Wrapping things up...

I have finally come to the end of what, I’m sure, will be one of the most memorable summers of my life. Nashville, you have been everything I could have asked for.

Three months have passed since I (actually, my mom… thanks, Mom!) packed up everything in Tallahassee, bid farewell to Comfortable, and said Hello to the great unknown. My summer in Nashville had been over a year in the making. From the crazy God-story of meeting Nancy Alcorn, to the application process and the preparation, to the actually event of moving out, tying up loose ends and then actually going: These three months did not come easy.

And I had high hopes about my summer in Nashville. If you had asked me about my goals for the summer, I would have had a couple of different things to mention. For starters, I was SURE that I was going to meet famous people everywhere. I mean, tons of famous musicians hang out in Nashville! Who’s to say that they won’t be hanging out around me? Well, I did meet some pretty awesome musicians, mostly because of Stacie’s family and their connections to the music industry. And thanks to Daniel, I got to hang out with people that, I’m sure, will be famous in a couple years! However, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman still remain to be seen.

Another of my goals was to make some friends in the Nashville area. I definitely think I have accomplished that one. I’ve strengthened a lot of friendships with people from high school and college that live up here, and also made some great friends with people from Mercy Ministries, LifeWay and my Small Group Bible Study. What a huge blessing to know that God went ahead of me to provide some great friends to be an encouragement to me during this time. I pray these friendships will continue!

These were just two of my goals for the summer. Some others include: seeing tons of live music, getting a good feel for the lay out of the city, finding a church that I like… the list could go on. But the number one goal I had for this summer was one that held utmost importance to me.

I needed to hear from God.

I needed to know if Nashville or Mercy Ministries was in the next step of my life. I needed to know if God was going to lead me to Grad school or to pursue counseling. As I asked these things, more and more questions came into my mind. These questions led to really seeking God and my experience here became about more than just discovering my future. It became about discovering more of the character of God.

I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when I started at Mercy. I mean, I knew the things that these girls dealt with, and I had read about the power of Christ to redeem and heal them.

It became real when I sat and listened to a girl- younger than me- recount the horror of what she had been through. She didn’t tell her story with a tone of self pity or with a flare for the dramatic. She simply told it. It ended with the power of God that had moved in her life as she learned for the first time that she was a beloved Child of the Most High King. She was healed, a new creation in Christ.

Wow. I barely made it through her testimony without losing it. I tried with all I had to be professional, mature. I knew that there were bad things and bad people in the world. How childish it would be to lose it now. But her story rocked me to the core. I spent time just grieving the innocence that was stolen from these girls. And I questioned God.

How could You let this happen to her? I asked.

Why do I get to live free from the things that haunted them?

Are You paying attention to what is going on down here?

I don’t think the answer comes neatly wrapped in a twenty minute Sunday school lesson. But I know that these are the very questions that the girls work through in their counseling sessions. And God isn’t afraid to face them. The truth- the very hard, painful truth- is that there is a lot of sin in the world. Sometimes people hurt others, purposeful or not, it’s just the state of the world.

Grappling with this has been no small feat for me. I know from experience and from scripture that God is good. He is. Not only is it an attribute, but it is a defining characteristic. It’s who he is. The Enemy wants me to reject this truth. But without it, nothing in the Universe or my life makes any sense.

So when I mourn for the broken, I have to know that God hurts even more. His heart is for justice, and he is near to the broken-hearted. The work done at Mercy is so near to the heart of Father God. There is comfort in that fact.

I got to attend a graduation one day. There were about five young women that were moving on from Mercy; Beginning the rest of their lives in the newness and confidence of their freedom in Christ. At every graduation, the girls recite a statement of faith. They say a lot of great things, but one sentence attached itself to my heart.

Only God knows why things happen as they do.

As a human, I just cannot know all of the answers. But by talking with a lot of people and praying though a lot hard things, I am coming to a place of submission to God in this. We just can’t know. But as a wise woman recently told me, we can walk in hope and live as vessels of God’s healing. I pray that among the many other things I may be in this life, I would always be a vessel of God’s healing.

So as I look back over my summer, and especially this last week, I would say that my prayer and main goal of this summer has been met. I have heard from God in ways that were totally unexpected. I sang to God, prayed to God, cried to God and yelled at Him. And he held me, stretched me, taught me and encouraged me through it all.