know.

You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe better things.

-Jamie Tworkowski 

A beautiful new year. There are no words for how overwhelmed I am at all the Lord has done in the year now finished. I have never experienced a year quite like it. There was absolutely more pain than I could have ever thought possible and then, there was a deep ocean of comfort and knowing and joy and love and I never knew any of these things before like I do now. It was a year of going deep and deeper still. There was lots of screaming, tears that fell like a never ending storm, laughter that went into that tear storm and balanced out what I thought could never stop, a joy I found constant despite the storms, and a constant whisper to simply gaze into the eyes of my God, to keep my gaze fixed and unwavering from His beautiful eyes no matter what else was happening. And the waves crashed and the storm screamed and I felt myself wrapped safe and tight in the arms of Jesus, held close as He took the brunt of what the enemy meant for my defeat.

In this moment, sitting in my little apartment, surrounded on all sides by the towering mountains He has surrounded me by, all I can do is smile. A joy like I've never known has welled inside the hole I thought would never be filled and I know. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt, as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that He is enough. He is all I need. I am Hi child, a child of the Living God, and I have seen His faithfulness in the land of the living like never before.

There is a longing growing with each passing day inside this heart of mine to know my God. To be a living example of what it is to have a personal and intimate relationship with the One who loves His children so much. I long to see His face before me, I long for the day the sky will roll back as a scroll. Yet, I absolutely adore being alive. Not just living, but being alive. And because of this deep love that I have for every moment I draw breath on this earth, I want to live in such a way that this love spills over and there is no explanation for me but Jesus. I want to love His children with the love He himself longs to rain down upon them, if they would let Him in.

So, as the words pour forth, as you read the lines He has given me to write, I pray with everything I have in me, that right now, you would know how much you are loved by Him. That you would never come here and feel judged or condemned, but that you would leave yearning to have whatever He is pouring out into my writing, in your own life. I don't know you, I don't know what's going on in your life or the pain that is overwhelming you or the hate, anger, grief, bitterness, longing, or misery that you may be drowning in. Perhaps an apathy has crept in like a disease and all you want is to feel  something...anything. Though I do not know the details, I do know what every single one of these words brings, and I know the freedom and joy of giving them, finally handing them over to Him. For He knows intimately of every single detail and pain you have in this moment. And you have already been set free from whatever may be binding you, all you have to do is reach out and take the hand He is holding.

And I know that you are loved. You are not alone, and though I may not know your face or your name I know the love of Jesus and so, you are loved by Him and through Him, loved by me also. For He is faithful to bring into the lives of His children all that we need in moments when hope seems lost.

© Jade Valcarcel 2013. All rights reserved