He wants us to hear

 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was NOT in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was NOT in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was NOT in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.  When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.  (1 Kings 19: 11-13)

When I read this passage, something was nudging me about it.  I couldn't figure it out so I read it again. "Lord, why did you first give all those powerful demonstrations of Your power, yet you were not in the power, or destruction of the mountain, not in the fire?? What are you showing me Lord?"

I read it again.

I put it down and went about my day.  Later it came to me, the Holy Spirit deposited it into my spirit.  He is telling me that He wants His people to realize HE IS SPEAKING! And He always has been. 
For a long time in my life, I kept waiting for these spectacular moments that the Lord would speak audibly, or thunder from the clouds, or give me a clear vision out of nowhere.  I would think, "Lord, I will do whatever you say, whatever Your will is, if only I knew for sure it was You."  But I realized after many years that that was part of faith, believing it WAS indeed Him speaking to me.  I have journaled for many years and have practiced very practically learning to hear His voice, and TRUST that it's Him.  As I have stepped out in small things, He has confirmed again and again that I am hearing.  I would even test it with things, for example; when someone was calling (before we had caller ID) I would ask the Lord who was calling.  Sometimes I was wrong, but sometimes it was right on!  I would ask for how to pray for someone and step out in what I was feeling that I heard (it usually felt like my very own thoughts) and the person would confirm that it was exactly what they needed to hear! I would ask Him to reveal to me where something was when I lost it, or if someone lost their keys or shoes.

I feel like He is so wanting us to understand that He longingly wants us to tune into our natural senses and see what we see, what we hear in our minds, what we sense in our hearts.  He IS SPEAKING, we need to know that He wants us to hear.  

As I was driving to ladies group on our beautiful route here in Oregon looking out over green pastures and fields covered with lush green everywhere.  I was completely enjoying God's creation and taking in His great love for me, thinking through the past couple of days, and I was suddenly recognizing that He had been highlighting  a specific person to me.  Then I began to think about how tickled I was that He kept reminding me, because I obviously wasn't getting it.  That's when it hit me, He really wants me to hear this, and He knows I will eventually get it if He keeps nudging me, even if if it takes three different instances! :)  It's a relationship, and He wants my input and interaction, He doesn't just speak once, and get mad at me if I didn't hear, or say "you weren't listening, your fault you missed out." He never gives up on me, He loves me, He wants me to hear!  I was so excited I had a perma-grin all the way to ladies group.

Here's a great representation of my excitement :)

 

The Crush grows stronger, Ruslan and Jessica (Part 2)

Our Team at another orphanage being built

Our awesome hippy skirts and t-shirt ensemble

So I went to my leader and asked for advice, I told her that I liked Ruslan as a friend and wanted to get to know him more, but that I didn’t want to confuse him or lead him on, cuz what if he wasn’t “the one”( I was a bit afraid of making a mistake – I wanted God to tell me what to do, I didn't know if I could trust my heart?).  I loved hanging out with him, but it was now confirmed that he did like me more than a friend, so I didn’t want to lead him on, but I didn’t want to stop getting closer to him.  I didn’t know the future, so I wanted to keep moving forward but I was confused, I felt afraid that I might hurt him if he didn’t turn out to be the one I married.   My leader strongly suggested that I needed to close any doors of "false hope" for Ruslan so I wouldn't be falsely leading him on.  I decided I would write him a letter to clarify things.  At first I wrote that I really liked him as a friend, and that I wanted to continue to get to know him and just see what the future had in store.  I gave the letter to my leader to see if it was clear enough.  She read the letter and said, it left too much of an open door, I needed to make it very clear (She was a VERY sweet leader, but I think maybe she had a few fears herself about relationships not wanting people to get hurt as well). So I rewrote that part and basically said "you are great I like you a lot, but I NEVER see us together in the future." (Ouch! I know ) You would think he would have given up on me forever at that point, well he almost did.  I  thought I had lost my chance “forever” (there’s that dumb word again, that almost ruined my chance with him sheesh)! 

Basically I gave him the note and the next time I saw him he didn’t look happy, I said hi in passing on the sidewalk and he didn’t even answer, my heart just plopped into my shoes.  I felt a little sick to my stomach, what had I done???  I felt horrible.

Well as you can imagine he was devastated, especially cuz my actions showed more interest than that. I was a bit confused myself.  The weeks passed with a lot of turmoil inside, for me, and questions to God.  I tried to still be friendly with Ruslan but he was very emotionless with me and I felt like he was only being cordial.  One thing I noticed right away, was he really did choose to stop caring completely about anything I thought of him; ironically this revealed another side to him I hadn’t seen yet.  He was so much more relaxed and funny he wasn’t at all nervous or trying to act his “best,” which of course, I found even more attractive, this new confidence.  I could tell I was really frustrating him as I continued to be friendly with him, because come to find out he was thinking:

“Why in the world is she now acting like she cares about me when she made it extremely clear that she NEVER sees us together in the future?!”  

So he continued through out the next few months to practically ignore me unless I approached him, and I had a really great friend who I had gotten really close to named Jeni, and the three of us would often hang out, but Ruslan would always give her ALL the attention it was really starting to get to me. 

“Lord, did I truly ruin my chance of ever having anything with this guy?  Is he falling for my friend now?  Were his feelings for me no big deal, and now he ALREADY likes someone else, who is the complete OPPOSITE of me!??”

I had many nights crying out to God asking if I could talk to Ruslan about my growing feelings and yet, I never felt that would help anything except for him to think I was not sincere, or had no idea what I wanted, or was just playing with his heart.  So I kept praying and giving it back to God asking Him to give me another chance to make things right, so that maybe someday we could see if we were meant to be together.

Our team of 17, traveled to Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, together on an outreach and had such a great time, once again I was in the van sitting next to Ruslan having so much more of a crush on him by now.  Seeing his very playful side telling stories of his life growing up and making jokes with the team mates.  I also saw that competitive side come out again when we played volleyball together one evening at the Los Angeles YWAM base, enroute to Mexico.  He was getting pretty visibly angry as he spiked the volleyball at me on the opposing team as they were beginning to lose.  I knew the frustration had a little more to do with than volleyball. 

In Mexico I watched what a really hard worker he was and what a great attitude he had about hard work and serving others, I was even more impressed.  We also went on one outreach to some poor children who had almost no food and we gave them, as a treat, a spoonful of peanut butter and a cup of powdered milk, I held the huge peanut butter canister and Ruslan dug it out by the spoonfuls.  I was wondering how silly he must have thought I looked in my mandatory hippy skirt, t-shirt and tennis shoes.  We were to dress as modest as possible, no tank-tops, no jeans or shorts, they needed to be long dresses or skirts.  I thought it was so funny how much he hated getting “dirty” he couldn’t stand all the dirt in Mexico, and yet, he ended up digging a well in a huge pit of dirt for an orphanage and shoveling huge piles of dirt to bring to other locations, and he still was hardly ever complaining.  I also loved how his hair would get so full of dust it became wiry and would stick up all over the place.  

My future husband working hard ;)

There's me in the back with Ruslan!

Ruslan cracking up some team mates

Peanut butter delight! :)

Well digging

  

Yes I was absolutely falling for him.  I thought it wasn’t that obvious but judging by the comments from the team members later, they said that they always joked about the growing relationship between Ruslan and I, that we both thought wasn’t so obvious, haha, love is blind is guess.

more to come...

Sharing my process OUT LOUD. :)

When we first had the plan to move to Eugene Oregon, it was all quite sudden. As in we decided a month before we moved! We were in a tough place in our home business, we were about to lose our house to foreclosure in CA, we had moved to Redding 2 1/2 years prior, (because of a wish of mine for 10 years that Ruslan granted me), and Ruslan blurted out the idea of moving to Oregon. I kinda laughed and then saw the seriousness in his eyes. 
"Oh you are serious?" I pried further. 

So we prayed looked at our situation and saw that we really didn't have anything holding us to Redding, (well except that I personally wasn't quite done yet), but I knew it was my turn to follow Ruslan's desire, He always wanted to try Oregon, and he kinda just wanted to try something completely new. As we prayed at different times one of the things the Lord spoke to us was that we would be learning more about "community." I thought that rather odd, coming from a family of 10 children, I thought I knew community quite well!

Here we are 2 1/2 years into our lives in Eugene Oregon and I completely see how I had NOT known true community.  First of all, props to Christ's Center Church for fully embracing and loving on this struggling family as we began to rebuild from what felt like brick one, of our foundation in finances and direction.  We felt so loved and supported as we let people into our process.  I started recognizing that one of my past ideas of letting people in was getting through the struggle and sharing the testimony of my victory AFTERWARDS.  So we started being more vulnerable and sharing our feelings of despair, frustration, losing hope, lost vision, and just plain anger at certain situations.  We saw how people began to completely surround us and bare our burdens and pray with us, give us gifts, offered groceries sometimes, spoke hope, and believed in us, even provided Christmas presents our first year! We were being blessed beyond measure, and we felt so loved, and NOT ALONE. 

One of my big issues before a lot of my healing processes; through SOZO inner healing, and God's love melting down my walls, was thinking that I needed to always figure everything out on my own, and that I needed to be perfect, it was a tough standard to live up to, and very lonely.  I have watched others reach out beyond their struggles and love on us, and it has taught me so much more about giving love as well.  I didn't recognize how that lie I was living under also made me quite selfish, cuz it was all about me figuring it out on my own, so I always had to be looking out for myself. I was so blessed by the three photographer's in my church who fully came along side me and poured into my business as if it was their own.  All since of competition and fear completely dissipated, I was embarrassed to have even had those feelings. Jaymie Starr, Anne Nunn, and Cassie Wicks, thank you, thank you, thank you! My eyes are being opened to all those around me, and I want to see how I too can help others.

"Me! Me! Me!"

  So continuing on with my testimony from last time I wrote, I have gotten more confirmation.  I don’t fully understand why some things just take a certain amount of times before they actually sink in, but thank God it’s FINALLY sinking in, being a Wife and Mom is my utmost important dream, destiny, accomplishment, etc…(after my relationship with God of course). It may not be what I am ALWAYS going to do the rest of my life, but right now this is my main focus, and time consuming ministry, that I need to be putting all of my heart into, and I am really enjoying it, in a whole new way. I would say this revelation has been getting through over the last 5 years or so, but it sure has been a process, ups and downs, and lots of forgetting and needing to be reminded again and again.  One of the main reasons being, the onslaught of attack and NOT much affirmation of the value and importance of being a wife and Mothering. In our society I would say it has been long forgotten how important it truly is, our culture basically screams, “Me! Me! Me! And how can “I” be successful, how can “I” be famous or count for something, how can “I” be fulfilled, how can “I” live my fullest potential, and not let anyone steal that from me?  But in the kingdom Jesus said, “if you want to be great, become a servant to all.”  I have thoroughly seen that I fell completely for the lie, and it can snag you even in the Christian life, cuz it’s the same thing it just uses “christianese:” “I want to live my destiny, I want to do God’s will, not focus on menial tasks at home, (cleaning house, washing dishes, wiping bums, feeding kids…) I want to be walking in “my” calling, “my” ministry,  I need to save the world, not be at home wasting “my” precious time! I need to get out of this time wasting job so I can go evangelize (meanwhile your co-workers go on not even knowing you are a Christian).

 

Well at church Sunday, Jason Hague, our associate Pastor was speaking on discipling and what does that really look like, as he gave the description of what that was: a man (Jesus) having 12 other people follow him everywhere he went, learning from His every move as he lived out loud, sometimes explaining and training.  It HIT me! Duh I am totally discipling my 4 disciples consistently and constantly every day!  And I love teaching about the Lord, not just in words but in actions.  So as I have fully embraced my “ministry” I am seeing a new found joy in the daily moments, homeschooling, playing, being silly, spending time with God, cooking, washing dishes, little chats with the kids, walks, food shopping etc…The other day I was reminded how long it had been since I danced and there sat my never ending pile of dishes, so I put on my ipod shuffle and started wildly washing dishes spinning around the kitchen kicking wildly in the air, I ended up out on the patio dancing around just fully enjoying the task at hand. I had a blast, and the dishes were almost done!  It’s amazing how much we can miss if we aren’t just in the moment giving our full attention to what we are doing, I have been stuck in the “next task” or future for so long, I have MISSED many, many, many important moments, and lessons along the way, but it’s never too late to start so I am starting again, and when I forget, I am starting again, and again and again!  There really is a war in the heavenlies for our TIME.