anyway you want it.

I'm doing an internship this Summer with a small little two year old church plant. I heard about the position several months before summer started, and I thought there was no way I would even apply. But as I continued to pray about what I was going to do this Summer I continued to come up blank, except for the internship. It just kept coming to mind. I wanted so badly for something else to just appear, but it never did. I wanted God to appear to me in a dream or something and reveal some brilliant plan that he had for me this summer; a brilliant plan that didn't involve anything too uncomfortable for me. Dang. I'm kind of self-centered.

As a rule, I don't generally volunteer for leadership type positions. I don't like to be the center of attention. I don't feel qualified to have that kind of power most times. But I applied for the internship, mainly because that's what I felt like God was asking me to do. Which is great. But this week I've come to realize something about myself that I didn't see before.

Since the time that I came to terms with God wanting me to be in this place this Summer, with these people, I had built it up in my head as what I thought it would be like. I knew that God was going to teach me so much, but it got to the point where I thought knew what he was going to teach me before it ever even happened. On the day-to-day basis things have been pretty much what I expected. We were given a schedule that we follow pretty strictly, but on a deeper level it's nothing like I thought it would be. It's like I had this whole idea of what this experience would be like, I knew where I would struggle, I knew where I would do well, and I knew what I would come away from it all with.

Nothing has happened the way I thought it would, the way I wanted it to. Things that I'm usually good at, are a struggle, things that I'm usually not so good at, are a bigger struggle. God has just turned all of my expectations upside down (as he usually does).

It has been less about me learning how to love others, and more about me learning how to love myself. I'm coming to see how things from my past are manifested in who I am today. I'm seeing more and more self-contempt; I find my head having to remind my heart that I am valuable and deserve to have a voice, and for that voice to be heard.

It's the kind of stuff that we hate to deal with, because it's not fun, but it's the kind of stuff that once we do work through it, we come away stronger, closer to our maker, and better. It's the kind of pain that is easy to find joy in, because I know that this stuff is worth the trouble, it's worth the tears, it's worth the confusion, because one day I will be able to look back on it and smile, knowing that God produced something good in me, through the bad.

I like to think that I know what's best for myself. I like to think that I control my life. I like to think that my plan is the best plan. I pray that as I draw closer and closer to Jesus that he would absolutely break me of this. So I say with confidence: anyway He wants it, that's the way I need it.