Fall Conference

It's currently thunderstorming and I love the sound of the rain hitting the skylights in my room. I love it when lightening flashes and for a split second, my room is blue...

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Let's see...should I write about Fall Conference? It seems as if a lot of people have...but my experience at Fall Conference this year was so different from the other 4 years....
The other years, I got so much out of the manuscript sessions and the speakers. I often went into it burned out and left feeling refreshed. I was often in leadership positions and had lots of stuff to bring before God.
This year was different. One major difference was that being able to go to this year's conference was a complete gift from God. It's not as though the other years weren't gifts...this one was just unexpected and unasked for. This year, the love that God has for me is what touched me the most. God repeatedly showed me that He loved me this past weekend...whether it was through fellowshipping with my spiritual family, through being able to see Eric, through being able to worship, through being able to just spend time alone...God seemed to be saying through all of that, "Jessica, I see you and I love you." I got to experience that love most intensely through my spiritual family... I got to encourage and be encouraged by Maya and Laura, some of the best friends a girl could ask for...and when I needed a hug the most on Saturday night, Mikey G was there to give me one...I got to have fun being myself around people (playing foosball especially =P)...something I have not had the joy of doing in a long time...
These kinds of things happened at past conferences too, but in the past, my reaction to these things was totally different. It's like I would give glory and praise to a painting for being beautiful and being something I'm able to enjoy when I should be giving praise and glory to the Master who painted it.
This past weekend, I feel strongly that everything that I experienced wasn't because of any one person...I didn't see the painting...rather I saw the Painter and what He was doing for me.
Many times this year, I have questioned whether God really sees what I'm going through. Whether He really cares. I knew about God's love but it never travelled the 18 inches from my head to my heart. I was definitely like Zaccheus...already given up on life and just living each day to make it through. And yet God picked me out of the crowd at Fall Conference (haha, the theme is IN Sight...wow, I just realized how appropriate that was) and showed me on Saturday night that He knows...He knew there was a band of anguish around my heart about going up to that stage and lighting a candle...He showed me that I was that tree that had been uprooted and transferred to another grove of trees but was still struggling with putting down roots...
I guess you could say that at this year's fall conference, I really experienced God and got to know Him better. It has made me really love Him all the more...

Coming back from Fall Conference, I knew that it would be different too...in the past, I had a bit of a reality check when I came back because I would get slammed with work and stuff...going from spiritual high to stressed in an instant. But this time, even though I'm getting hit from all sides...EMT class, my mom, health issues with my dad, church, I have a quiet peace within me...a quiet confidence of Jesus' presence within me. And this confidence sustains me. I am pressed but not crushed...which is very unlike how I would usually react to my situation right now...
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I finished Passion and Purity by Elizabeth Elliot last night. May God bless Elizabeth Elliot for writing Passion and Purity. For she writes about emotions that seem to transfer from my heart to her pen....