The best day of my life

So that's a pretty bold and dramatic claim, but Saturday was definitely one of the best days of my life. I don’t even know where to begin putting it on paper but got to talk about it with my roommates, pastor, and some close friends last night. I have written my raw thoughts in my written journal and am glad I did that yesterday because now it doesn’t even feel real.

I still feel like it I dreamt it up or something. Too good to be true.

I was invited to attend a leadership retreat at Woodcrest and in the afternoon was a recovery leaders retreat. Our church has a beautiful partnership with them and we are currently developing a partnership with their recovery ministry. They are training and mentoring myself and 1-3 other staff members from our church to help us get recovery ministries, for issues surrounding emotional health and addictions, off the ground. Right now, while I am support raising still, we are seeing this as time for me to soak up training and get mentored by some of their key leaders. Our hope is to develop our groups modeled after their system in the fall, after observing and participating in some of their groups this semester.

There was so much that happened and was said that gave voice to some of the deepest dreams I’ve had within yet have never reached the surface or been expressed.

I still cannot believe it. It was so amazing.

Yesterday was like God saying, "yes" to a million questions and unspoken dreams and desires of my heart.

I was so overwhelmed with emotion but so excited at the same time, that as I was leaving the church (we got a break from 4-6 before dinner), I got in the car. My head was spinning.

I turned up the radio really loud.

What was I trying to drown out?

Well, it didn’t work.

I got about two blocks away from the church when tears started rolling down my cheeks.

Why are you crying?

I’m not sad.

What is going on.

The tears just kept coming.

I finally gave up fighting with God and resolved to go to our secret spot. Obviously we were going to process this NOW. lol. I just think it's funny that we think we know what we need better than God. I was hoping to go chill at Starbucks for a couple hours and finish The Shack, go home and change then go to dinner for the final session.

Oh no, this obviously couldn’t wait.

I get to the place where I drive to go and have some of the best times with God and by that time I am full out crying.

About what I still do not know.

All of a sudden, something Garrett had told me this summer as I was sharing my excitement for some of the ministries I was discovering in support raising, things in the inner-city and counseling things and recovery ministry of different types and how I desired to bring that to the campus church, he said, the more I think about it, the more that [recovery] is who you are.

We talked about his role and my role in launching recovery ministries at the Rock, as it was once on his heart, and is still something there, but not in the capacity of getting it up and running, but participating and leading in it…

He said, the more I think about it, this is who you ARE…

That was it. That’s what clicked as I was in the car, tears of who knows what flowing.

The things discussed and said today were things so deep inside of me…

They were some of the deepest parts of me…

I realized, recovery isn’t something that God has put ON my heart…

It IS my heart…

Everything they were saying just broke me because it wasn’t something I could separate from myself…

It was that overwhelming feeling of knowing this was the work you were created to do…

I got this overwhelming sense of calling that recovery is something I am called to for a lifetime, but it will look different in different seasons of my life.

The lady who leads the recovery ministry, as she was up there talking, I was floored she is someone in my life as a mentor and a guide.

As she was talking, I was floored… in 25 years, I want to be like her.

That was my prayer.

That I would have be a fully devoted disciple of Christ and have a tender and compassionate heart. That I would be more in love with Jesus then than I am now. That my life would be a reflection of His glory and His unfailing love.

She started on this same path 25 years ago. As she’s been in ministry since the year I was born.

I look at her, and even how her husband described her at the meeting, recovery is something she lives and breathes… it it how God has fashioned her heart…

And I got so excited about the role of recovery within a church. How effective churches are catching on to this necessary and vital component of heart care.

It is an element that will look very different for a campus church, but one that is needed none the less. The more I am in community churches, especially in this support raising period, the more I know for this season, I was created for the campus church. Everything we were talking about yesterday, I was just dreaming about what it would do in our church, what it would do for our campus and how we go about influencing this next generation for Christ...

It just got me more fired up for the opportunity we have on campus to intersect people's lives at such a critical time, to be there to embrace the mess and help them walk out of it God's way.

Yesterday was one of those days where I got a glimpse into 5, 10, 25 years down the road.

I’m really not married to what recovery or my job looks like at a campus church, or at a women’s shelter, or in an African country, or in the inner-city, all of those things could happen, they could not (or other things God has in my future that I have no idea about), but what I am even more excited about is the power of the local church and the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is my hope.

That’s the only thing I can place my life in. Jesus is the only thing I’m really sure about when it comes to my future. And because of that security, I can trust Him to lead this journey wherever it takes me. It really doesn't matter to me where it is, or who it's with or what it looks like. Yesterday was the confirmation of a calling I did not choose or sign up for, but one I was brought here to live out for the glory of God.

Yesterday doesn’t even seem real.

It was just so amazing to be around people who speak the same language and are like-minded in helping create a safe place for people – the churched and de-churched to enter into the reality of Jesus Christ.

One of the vehicles to that is recovery.

The reality is people in and out of our churches are more broken than ever.

They are broken and they are hurting. And in need of healing.

An inner healing that can come only from the Power of God. A power that will revolutionize this world.

More on all of this soon.