In love.

My hands were shaking today. I was tired. I am so tired of this. I sat at school, mad at the people around me, reciting poetry and reading 1 John so I wouldn't be so mad. But I was. I was so mad.

I am so tired of people giving up.

Three people today, in three different classes, at three different times said what I can't even imagine saying.

They all denied God.

I wonder sometimes if the people who give Him up ever actually had Him.

See, my entire life is devoted to making and building and finding beautiful things. It's demanded of me. Because my whole life is devoted to a Creator who whispers that and presses it into me every morning. Something beautiful, He says. And so I go. I spend all of my seconds looking for the beautiful. 

When you have Jesus, when you really have Him, there's no turning back. It's a love so full and swollen and perfect, I really can't explain it in words. I can't do it justice. The comfort He offers. The peace He gives. The grace He pours out. The love He pushes on to you. The hope, oh Lord, the hope is incredible. 

Have you ever felt hope? Real hope. The kind that spills all over you and washes all of it away and pulls you when you're tired and shouts, it shouts so loud sometimes it hurts. Don't give up, it says. Don't you dare give up. And so you don't. You can't. Because you know, you understand, this life is not all that there is. 

This life is not all that there is.

This life is not all that there is.

This life is not all that there is.

Those people could not have been in love with the same Savior that I am. There is no possible way. 

I don't believe that stuff anymore.

That's what they said. And I didn't just cringe. I broke. Because how can they have had what I have and just give it all up? How can they think it so worthless now? 

How can they say that?

There are mornings when I wake up, and everything is slow. The sky is mellow with new light. My kitchen table is empty or full. I brew tea and whisper prayers. I watch the sun. I paint. I read Isaiah. And I look for the beautiful things, because it is those moments when they're the easiest to find. Those moments at my light stained kitchen table with an open leather Bible and a white porcelain tea cup and watercolour words and a fresh beginning, a day when I'm still breathing that the beauty is most obvious.

It is mornings when I am most thankful for a relationship with a God who died for me and everything I have done and ever will do and never will do and He is present then and there.

It is mornings that I love.

I worship best in the mornings, and I think, who would give this up?

⁴ For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

⁵ Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5

This life is not all that there is.

I will spend every day of my life defending this faith, I promise that to you. I will be a warrior for Christ. I will be a discoverer of beautiful things, a builder of beautiful things. I will be a woman after the heart of God.

I will be in love, always.

Because this life is not all that there is.

Never forget that. Do not be consumed by your doubts and the world and other voices. Do not give up the sweetest thing you'll ever have. 

And if you've never had it, just know, there is a desperate God who is pursuing you daily. Daily. Because He is the one who claims this is not all that there is. And it's not.

There's more.