Adding to the Beauty

My paper is DONE!!

And it's pretty good too!

Heartfelt thank-you's to several of you who prayed for me all the way through and encouraged me with phone calls and notes. It was a much less isolating labor that way! I felt so loved. Wow.

Last night we had a sendoff for one of the girls in my prayer group, Ginny, who is headed down to Guatemala as a missionary to orphan girls. I am so proud of all her growth and her perseverance in getting everything together to be able to go over the last year. I will really miss her - she's become a valued accountability partner. I can always count on her to make me walk my talk when it comes to speaking positively and in alignment with God's character. She's going to be doing great work...here we are together.

We got some fun photos, and as I printed some out today, I saw the amazing changes in me and the fruitfulness of this time - investing in this group of girls and seeing most of them just explode into healing and new phases of their lives. We are all changed and changing, and it's tremendous to see all the blessing pouring out in everyone.

Here are some of us, looking really mature...

This photo below is me with Miriam Kuhni, our visiting Swiss! She's the one who walked up to me at church the morning after I got home in July, and just started chatting at me in Swiss-German as a joke. It was hilarious - I was so tired I couldn't even think or respond, but I knew it was Swiss-German and it just blew me away. Every time I see her, I am reminded that God knows how I feel and He sent me a Swiss ambassador to encourage me not to give up.

Miriam is fun in her own right - a pastor's kid from Zurich and an adventuresome traveler. I may be sending her to my church in Brazil!

So in all these good things, with all this investment in people, enjoying good music, some fun pictures I took recently, and thinking about the future and all that it holds - even though I've been really hurting lately, my heart is still singing and I know that everything is working together for good.

Another Sara Groves song.... I really love the words. Pasted them into my journal tonight. They just might end up on the bathroom mirror.

Add To The Beauty

We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it's worth

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
This is grace, an invitation

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out our best

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside
~ Sara Groves