Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. Better late than never though, right?

Breaks of any sort, though a welcome respite, are often times of extreme torture for my overly analytical brain. When I'm not going 100 mph everyday, I think entirely too much for my own good. If some of you haven't discovered this already, my whole mindset is wrapped around the concept of purpose. Therefore, I struggle with things people accept as ordinary happenings and the comings and goings of everyday life. For me, if something doesn't have an eternal purpose, I can't see the use in it. Perhaps this is why I sit in the student section at OU football games absolutely perplexed as to why people get so wrapped up in a game that, in my eyes, has little to no eternal bearing. Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoy sports, I just don't understand why people's lives revolve around them at times! Or, shopping. I very much enjoy fashion, but, really, when it comes down to it, we're not taking our knowledge of celebrity trends or our closets to Heaven.

There have been several times in my life that I do understand. Understood so clearly that I couldn't get why anything else could possibly matter. Before my senior year in high school, I went on a missions trip to Belize with my youth group. One of our outreaches was to a tiny village called More Tomorrow, located in the jungle. The people were living in extremely poor circumstances, yet each of the children had on a uniform. The government there is terribly slow in providing them with supplies, so my church was the only way they'd get new school supplies each year. We got to play soccer with the kids, read books to them, help them make salvation bracelets and serve them hot dogs and lemonade with ice for lunch. And I knew, sitting with one little girl on my lap and another looking over my shoulder as I read them a book, that THIS was what purpose meant. I felt fully alive. That must be what Heaven feels like: to be totally captivated by and caught up in what you're doing to the point that your heart could just burst from the sheer joy of it. I didn't want to leave. And yet, in the midst of all of it, I had to remember: this isn't about me.

That's the great thing about purpose. It's never just about yourself. It has everything to do with the Kingdom, with God's plan, with serving others. It's not an easy thing to find, and it requires stretching of one's comfort zone, but I'd rather live my life in and on purpose than any other way.