So, it is now almost 1am here in Chaing Mai and I'm wide awake in bed when I really need to be asleep. Tomorrow I am going to be watching/coaching from the sidelines my kids that I have been teaching at their very first horse show. They are super excited and so am I. However, I am getting picked up at 6:45am.
But there is way way way too much on my mind right now to sleep. Earlier today, I found out that I compound fractured my T12. With that comes the restrictions of no mopeds, no horses, no lifting, little bending, no floor sitting and about a million and a half other things I 'can't' do for the next 3 months. I also have a wonderfully annoying brace that will also be with me that long. When I first heard I thought the choices of what to do would be hard. But surprisingly, I feel like God has given me such an incredible peace about one option; going home.
Now while I am in fact at peace about that choice and that it is the one God wants me to make, it doesn't make my heart at any less of a slight turmoil. Part of me is so so sad to be leaving here. There were a lot of dreams and goals I had for the next couple months. A lot of lives I was hoping to be able to impact. I also am so beyond sad at the friendships I will be leaving here. That will be the hardest part. Not sure how I'm gonna live without my Bethany haha or anyone else here either! Part of me is also so excited! I am so excited to be home and see my family and friends and just to be back in America. I feel like my life has in a way been on 'hold' while I've been here. I am also super excited about what thing it is God is bringing me to there that He needed me away from here so badly! I think that is where I am feeling the most peace.
Last year, when I messed up my shoulder, I looked at it as the end of what God had been doing in me. I saw it as a complete reversal of everything He'd been doing. Now with my new injury, that is also totally throwing a curveball in what God has been doing in my life, I am just thrilled with it. I KNOW God has a plan. I don't doubt for half a second God has had me here for a reason. I don't doubt that I was supposed to stay here. I'm not sure why, but that really doesn't matter. I trust Him. Maybe it was for how much I have grown in the past couple months. Maybe it was for someone here. Maybe it was just to keep me out of something at home. But I know that He had me here. And now I'm just so excited to see what new and incredible things He has planned for me back in good ole Kansas.
PS The title is from Chris Tomlin's Song "I Will Follow" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ohvhmGSfxI&ob=av2n
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Faithfulness
What a week! In about an hour I will be heading to the doctor's office to get my back xrayed.On Wednesday of this week, I took a pretty hard fall off of a horse and landed flat on my butt and have been in a lot of pain ever since. To the point I seriously look like a grandma walking around and trying to stand up or sit down(no offense meant to any grandmas out there! just lots of love to ya; i'm sympathizing with you! :) ) I thought about taking a video of me doing that, but decided everyone might not share my same sense of humor at pain. This fall came right on top of being sick for the first half of the week.
But ya know what? So what! God is so entirely faithful. We can be at the darkest of times, and He provides. My last blog I wrote about some of the troubles I was facing in being here. Within a week of writing that, He had provided the complete amount for me to buy a plane ticket home. Months ago He started preparing a friendship He knew would help sustain me through this whole time of living here, the amazingly, wonderful, incredible, Bethany. She is always always always there for me and has done so much for me. I don't know what I would have done without her. He also provided me with three extra pairs of parents while I'm here. The Rathmells, the Shorts and the Mintz. Jenn and Buddy have let me stay at their house this week as I'm recovering from the fall. I also have great friends back at the farm who love to come up and see me and bring me candy! Last week, I even had a guy who liked the way I trained horses send me and my team at the farm a very nice lunch of fish and fries and pumpkin and potatoes and salad ! God even provided the money for me to go to the doctor today through a friend of Jenn's who was over at the house yesterday. Does life get hard following God? Absolutely!! Does He always have a plan and provide, even when we as less than all knowing humans can't see it? Without room for doubt. I ask you all to take the time to listen to this song. It's one of my favorites and just sooo true! I pray you all can see how God is just so alive and working in the world today. He is NOT a God who just created us and left. He's here today, loving YOU. Watching over You. Providing for YOU. Even when you can't see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlA5IDnpGhc
But ya know what? So what! God is so entirely faithful. We can be at the darkest of times, and He provides. My last blog I wrote about some of the troubles I was facing in being here. Within a week of writing that, He had provided the complete amount for me to buy a plane ticket home. Months ago He started preparing a friendship He knew would help sustain me through this whole time of living here, the amazingly, wonderful, incredible, Bethany. She is always always always there for me and has done so much for me. I don't know what I would have done without her. He also provided me with three extra pairs of parents while I'm here. The Rathmells, the Shorts and the Mintz. Jenn and Buddy have let me stay at their house this week as I'm recovering from the fall. I also have great friends back at the farm who love to come up and see me and bring me candy! Last week, I even had a guy who liked the way I trained horses send me and my team at the farm a very nice lunch of fish and fries and pumpkin and potatoes and salad ! God even provided the money for me to go to the doctor today through a friend of Jenn's who was over at the house yesterday. Does life get hard following God? Absolutely!! Does He always have a plan and provide, even when we as less than all knowing humans can't see it? Without room for doubt. I ask you all to take the time to listen to this song. It's one of my favorites and just sooo true! I pray you all can see how God is just so alive and working in the world today. He is NOT a God who just created us and left. He's here today, loving YOU. Watching over You. Providing for YOU. Even when you can't see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlA5IDnpGhc
Monday, January 9, 2012
Work!!
Wow!! It's been forever since I last posted!! So much seems to have happened since then, so first a quick overview of life.
I graduated DTS on December 14 and over the following days said a very sad goodbye to most of the team. However, Ange Bethany and I had a little more time together. Thanks to Dave and Julie Mintz, I was able to go down with them, Bethany, and Ange and her parents to go spend a week on the beach in Phuket. Talk about beautiful! I got the best tan I've had in my entire life just chilling on the beach with Ange and Bethany. We had such a fun time and it's a week I'll never forget. At the end of the week, we came back to Chiang Mai and we said goodbye to Ange for a while.zi moved into the farm and now have my own room! It's pretty amazing. I even have something to put my clothes in instead of my suitcase. Oh the little things in life... Christmas dinner was over at the Rathmells house. It was great to be able to have Christmas in a home with a family and amazing food!!! I ate so much... man. Later that night Bethany and I went with the German team to go see Sherlock Holmes 2. It was an overall incredible day. Later that week, things got crazy again as we had a horse colic on us. Bethany had been spending the night that night and so her, Esther(my friend/housemate at the farm) and I pulled an all night keeping the horse alive. The poor thing had tubes up his nose, an iv, a hand up his bum and walked for hours. But he's alive now so that's what counts! :) That weekend it was New Years. Bethany, Esther and I spent New Years at the farm. We built a bonfire(that only took an hour, and some flammable house hold liquids to get started) and baked German bread and sausage over it. We all had so much fun and Bethany found her calling as a Piro. Since then it has been just a life of figuring everything out around here. Learning the ropes of the daily schedule and all that fun stuff. The farm is finally starting to feel like some semblance of a home. My schedule starts at 6am and ends at 7pm. So life is super busy but good.
Something that I've really realized the past couple weeks is that if you tell God to take your life and let it be for Him and not about you, you'd better seriously mean it. There are so many sacrifices to living for Him. At the DTS graduating, Jenn Rathmell (who spoke that day :) ) told me that I would always be able to work myself into, or out of anything. But that I needed to be careful to not get caught on my working, but rather God working(I think getting caught up in pride also falls under that). That is totally true and I'm being soooo stretched right now over working! I like earning every little thing that I work for. But now I'm having to live off of support from people in the States and from the Farm. And honestly, I don't have much support raised from the States but there is nothing more I can do about that, I can't work anymore for that, it has to be God. That's scary to me! Also, when I stayed here, I lost my plane ticket because they wouldn't let me trade to a later date. So I'm here with no plane ticket home and no way of making money to pay for one. That's terrifying! Even if I wanted I can't even just get a job at a local 7-11 because of work permits. I am currently sharing mopeds with friends and mostly having to depend on just riding with them. That's hard for me! I am having to live away from my family and friends who I love and miss so much! God is reminding me everyday that is through Him alone that I need to live. All of those things I learned during DTS I now get to put into practice. And it's hard. Now, I don't want any of this to come off as whining. I know it sounds like it. But truly, I'm happy here and I know that God has a complete and perfect plan. I trust Him and that He knows what He is doing much better than I do. But I also think there is often this allusion that if you are following God and giving your life to Him, things get easy. And that's just so not true! God called us to pick up our cross and follow Him. He didn't say anything about a flowers and gold. But He did say while we are bearing that cross, He's always there, and always loves, and is there to be our strength.
I graduated DTS on December 14 and over the following days said a very sad goodbye to most of the team. However, Ange Bethany and I had a little more time together. Thanks to Dave and Julie Mintz, I was able to go down with them, Bethany, and Ange and her parents to go spend a week on the beach in Phuket. Talk about beautiful! I got the best tan I've had in my entire life just chilling on the beach with Ange and Bethany. We had such a fun time and it's a week I'll never forget. At the end of the week, we came back to Chiang Mai and we said goodbye to Ange for a while.zi moved into the farm and now have my own room! It's pretty amazing. I even have something to put my clothes in instead of my suitcase. Oh the little things in life... Christmas dinner was over at the Rathmells house. It was great to be able to have Christmas in a home with a family and amazing food!!! I ate so much... man. Later that night Bethany and I went with the German team to go see Sherlock Holmes 2. It was an overall incredible day. Later that week, things got crazy again as we had a horse colic on us. Bethany had been spending the night that night and so her, Esther(my friend/housemate at the farm) and I pulled an all night keeping the horse alive. The poor thing had tubes up his nose, an iv, a hand up his bum and walked for hours. But he's alive now so that's what counts! :) That weekend it was New Years. Bethany, Esther and I spent New Years at the farm. We built a bonfire(that only took an hour, and some flammable house hold liquids to get started) and baked German bread and sausage over it. We all had so much fun and Bethany found her calling as a Piro. Since then it has been just a life of figuring everything out around here. Learning the ropes of the daily schedule and all that fun stuff. The farm is finally starting to feel like some semblance of a home. My schedule starts at 6am and ends at 7pm. So life is super busy but good.
Something that I've really realized the past couple weeks is that if you tell God to take your life and let it be for Him and not about you, you'd better seriously mean it. There are so many sacrifices to living for Him. At the DTS graduating, Jenn Rathmell (who spoke that day :) ) told me that I would always be able to work myself into, or out of anything. But that I needed to be careful to not get caught on my working, but rather God working(I think getting caught up in pride also falls under that). That is totally true and I'm being soooo stretched right now over working! I like earning every little thing that I work for. But now I'm having to live off of support from people in the States and from the Farm. And honestly, I don't have much support raised from the States but there is nothing more I can do about that, I can't work anymore for that, it has to be God. That's scary to me! Also, when I stayed here, I lost my plane ticket because they wouldn't let me trade to a later date. So I'm here with no plane ticket home and no way of making money to pay for one. That's terrifying! Even if I wanted I can't even just get a job at a local 7-11 because of work permits. I am currently sharing mopeds with friends and mostly having to depend on just riding with them. That's hard for me! I am having to live away from my family and friends who I love and miss so much! God is reminding me everyday that is through Him alone that I need to live. All of those things I learned during DTS I now get to put into practice. And it's hard. Now, I don't want any of this to come off as whining. I know it sounds like it. But truly, I'm happy here and I know that God has a complete and perfect plan. I trust Him and that He knows what He is doing much better than I do. But I also think there is often this allusion that if you are following God and giving your life to Him, things get easy. And that's just so not true! God called us to pick up our cross and follow Him. He didn't say anything about a flowers and gold. But He did say while we are bearing that cross, He's always there, and always loves, and is there to be our strength.
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