It started for me with a card that I didn’t know where to send.
For God, it started much much earlier – when he dreamed me up and knit me together in my mother’s womb with a perfect love and brilliance that leaves me humbled in awe and wonder.
These were the beginnings of my loving and worshipping of God, and that four-year-old devotion is what I never want to lose. At six years old, I stood in front of my congregation at my baptism, filled with fierce desire to declare that Jesus is Lord of my life and to offer all of myself to him. One of the elders gave me this verse from Psalm 37:
Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and verily you will be fed. Delight yourself also in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
He blessed me with a foundational code for how to conduct my heart towards God. These verses have kept me focused on God’s faithfulness and my response in the big and small details of life.
As I journeyed through childhood, the love and care of my parents, the beauty of creation, and the stories from community around inspired deep ponderings and expansive imagination in my discovery of God.
God was with me and with my family wherever we were: in our fun and adventures, in our hard work and innovation, and in our facing of trials and sufferings. His faithful provision through friends, school, church, and medical professionals had a lasting impact, speaking to me of God’s care, attentiveness and surrounding presence.
It took me however all of my teenage years struggling with fear of the enemy and the pain of the world to finally surrender control of my life in a whole new way when I was 18. I loved God as much as I knew how, and yet I was not willing until that point to let go of keeping myself safe from the darkness that terrified me and from the hurts of broken people that filled my soul. I hid from the revelation of my own weakness and my inability to love myself or know peace.
I decided when I hit the bottom of a mental and emotional spiral that I would trust the unknownness of God – the way that he was outside of my control and immensely powerful. I screamed out to him on my bedroom floor from the very centre of my being and he answered me in a way that has changed me forever. He filled me with a love and power I had never known, drenching my whole being, shifting fear, insecurity and self-hatred out of the core of me and beginning there a spring of overwhelming love. He gave me my heart’s desires that day: a hunger for the Scriptures which I consumed and which washed my mind and heart in truth and peace, an ability to meet with him in prayer and have fellowship that embraced every part of me in warmth and hope, and a deep knowing of my belonging to his global family of believers – his imperfect but extravagantly loved church.
He made me capable of loving him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength. He made me capable of loving those around me. He called me away from my own vision of medical school to minister healing with him in his church. He showed me how he could make the powers of darkness flee and the even the darkest nights become bright when I held his hand. He is the most generous, gracious, just and merciful person. He is the Creator of us all and the one who breathes tenderly to fill our lungs and souls with life. He saves and delivers and walks through the muckiest, lowly, broken, pain-filled journeys with us to not only sustain us faithfully but to bring us through to an even greater hope ahead. He has walked with me through seasons of joy and wonder and through seasons of loss, grief and disillusionment.
I found in preparing for the ordination service that God kept affirming so deeply that this commitment I was preparing to make was what I was made for and every way in which he'd journeyed with me led to this. It is me becoming even more fully me for him and my part to play in bringing him glory. Not because I am good enough, strong enough or skilled enough but because he has invited me and desires to take my small part offered and use it wonderfully in his mission.
My ordination meant coming to this moment of offering my life afresh for his purposes, surrounded by my husband, children, family, friends and fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is my greatest delight to worship God in this way by playing my part in his greater plan for the healing and reconciliation of all things in Jesus.
The road before me is not one I can walk alone but only in right connection and journey with the people around me. I cannot even play the smallest aspect of my part well except by the grace of God. And yet there is this deep hope and joy and excitement that wells in my chest as I look to the dawn of a new day because the Son has risen, Jesus has risen and his light now shines on us, inviting us to feel the warmth of his love, to take courage and trust in how he invites us to walk and work with him. I want my life to be an offering of worship to him – my gaze filled with his glory and my eyes seeing the people in front of me with his heart.
As I learn and grow in my ability to lead and minister I want to be overwhelmed by his perfect love in the way he continues to make me whole and in the way he uses my small part to bring his power and love to others, leading them home to his embrace and inviting them into the greatest adventure.
Thank you to my beautiful husband Greg, for your courageous support and faithful sharing in this journey with me, to our kids for bringing such trust and joy to us, to our bishop and diocese for your wisdom, oversight and friendship, and thank you friends and family for being part of our adventure and for allowing us to be part of yours.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
It started for me with a card that I didn’t know where to send.
For God, it started much much earlier – when he dreamed me up and knit me together in my mother’s womb with a perfect love and brilliance that leaves me humbled in awe and wonder.
These were the beginnings of my loving and worshipping of God, and that four-year-old devotion is what I never want to lose. At six years old, I stood in front of my congregation at my baptism, filled with fierce desire to declare that Jesus is Lord of my life and to offer all of myself to him. One of the elders gave me this verse from Psalm 37:
Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and verily you will be fed. Delight yourself also in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
He blessed me with a foundational code for how to conduct my heart towards God. These verses have kept me focused on God’s faithfulness and my response in the big and small details of life.
As I journeyed through childhood, the love and care of my parents, the beauty of creation, and the stories from community around inspired deep ponderings and expansive imagination in my discovery of God.
God was with me and with my family wherever we were: in our fun and adventures, in our hard work and innovation, and in our facing of trials and sufferings. His faithful provision through friends, school, church, and medical professionals had a lasting impact, speaking to me of God’s care, attentiveness and surrounding presence.
It took me however all of my teenage years struggling with fear of the enemy and the pain of the world to finally surrender control of my life in a whole new way when I was 18. I loved God as much as I knew how, and yet I was not willing until that point to let go of keeping myself safe from the darkness that terrified me and from the hurts of broken people that filled my soul. I hid from the revelation of my own weakness and my inability to love myself or know peace.
I decided when I hit the bottom of a mental and emotional spiral that I would trust the unknownness of God – the way that he was outside of my control and immensely powerful. I screamed out to him on my bedroom floor from the very centre of my being and he answered me in a way that has changed me forever. He filled me with a love and power I had never known, drenching my whole being, shifting fear, insecurity and self-hatred out of the core of me and beginning there a spring of overwhelming love. He gave me my heart’s desires that day: a hunger for the Scriptures which I consumed and which washed my mind and heart in truth and peace, an ability to meet with him in prayer and have fellowship that embraced every part of me in warmth and hope, and a deep knowing of my belonging to his global family of believers – his imperfect but extravagantly loved church.
He made me capable of loving him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength. He made me capable of loving those around me. He called me away from my own vision of medical school to minister healing with him in his church. He showed me how he could make the powers of darkness flee and the even the darkest nights become bright when I held his hand. He is the most generous, gracious, just and merciful person. He is the Creator of us all and the one who breathes tenderly to fill our lungs and souls with life. He saves and delivers and walks through the muckiest, lowly, broken, pain-filled journeys with us to not only sustain us faithfully but to bring us through to an even greater hope ahead. He has walked with me through seasons of joy and wonder and through seasons of loss, grief and disillusionment.
I found in preparing for the ordination service that God kept affirming so deeply that this commitment I was preparing to make was what I was made for and every way in which he'd journeyed with me led to this. It is me becoming even more fully me for him and my part to play in bringing him glory. Not because I am good enough, strong enough or skilled enough but because he has invited me and desires to take my small part offered and use it wonderfully in his mission.
My ordination meant coming to this moment of offering my life afresh for his purposes, surrounded by my husband, children, family, friends and fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is my greatest delight to worship God in this way by playing my part in his greater plan for the healing and reconciliation of all things in Jesus.
The road before me is not one I can walk alone but only in right connection and journey with the people around me. I cannot even play the smallest aspect of my part well except by the grace of God. And yet there is this deep hope and joy and excitement that wells in my chest as I look to the dawn of a new day because the Son has risen, Jesus has risen and his light now shines on us, inviting us to feel the warmth of his love, to take courage and trust in how he invites us to walk and work with him. I want my life to be an offering of worship to him – my gaze filled with his glory and my eyes seeing the people in front of me with his heart.
As I learn and grow in my ability to lead and minister I want to be overwhelmed by his perfect love in the way he continues to make me whole and in the way he uses my small part to bring his power and love to others, leading them home to his embrace and inviting them into the greatest adventure.
Thank you to my beautiful husband Greg, for your courageous support and faithful sharing in this journey with me, to our kids for bringing such trust and joy to us, to our bishop and diocese for your wisdom, oversight and friendship, and thank you friends and family for being part of our adventure and for allowing us to be part of yours.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
