Beautiful and Passionate Grace

The past few weeks of Ocean City Summer Project ’12 have been wonderfully unique. It’s like I’m home when I walk up to the Ambassador’s Inn (where we all live), and I feel that I’ve known this group of people my whole life. Work is becoming routine, I feel comfortable there and enjoy my job. My coworkers are now actually friends - they open up to me about their lives and listen when I talk about mine. The weather finally broke today after a massive heat wave, and so the temperature feels perfect. I am in this beautiful place of finding joy and peace in the routine.

Ironically enough, this is the point where it all changes. This is the week that the staff leave and go home, and we’ve all been assigned jobs for the project. Just as I felt so comfortable, the Lord shakes it up.

The job position I’ve been given is going to stretch me beyond where I’ve been stretched before. And my prayer is that these marks will never go away. I’m in a place of leadership - spiritually and physically - over the project, and that terrifies me. As I think and plan with the other men and women on the leadership team, our individual and collective feeling is that we are incredibly humbled and inadequate. If we attempt to lead of our own strength and power and wisdom, we will epicly fail. However, if we are relying on the Lord for strength and wisdom, and resting in him, then he will succeed through us. I am really excited to pour my heart into the last month of this trip and truly be transformed by the Holy Spirit, growing in valuable life skills and being stretched as an individual.

(Our Impact group got real when it came to Softball. So fun.)

The community here is rich. It does not come easy, but through casting our eyes on Christ, being vulnerable and humble, and practicing confession with each other we are experiencing God’s grace and truth in a real and tangible way. The reality that this community will only last a couple more weeks in the state of New Jersey saddens my heart, but excites me to continue the vulnerability, humility, and confession with my relationships at home and at school.

I feel like I am being set free to embrace the person that God created me to be, and to find my identity and very life in Christ alone. The reality of leaving here is striking me, but rather than cling to this place like it is what’s bringing me joy and life, I am praying to cling to Christ because he is truly what brings me joy and life. This is a sweet time in my life that I’ll always remember, but Christ is who will stay with me for the rest of eternity. If my eyes remain on him, then pouring myself out over the next four weeks and drinking deeply from the community that will end will not be sad or exhausting. Instead, it is a blessing that I’m here, and the true lessons and heart changes I will experience and realize most once I do leave.

(I found another Gamma Phi Beta- Northwestern! Krysta is wonderful, and I am so blessed by her amazing and true friendship.)

So that’s where I’m at currently, I feel overwhelmed by God’s grace as I am being made more and more aware of my sin and how hard I really do fail. But that only makes the forgiveness so much sweeter. Thanks so much for reading this, I pray that my willingness to be vulnerable will continue and grow (and be reciprocated!)

Love,

Laney

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Deut 6:4-5