I asked for one bird, and I received three

God has been good...I see His design, His plan for Africa as I look back over the past two years of my life. Funny how some things just seem to be random, but later you find that they had a clear and direct purpose.

I am feeling a bit...odd today. I met with some friends for lunch, good people who I know care about me and my trip. We spoke about preparing for the upcoming plans that God has and the more we spoke the more I felt uncomfortable. I know that God has led me to the place I am in, and He is clearly making a way for my journey to Africa, but an overwhelming feeling of insecurity grips me from time to time and I feel that I need to Become...Become a different kind of perfect person, become a better kind of Christian...become. This is something I have struggled with throughout my lifetime, feelings of being a chameleon, always wanting to be sure I looked the part and getting caught up in the legalism that places chains on my wrists an ache in my heart...I feel swallowed by it sometimes, and today especially.

I think it is very easy when doing a specific "God thing" to tend to feel the need to use "God words" and "God phrases"...as Christine and I joke around about children in Sunday School who answer "JESUS" to every question, as they have heard that as the correct answer for so long, they don't even understand the question, they just know it has got to have Something to do with Him.... I don't want this to be the way I live my life or the way I live this next year. I want to be genuine. I want to be real. I want to BE not become.... and this does not mean that I don't want to grow and change and allow God do the work in me that He has begun, I want to be molded as God wills...but as God wills...not as I will myself.

Prayer request - that God would comfort my heart, that I would know that He has not asked me to be anyone other than myself, and that He would do the work through me...that I would let go of any thoughts that I am supposed to know how or have the power to do any of this on my own.

God truly is a good God. He gave me a gift this weekend. He gave me three birds rather than one, and a canary singer to boot...what a sweet, sweet sound those words were to my heart. God loves His children, and He loves us abundantly..."I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" John 10:10