His plans are BIG...

In Jax during the summer of 2010 I was blessed with an amazing team. I learned so much from each of those women, and have been blessed as some of those relationships have grown even more over the past years. Some of my team members are amazing women of God who still encourage me continually each and every time I talk to them.

One of the women on my team, to whom I am grateful for walking through so much with me that summer, is my team leader. At the end of the summer, she gave each of us a parting gift, which was a photo album with a little note and some pictures of our team from throughout the summer. Recently, I was packing up my room, because my parents will make the big move this summer while I am down in Jax, again. As I was cleaning, I came upon this photo album, which is now stuffed full of so many pictures and memories from that summer. Needless to say, I gladly opened it up and began reminiscing; laughing and crying as many memories of that summer came streaming back, with little personal videos playing in my head that went along with each picture. 

But there was one specific page that really grabbed me, and I ended up going back to it. On one of the pages she wrote... "Jubilee... Joy and praises explode from deep within declaring his promises of freedom and restoration." Which completely BLEW MY MIND. Because that's exactly what I've seen in my life since Jax.... Especially this last year. After China I was super discontent and nothing in me wanted to go back to Northwest, which I now see had a big part in brewing the depression and anxiety I wrestled with for the fall semester. But before the fall semester, I claimed Jeremiah 33:6-9 and prayed that the things it says of Israel in those passages would be true of me. So it talks about coming back from captivity, and that He will rebuild them as they were before - which He did... so there's restoration. And this last semester I've been learning A LOT about the freedom that we have because of Christ and it's dramatically impacted the way I live day to day... so there's freedom. God's SO big. And stupid crazy... He promised these things two years ago, and now He's done them! Ahh. It's just put me in awe of Him, once again.

And it goes along with what I've been learning this month, which you can read about in Monday's post, "Truly Resting."