pickingwildflowers: sunday love

I hope that everyone is having a fabulous Sunday full of peace and love - and if you are very fortunate, then I hope you are embracing the joy of being around the ones you love and/or fellowshipping with fellow believers and warm-hearted people. That was the kind of Sunday that I had - family love, "How Great Thou Art," and a sermon that touched the soul - simply titled, HE IS HOLY.

I really enjoy going to church with my Mom and Dad again - I was an inconsistent church-goer at school (which I wish wasn't the case but with the college life it semed pretty typical). I was raised in a Southern Baptist church where I became a believer and baptized in 1999. Before that, though, we had always called that place home. When I left for college at the University of Alabama - after my 2005 high school graduation, that church had been my home for many years and was a safe harbor and a caring & safe place. I know that the church still means well and I know that God works tremendously through the hands of its congregation, every single day, but over the past few years we fell distant to the things that big churches become. Sometimes churches can be big and do amazing things, but sometimes churches can be on their way to being huge and hurt people along the way. Everything is circumstantial, I believe, and I firmly believe that the reasons that my family and I are no longer members of the only church we have ever called "home" is circumstantial and individualistic. Sure, it fell in a time when there was a gap and slipping church enrollment, but I know we wanted more than anything to do what God led us to do, and he led us searching for a new church home. I have been visiting several different churches at night, but my morning service and worship time I want to be with my parents - it's one of the greatest things about being at home is going to church in my Sunday best with Momma and Daddy. I pray every night that we find our current place of worhsip a nice fit and can soon call it home for good.
So many things have happened to me in the past year. A lot of changes. I lost life as I knew it - church, school, belongings to the fire, friends, relationships I put my heart and soul in, and A LOT OF PRIDE. If I could only explain to you some of the ridiculous and life-challenging MESSES I got myself into then you'd be reading a damn near novel. I won't go into the deets, but let's just put it in the words of one my main men: Bob Dylan. "Chaos is a friend of mne."

Even though so many things have happened to me, I have realized a lot - especially during my few week blogging-hiatus where I just thunk and thunk and thunk ;)

For one, I consider myself majorly lucky to even be aware that all of this "stuff" has happened to me for a reason and that it wasn't just for shits and giggles and a bunch of April's Fool jokes being played on me - although April and I do have more of a hate/hate relationship with one another and she likes to screw me one good time during this month. But, whatever she showers me with - I have learned to grow it in to a May flower. Like for instance, a good friend of mine passed away on April 1 - about the same time I was hanging out with my good friend here in Orlando and in tears to him trying to explain my anxiety and constant worry during the month of April. "Oh but bad things always happen in April for me - it's a curse," I'd say. Even I knew that I was being slightly melodramatic (but remember, I cannot help who I am, ha) but wouldn't you know - I got a call that a buddy from Tuscaloosa who had just moved to Charleston to clean up his act, get his life together, move on from past mistakes and bad habits, was dead. He relapsed. And just like that, April took another friend from me.

But I know that things, ALL THINGS, happen for a reason. It's a hokie dokie saying that we brush off and say when the timing calls for it but it seriously all happens for a reason. You stub your toe? Meant to happen. Maybe it kept you from going on a jog that would have ended violently or traumatically? You miss the school bus and when your Mom drops you off in the car-riders lane you learn that your bus was in a trauamtic accident. Every little thing, if you think about it, happens for a solid reason.

I just think it's almost insane that God throws these details into our lives. Like me not being in that fire, Millie not being locked up in that crate. I crossed two lanes of traffic and hit a power pole, but no one was in the opposite lane - for a reason. He crushed and shattered ever piece of my heart and it's been hell putting it back together - for a reason. I have a really dark spot in my life's timeline, and I have really groovy colored spots on it too - because the darker spots make the colored ones even better. How can you not love a God that spends so much time giving you a life of adventure, a riddle or rhyme or two to help you figure out the reasons He does things so mysteriously, but always in the end doing it for the sake of your good, His good, and His Gospel's good? How can you not love that God?

I am just overcome with joy today because - I have to be honest, some Sunday's I get sad. Some Sunday's I miss our old church. I miss the friends, the people I grew up praying for and them praying for me, I miss my parent's little group of friends and how they always knew what was going on with me (and I hoped at least that they had compassion and understanding for me during my struggles) and I miss the church family belonging. I really want to join First Baptist Orlando, but it is so overwhelming - the size of that church, sometimes. I just have a calling - and I know it's a calling from God telling me that there IS a reason that my life has played out the way that it has - and I want to go serve in the mission field for a short time. And First Baptist Orlando is the perfect place for service. I would keep you here until Tuesday if I went into all the neat, Godly projects that is going on in that church. I just love it. And if you know me... then you can remember that "my word" is PASSION and I love when (so many) people tell me that I am a passionate person - I just loooove it because that is success to me, to be passionate - but anyways, the motto or mantra or whatever you wish to call it for the First Baptist Church of Orlando is PASSION FOR GOD. It just screams.... "BAILY JORDAN JONES, THIS IS SO YOUR PLACE TO COME FIND YOUR PURPOSE!"

I want to go on a short-term mission project, not sign my life away just yet. But I have a zest for travel, a love for God, a yearning to learn more about the world, and a testimony and that I am SO not afraid to share. I love the microphone! I don't want to travel and see the world from one Hilton the next Marriott - I want to really see the world and give them something, I want to go over there and do it for Him, not me. I just have no desire, whatsoever, to go overseas to gawk and pretend to awe over arts and architecture that - no offense - I don't really give a damn for. And I really don't want to go to London or Paris or anywhere and look at castles of Queens and Kings I know nothing about. I want to go over to that part of the country and share the Gospel, serve under-developed children, bring creativity and the joy of arts and culture to their lives the way they bring it to our lives - I don't want to go play hoity toity Parisian... I want to get my hands dirty and prove that I may not have been ready to be a professional business-woman college graduate just yet, but I AM ready to serve, to share what I've learned throughout my own personal tragedies, and just love and dance and smiles and sing and give someone a hug.

I know a lot of you don't know what it is like to be depressed - but I know that everyone suffers. Whether you are like me and have an actual biological, chemical imbalance or not... there are times when you are sad, when you've lost, when you've mourned, when you've grieved - and in those times, you rememner the ones that were there for you to help you, serve you, be with you, understand you, pray for you, and give you hope. I can do that. I can do those things so well - God has shown me in multitudes of ways. I've been moved, I am being changed - and this time: I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE. I am letting GOD control my path, because I want the destiny HE has planned for me - full of joy, peace, and love - the things I believe in.

I'm not going to listen to anything but my heart and what the Lord convicts, sways, moves, and touches. I know He dwells within me and will show me the right way. I'm tired of my way - because it is soooo the wrong way.

Oh, and another reason I have no desire to go look at castles of Kings and Queens of another country that are rude to us, is that I'm a proud and loud SOUTHERN BELL and I ain't going to no castle being as I have never graced the gates of GRACELAND where my King lived and died. Call me a redneck, but I've got a better name for you I bet ;)