if i could go..

i'm fully aware that it's not good to spend your life wishing you were somewhere else doing something else. in fact, lately God has been very CLEARLY teaching me what it looks like to abide in Him, which requires a lot of staying put and being still and resting. all of those things are really not easy. the past month or so has been honestly pretty hard- and it has caused me to sometimes long for a little adventure. (i know what you're thinking.. i just got back from Asia.. how could i be complaining about not having adventure? ha )

to ease my stuck-in-knoxville blues, or maybe make them worse, here are some things i wish i was doing:

driving along the coast of Cali

biking the Sound of Music tour in Austria

going to a Lumineers concert

visiting my 2nd family in Dallas

relaxing in this beauty of a place.. its been too long!

now that i've depressed myself and you too.. happy almost weekend :)

forts

*picture from pinterest

when i was little one of my favorite things to do was to build forts. my brother and sister and i would build these forts out of sheets that spread out all over the living room. we would stick books on the ends of them to hold them down and lay our sleeping bags underneath. i would spend all day in those forts just reading my books and wishing the fort was a permanent part of our house. it was magic and adventure and surprise all hidden under that sheet. i got to be whoever and whatever i wanted while it was up, and my imagination would come to life.
my book characters became friends, my dreams stretched wide, my heart was full.
but just like any game- the fort always came down. my mom loves a good clean room, she always has, so it was rare that a fort would stay for more than a day. the fort came down and then it was back to regular life, regular dreams, regular fun in my regular room.

you know the beauty of serving the God we do? we don't have to hide under forts made of sheets to live a life full of dreams and adventure. we can be who He has created us to be and our dreams can stretch all the way to the other side of the world.. the God that created us fearfully and wonderfully knows our hearts and cherishes them.

it is so easy for me to forget that. some days i get so wrapped up in what my life isn't and what i haven't yet 'accomplished' that i get scared to dream. i grasp tightly to my fears instead of releasing them, and i hide my desires in my heart because i'm afraid God doesn't care enough to do anything with them. some days i think that my fear might swallow me up and never let me go. but God is so GOOD. I'm learning we have to know Him when we are brought low and when we abound (philippians 4:12). And He meets us in our messes and even then He just might choose to give us the desires in our hearts..or maybe His desire for us is better. Sometimes those desires feel impossible, and all of the time we don't deserve them, but still He gives good things. He gives in loneliness, He gives in weakness, He gives in plenty, He gives in laughter, He gives in messy, He gives in the middle of 20 six year olds that don't understand what a question is :) .. He just gives and gives, so that we may be more like Him.
..and THAT makes me want to tear down my forts and dream of a God who can do great and mighty things.