God is Good.

Being busy causes a dual problem… not only do I not have time to blog, but when I finally do, I have wayyyy too much to write about. I still haven’t even posted pictures from my last two days in France when I took two amazing solo sightseeing adventures. I will hope to get to that this week and then maybe write more about them when I do.

For now, what’s really on my mind is how incredible God’s blessings have been in my life lately. I started thinking about this after successfully driving a stick shift car in Marseille city traffic without causing an accident or hitting any of the pedestrians who regularly step into traffic without looking. You think I’m joking, but I consider this a serious miracle. I also thought about it while sitting on the rocky shoreline of an island off the coast of Marseille, enjoying the solitude and sounds of crashing waves while marveling at the view across the water of the city spread out below the massive forms of the Alps in the distance. Who would have ever thought I would have opportunities like this? It was one of those moments I almost felt like pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Then, this week, I found out that a tough situation in a friend’s life that I have been praying about took a major step in the right direction. I was so happy to hear about this that a random stranger in line ahead of me later that day asked what I was smiling so much about. I think it is even more exciting when God answers a prayer for a friend than it is when He blesses something in my own life.

Also, I have just been unbelievably blessed by the people I have had the privilege of getting to know and spend time with here. I think about it every time I look around the living room at OCF meetings and know what a real family that group is, with every role including mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers to learn from and just share life with. I have the same feeling when I spend time with my weather flight… I love all of them individually, but also as a group, when I see the bonds and relationships that hold the team together and make us all better than we are on our own.

Before I left for France, I had lunch with two friends from OCF. It was two days before I was supposed to leave, and my orders and travel arrangements were in chaos. I had woken up at 4am to do laundry on base before work, only to find the change machine in the laundromat broken and not enough quarters to do my laundry. So, as you might imagine, I was a little bit stressed and not really in the most joyous mood. After venting about all this to my friends, one of them told me that when things like this happen to him, he takes a minute to think about how blessed he is in the areas of life that really matter, most of all how incredible it is to be loved and saved by God. “The rest is just details, right?” I had to agree with him, and it definitely had me looking at the laundromat issue with a different perspective. I’ve thought back to this conversation several times in the last week and a half, because it just makes so much sense in light of everything else I have talked about in this entry. Life is never going to be perfect, and it’s not always going to be happy… but I do believe it is the most beautiful and exciting gift that God has given us, and I want to live it that way.

You know what's even more amazing? That God gives us that gift even though we don't deserve it. I'll make this personal and switch from "we" to "I". I have messed up a lot of things in life. I have made bad decisions, I have been selfish, and I have hurt people I care about. While I still struggle to forgive myself for some of these things, I know that God already has forgiven me, even though that is a hard thing to wrap my mind around. The gift of salvation, the gift of life, the gift of love... all of these given just by His grace, not by anything I have done or ever could do. Crazy, isn't it? But true. And I want to love the people in my life like that, unconditionally.