*go to Patchwork and Doors, 2008 Part 1 for the beginning of this reflection.
After this I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”
Rev. 4:1
Suddenly, I found myself support raising, learning the ends and outs of the World Race, booking flights, and trying to acclimate myself to AIM. About a month later, a get a phone call from the head of the Real Life program here at AIM, asking if I wanted to co-lead a group of college students on a trip to Mozambique for the summer. I would leave in three weeks. I wouldn’t have to support raise any extra money (i.e. more or less a free ride) And they needed an answer pretty much yesterday. I gave it 24 hours, and a whirlwind few weeks later found myself, my other two co leaders and 13 college kids on one of the craziest two months of my life. From no clean drinking water to the look on a Mozambican man’s face as he arrives home and wonders why a bunch of white people have taken over his property (that would be us. and we thought he knew we were there), to malaria breakouts to no showers for weeks, we had our work cut out for us.
In the midst of the chaos and the dirt, the discipling and leading, I found my own little school of the holy spirit. He was teaching me more about hearing His voice, and not just hearing, but acting. My poor team kinda got drug along with me, whether they wanted to or not. I began to pray really crazy prayers for the Holy Spirit to wreck us all. I prayed to see His power made manifest before our eyes. One of my students said that one of her first impressions of me was that I prayed “big, scary prayers”. I definitley knew something was up. This was not normal Jess. But, I was tired of normal Jess. Maybe God was, too.
So, then I began to see the fruit of these crazy prayers. And it was all based on the faith of the people I encountered. I began to understand what it meant when Jesus said “Go, your faith has healed you.” I saw true faith, humbling faith displayed. By Amos, the pastor of the tiny church plant in Zimula. In Fernand, the man who allowed me to take his cane away from him and tried limping, then walking, then running down the road, with us running behind him, weeping at what God had just done before our eyes. In my students, as God began to break their hearts and open their spirits to Him in new ways. I had tasted and seen a goodness of the Lord I had previously only encountered in whispers and rumors. I felt like I had walked through a new door of His Kingdom. And I knew there was no turning back.
I came home from Africa and before I could take a breath jumped into my new life in Gainesville, GA. Doing this ComLife thing. Community. Life. “What exactly are you doing?” I got asked with blank stares alot. Hmm. Good question. We all gathered with our own expectations, our own visions and tried to make them all work. After we realized the impossiblity of that task, we tried to make one thing work. Then, that didn’t really, um work. (Is anyone else getting exhausted by just reading that?) Huge lessons of trust, communication, dissapointment and ultimately how to love our brothers and sisters. I have come to find out just how much I still have to learn about that. We are all still learning. Thank goodness we don’t have to have the end of the book written yet. And that we can all have grace with one another in the process. 
This takes us to the present. So, what did all that crazy jumbled patchwork of a year mean? What’s up with all these doors? And as I look to the future and new things that are stirring in my heart even now, where the heck do I eventually end up?
With me, He tells me. That is where it all leads. To My presence.
We spend most of our lives looking for that one thing, that one path, that one means to the end we are looking for (even though half the time we have no idea what that is). And yes, God does “have a plan”. For your life. For my life. His children are destined to do great things. Greater things, scripture says. But ultimately we were created by Him, for Him. To be with Him where He is. To seek Him out. To stand at that door to His throne room and actually answer when He says “Come up here. I have something to show you”. I am too wrapped up in my own crap half the time to even hear Him calling. Ironically, that is where the very thing I am desiring lies. Revelation, insight. How to get out of bed some mornings. It only comes from those intimate times, when I lay back against Him and breathe and feel His heart beat. Then why do I come to the end of my day full of a million other things and say, “Tomorrow. I will make time tomorrow.”
And He is waiting. “Come up here, come up now. My beloved….”
Here’s to 2009. To all the open doors that will be. To the patches that are yet to be sewn on. And to making the most of every opportunity.
