom and closet for the first time and thinking all I brought would never fit in here. This was the beginning of God purging me of the excessive things in my life that bring me comfort. This first night was hectic, uneasy, and disillusioning as I searched for where i would fit in with the Hernendez family. I remember laying in bed and putting my headphones on to worship music that night. I took a deep breath and felt my Heavenly Father say, "I am here, I brought you, and I am here." This was the most peaceful and confirming moment I can remember over the last three weeks.
My journey of of searching for God in MacAuther Park and LA began the second day. I became anxious and thought God would obviously reveal Himself to me since I followed Him here, I was wrong. This was going to be a process of learning more about myself and how I see His people first. The second night in LA I was placed in a position where I had no other choice but to walk home by myself. I remember walking to the bus stop at Wlishire and Vermont. I looked around and saw absolutely no one with the same color skin as mine. There were mostly Hispanic men. I kept telling myself I was fine, but it was already dark and I felt vulnerable and alone. Tears came to my eyes as I tried to recite every word I could remember from Psalms 23. My whole body was tense as I tried to calm myself down, pleading for God to let me know He was here, pleading for God to let me know I was safe. I had never been in this position before. Ever since I was a little girl, my worst fear was walking alone at night. I also grew up being told that the more dangerous part of Santa Barbara was the poor Hispanic area. I was consumed with my fear, there wasn't even room for the Holy Spirit to seep in and calm my heart.
After getting home I broke down crying. I felt God say, "See, you don't trust me as much as you think you do." I cried out saying how sorry I was and knew I couldn't force myself to trust Him, that didn't take my fear. I had to receive God's heart for His people that I was so afraid of. I couldn't just live here and love people in the way I loved my friends and family up until this point. God had to pour his new wine into my Spirit. I can only love as much as He pours.
I always knew God was giving me a new wineskin for these four months of my life, but I wasn't prepared to walk in complete emptiness until I asked for His perfect/pure wine. I had baggage from my past that was not fitting here. Each time God showed me something new I cried out, "Are you kidding me God, that too?!" As God strips me more and more of simple things that bring me comfort I am being brought to me knees. I always thought God was all I needed and that I relied on Him for most of my life. I didn't. Right now I feel empty. I am waiting in the stillness of a simple life composed of me and my God. I used to find the beauty of my God in the beach, sunsets, worshiping by myself in a car or face-flat on the ground at church. I used to find the beauty of His Spirit woven between my daily encounters with friends and conversations about how He was moving. I used to become overwhelmed by the simplicity of His voice while praying with people, or even alone in the comfort of my home. All of this is gone now. I couldn't bring any of it to LA. My Spirit sometimes feels so dry because it doesn't recognize this new wine being poured all around me. I am still searching in the stillness of this time in my life when it literally is me and my God.
My thirsty soul now searches everywhere for my God in LA. While still combating my fear of people I don't know, I am trying to trust my God for protection. Yesterday I was telling a friend how fearful some family and friends have been for my safety here. I said that I found it interesting how my Dad, one of two people that love me more than I could ever know, is the most confident out of everybody including me that God brought me here and WILL protect me with His life. Every time I am afraid, I remember that. If anyone knows what God is doing, it's my Dad.
So my search begins for the movement of God in His people. Two Sundays ago I went to a church service that was all in Spanish. My house mom Jisela translated the entire sermon for us. This preacher named Carlos was rocking the house with truth. It was just so real. He talked about the peace of God that we should daily walk in and how it enables us to serve others despite our struggles. It was so powerful to be amongst the impoverished while he talked about living with little but letting the Spirit of God cover all our needs. Anywhere else I wouldn't understand the reality in needing the next pay check to keep a home, or have food on the table. These people live like this. Their desperation for God is naturally so passionate. They know what it is like to have little, but see Christ easily fulfill all their needs so they can go serve others. I don't know.. it just hit me pretty hard, there is a special beauty here that I am beginning to see.
As I learn God's new fresh beauty in a simplistic life before Him I am daily challenged with blindly walking in the comfort of His Spirit here, not the one I've always known. God is purging me of the things I don't need as His new fresh water pours through me everything I need. I am patiently learning to wait for the down pour and drink from unrecognizable sprinkles of His Spirit that keep me filled.

New Beginnings

Hello,
I am in LA right now... searching for only God knows what! You'll find out around the same time I do. Until then.. be so blessed!