Hi friends :)

Picture this… 

It’s mid-day. You are on a black sand beach, it is downpouring, you are surrounded by surfboards, just sitting in a chair with your friends, enjoying the scenery, soaking wet. Then you get up, start sprinting across this beach, arms spread out wide, hair blowing in the wind, rain still pouring down, and you just say over and over “God is so good”. You get to the ocean, you dive in, the water is actually warm even though it is November, the waves are huge and very strong. You come up for air, see your best friends beside you, turn around, and there is just a picture perfect view of the most green jungle with gray clouds and the sun peaking through. “How great is God! What did we do to deserve this? What did we do to get here?” 

This was my first impression of Costa Rica. Day one and God spoke these five words over me and my time here; all because of His favor. I learned through these words that things can be so good, and things can be so hard (like really, really hard) and yet, it's allowed by God because He loves us. I have learned that He chooses to allow us to experience difficulties to strengthen our relationship with Him. He chooses to give us hard things so that through them we can grow in working in His strength and in asking for help from Him. He chooses to love us through everything we throw His way, every time we don’t necessarily ask Him for permission, every time we disobey, everytime we work out of our own strength. And then He gives us the good stuff. The sweet, milk and honey, warm fire, enveloped in love type of things that make you feel like your heart could just burst.

For so long, I found it hard to see the good in the hard. To understand that my Father in Heaven is sitting right beside me, giving me His strength, cheering me on, telling me that He is protecting me. And then these five little words came along and changed my entire perspective. We can look at something so closely, like our trials, and only see the “bad” in them. But when we zoom out, look at the full picture, that’s when we can see how God’s hand was orchestrating everything around us.

It was after I realized this that God told me to get re-baptized. I was asked by a friend to describe my relationship with God in a few words. “Marriage covenant.” That was it. Something lasting, something permanent, something that I have fully chosen into, something that I am going to work at consistently, something that I am excited about every single day. That is my relationship with God. And so, I was re-baptized on the same beach and in the same ocean I described to you at the beginning of this blog. And as I was raised out of the water God spoke to me one more time, “It’s all because of My favor.” 

All the love,

     Caroline