Undeserved Grace.

Cleaning. Its a hard task, it takes time, it takes energy, it’s something you have to be willing to do. It doesn’t happen on it’s own, you have to decide that you want to do it, and then you do.

My heart. A part of me, that if I am not careful, will begin to accumulate junk. Whether it be in the form of envy, hate, disklike, ungratefulness, bitterness, worry, or anything else that is not from God.  It’s like a sponge, that sucks everything up, and burries it deep down, and won’t let go of it, unless I tell it to, unless I decide that it’s time to clean.

You see, this past month has been a wake up alert for me. I have been seeing signs and have been hearing warning bells ring loudly in my head, telling me that the ” junk” in my life, is getting to be too much.  The pile is getting to big to stay where it is, I either had put it somewhere to let it grow, or, begin to get rid of it completely. An easy task?  Not really.

Cleaning makes you get down on your hands and knees, it makes you get dirty, it makes you forget about your appearance for those few hours, and it makes you simply focus on the task that is ahead.

Cleaning out my heart is kind of like the same thing. I hae to get down on my hands and knees, and set my pride aside. I have to be willing to listen to the truth, the real truth, and not pretend that I don’t care. I have to be willing to set aside my  appearance, and simply be humble.

 To truly clean, God asks me to leave  everything else aside, and reminds me that  I am only human, and that until I reach heaven, I will continue to make mistakes. But that the mistakes I make, can become either a blessing, or a curse. I have to decide. Will I let my mistakes mold me and shape me and help me become stronger? Or will I allow them to cripple me, and also cripple my walk with Christ? It’s a decision, and it takes humility, a humility that only Christ can give me.

So as I continue to clean out my heart, to remove the junk that will cripple me if I allow it, I look to the cross. I look to the one who is standing there with His arms open wide, offering  grace and mercy. Reminding me of the blood that was shed so that I could find forgivness, and be given, undeserving grace.

Simplicity

So on Saturday night,  I went with the team to go and do their cultural experience. The one where they go to a guatemalan family’s house, go the cornmill, make dobladas and eat delicious arroz con leche!  ).  Anyway, I ended up getting there about 1/2 an hour earlier than the team did, and so it just ended up being me and the lady of the house who went to the cornmill. As we walked down the small dirt path leading to the cornmill, I stopped to look around me. There were huge bunches of corn growing around me, you could see smoke coming out of people’s kitchens, children playing outside their houses, and a game of soccer going on with some of the men from the village. It was around 6 pm, and so the sun was beginning to set, but it was still the perfect temperature outside. So, eventually, we got to the cornmill and we waited in line as other women and girls from the village were getting their corn made into mush for making tortillas.

As I stood there watching them come in to the mill, with a bucket of corn on their head, dressed in the typical clothing from here and having little to no jewlery on, the word ” simplicity” came in to my head. Simplicity, simple, enjoying life as it comes. Doing tasks day after day, the same ones..over and over again….but enjoying it while it lasts, because, in the end, it’s life and tomorrow never rolls around again.

For most of the girls and ladies who came through that door, going to the cornmill is just part of their daily routine. They do it for breakfast, lunch and supper. There is no such thing as a ” major grocery shop trip” for them. Every day they go the market to buy whyat they need. Every day is lived as it comes, no agendas, no crazy busy schedules, no planning 2 weeks ahead. Just life, as it comes, one step at a time. 

You see, simplictiy is what makes me LOVE  Guatemala. The way that relationships are everything, that planning crazy ahead in advance, is almost a foreign concept. The fact that, friends  are almost always availabe,  or that wedding invitations get given out the week before, or sometimes, the night before, and we still usually end up attending.  Life is something that gets lived here. It is something that gets enjoyed to the fullest of its ability. It’s not that there is no planning done whatsoever, there is. But, a key word in guatemalan vocabulary, is: flexibility. Being flexible, being open to changing your schedule, in order to bless someone elses day, or to be there for someone else. It’s what they do, something I do,  and it’s something I love about them.

Simple. Uncomplicated. Life  lived the way I believe it was intended to be. People and relationships being the first priority. Family and friends always coming first. It’s Guatemala, it’s the country I love. It’s the place that will forever in my heart be called, Home.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness. Probably one of the hardest things that us as humans have to display on a daily basis, and if not daily, at least a few times a week.

We live in an unperfect world, with unperfect people. People hurt us, they say mean things, we say mean things. We mess up, they mess up, I mean we might as well face it, forgiveness is a definite MUST. All the time, there are things about other people, or situations, that we have to decide to forgive. Forgivness is a choice, not a feeling, and with forgivness also comes forgetting.

I never understand when people say, I will forgive you, but I won’t forget it. I mean, what’s the point of forgiving me, if you aren’t going to forget what happened? Why hold on to hurt, when you can just let it go. Why continue to replay what happened over and over in your head until you start feeling upset again? Really, it makes no sense. 

If I am going to truly demonstarte forgiveness, that means I need to forget, to the same extent that I forgive. I need to be able know in my heart that I haven’ t just forgiven what was done, but I have also forgotten it. If God can do it for us, I know that He can help us do it for other people.

These last few weeks have been tough for me, and forgivness has been a lesson I am having to re-learn. It’s hard, it’s tough, and it asks for me to be humble. It’s a  difficult lesson to learn, a lesson that throughout life, many times we have to learn over.  Forgivness asks for me to love people no matter what they have done. It asks me to forget, to move on, to  believe in them again, and to trust them.  It’s something I can’t do on my own.

But as these last few weeks have gone by, and I have found myself needing to forgive different people,  to truly forgive them and forget the past; I have been getting help from the person who has mastered forgivness. The person who I fail time and time again, and who always takes me back and loves me just the same. I don’t deserve it. I never will and I never have, and yet, there it is. When I fail and ask forgivness, He takes my sin and tosses it into the depths of the sea, and never remembers it again. What a gift!

So as I continue this journey of forgivness, and I continue to learn from the teacher and of all teachers, I pray tha I will learn to love like He loves, and to be able to forgive with a heart like His.

Amigos

Friends.  You know, those people that you find at some point during your life, and every day you realize just how lucky you are to find them. The kind that when you get together to talk, you can talk for hours and hours and it seems like it’s just been a few minutes. The Kind that, no matter how close or far they are, you still feel incredibly close. The kind of friends that God gives us to help us on our journey.

Usually, I don’t post stuff like this on here, but today, I decided that I would. On Monday night one of my really good friends from Canada came to Tactic. She had been gone since last November, and I was really looking forward to seeing her. All day, I was waiting for 6 o’ clock to roll around so that I could see her! It finally did.  When I got to the guest house and walked through the gate, I was standing there talking to a friend when all of the sudden she came running out the door and we gave each other a big hug! It was so good to see her! We were instantely making jokes and pulling out some of the inside jokes that we share. It was like we had never been apart and it felt like it had just been yesterday when we were hanging out all the time when she was here. I know that now a days, technology has made keeping in touch a whole lot easier, but still, even with all of that, some friendships just stick and stay together because that’s what they were created for.

There have been hundreds of people walking through the doors of my house over the past 10 years, and it seems like every day I am meeting new people. Some of which, I stay in touch with, some I don’t. Some become good friends, and some are only in my life for a little while. But I am always so very thankful, when a new friendships begins, the kind that you know will last you a life time. 

I always love it when I recieve care packages from friends in Canada, sending me treats that I can’t get here, or even just a litte note letting me know that they are thinking about me. I try to keep in touch the best that I can, but with my crazy schedule, sometimes I fall behind. But the greatest thing is that, with those friends, the ones that are forever friends, no matter how much we lack  communication over periods of time, I know that they care and they know that I care about them. I know that, even if I were to have no internet for the next year of my life, I could meet them for coffee somewhere, and pick up right off where we last were.  I truly am blessed to have such friends. Also my friends that I have like that right here in Tactic. Despite how busy we all are, we know that our friendships will always be there and we can always count on one another.

So to anyone reading this, thank you for being my friend. Thank you for always being there, for encouraging me and for cheering me on. I hope you know that I care about you. That I thank God for your friendship every day, and I pray that it will last forever.

 Love,

Jessee

Doctor or not

So, my title says most of what I am going to say, but, I will explain what this post is all about.

As many of you know,  last year my plan was to get into medical school to become a Doctor. I was actually in school for 2 months before the University I was in closed their program. I then began the process to do my entrance exams in one of the other Universities, but they went on Strike, and medical school entrances came to a halt. So after my second try to get in to Medical school, I kind of gave up. 

So since I was no longer a medical student and it seemed like every door that I tried, ended up closing, I began thinking that maybe medical school wasn’t for me. I ended up thinking it enough that I started believing it.

This year in January, I enrolled in University to study  Highschool Eduaction, and it has been very interesting. However, everytime I hear about Medicine, or medical students, or anything that is relatively close to medicine, it makes me wonder about my decision to become a teacher. When I finally came to the terms that I would never become a Doctor, I really thought I was over it, and in some ways I almost felt relieved. There was no 6 years of school down the road, and life seemed to have an endless list of things I could do with it. But now that a year has gone by, and I am busy going to University to become a teacher, my desire to become a Doctor is still there.

The other day I recieved an email from a family friend who is a Doctor, asking me if I still wanted to puruse medicine. I was kind of suprised to recieve the email, but it made me think. As I read and re-read the email and tried to convince myself that I had no desire whatsoever to become a Doctor, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.  Everytime I see shows on T.V to do with medicine, or I get called to the office to help with a student who got hurt on the playground, working along side a Doctor in the medical clinic, or anything to do with medicine, no matter how small, I feel so happy and I realize how much I love anything I have to do with medicine.

So, as I continue to pray about what God really wants for me, and I try to do the right thing, I hope and pray that I WILL make the right decision. 6 years is a long time, somedays it seems a life time a way. A 3 year teaching degree seems like the perfect alternative, I mean it’s only half the time. But here’s the thing, taking a short cut is never as fulfilling as working hard and doing things right, or in this case, doing the right thing.

I still don’t know what exactly God is calling me to be, and sometimes I don’t know if I am ready to say yes,  a wholehearted yes. I want to be able to do that, to lay everything at His feet. My dreams, plans, desires, EVERYTHING, without  looking back. To trust that His plans for me are always always ALWAYS good, even if that means giving up something I want for myself. I know that He will be faithful if I trust Him, and in the end, His plans will be so much better than I could ever imagine.