I have four different blogs in my head, and I'm considering just writing them all out right now. Too many thoughts and ideas and revelations... not a bad problem to have.

First one that that came (I'm going to save the most exciting two for the end, so read through) was while I was washing dishes at sbux friday morning. I was looking forward to seeing my friend Meghan, just back from summer vacation at home in Cali, and my friend Aime, just back from her honeymoon in Mexico. I then started thinking about the chance of my sister Kim coming home for Christmas. I began to laugh as I looked at these 3 very close, very different friends. My range of close friends runs somewhere from 17 to 30ish...scratch that, 40's. I absolutely love spending time with a particular 4, 6, and 8 year-olds. When dancing with a 4-year-old is one of your favorite ways to spend a Friday night, and you'd prefer to spend Tuesday night with a good friend watching her daughter score in her highschool soccer match, you have to wonder a bit...how did I get like this?

Please don't take this as bragging...its merely me examining two things: What has caused me to be the way I am? And why was I created to be this way?

These two questions are closely connected to the process the Lord has had me in of growing confidence in His intention to fulfill my dreams.

The answer to why I have such a broad range of close friends I'm pretty sure has to do with my sisters. My sisters are 4 and 9 years older then me, and have been my best friends for a great many years. I wasn't always close with Kim. I have certain memories where Kim was the ideal amazing "older" sister, once when I was crying and very upset she sat and talked with me on the floor in my parents room, and I still remember her promising to take me for a ride in her "rabbit" some day (my favorite car at the time, because it was hers). I also remember her playing some hide and seek game with her earings in her room. I still clearly remember her teaching me how to make a bed properly, how to square the sheets in the corners. All these were before I was 5 years old, and I remember them. Once we moved to our new house (my kindergarten year), life took a lot of turns and I wasn't close with her until I reached high school.

Once again, life took more unexpected turns and I found myself spending more and more time with Kim, becoming best friends as we spend saturdays reading on her couch with a fire burning silently, or catching up on a season of some TV show... or eating her delicious baking projects... anything really. Maybe going to see some film together at the theatre, or playing basketball as she coached me and a bunch of my friends. Nine years came to mean very little, even while they meant a lot. She was older, wiser, and she was my ever-near friend, not judging or demeaning.

Our middle sister, Kristin, has always been my friend...my partner in crime, as well as interpretive dance. ;) She's the one who laughs at me no matter what I do, and pulls out the goofiest side that most of you don't even know exists....that will start conversations with strangers, maybe even bark at them, lay on the mall floor at christmas time, causing people to step over us, offer the woman at the macy's counter my library card as I snoutily inform her "charge it." She's 4 years older, but has never (okay, rarely!) made me feel like the obnoxious little sister. When she was a Junior and I just a seventh grader, she brought me along nearly everywhere. The older siblings I've seen do this genuinely I can count on one hand.

For this reason, when I was a Senior in high school, it seemed not so strange to bring the seventh graders along with me...not as a project, but as a friend. And I am so grateful today that this was put into me, because some of those "seventh graders" are the most incredible young women I know, and my good friends who I love to talk about life with. In Masters Commission and the years following, a girl 6 years or so older then me because my closest and dearest friend, walking through fire after fire together.

This was my final thought, I am so grateful that my parents had us girls 4 years apart, and even more grateful that they raised us to treasure one another as friends.

As for the why I am this way, I'm getting revelation...but I'll leave that to you to determine. :)

The revelation I had today that amazed me was this: our gifts really are for each other. During worship this morning I watched as Barco hopped off the stage to go dance, and Tong Pineda just as swiftly jumped up to the mike and began to sing in his place. I was stunned by how lovely this expression of praise and giftings was, and how the greater the complexity, due to the more people involved, the even more wondrous and lovely. See, I'd watched Tong clear more room for the dancers a few moments before, and considered also how his wife was involved in the training of the dancers...and the other dancers involved and their giftings, and the band. Its lovely, and complex, and so simple and pure at the same time. I hope some of this is making sense, sometimes a revelation is hard to really pass to another through words.

I've long considered my primary gifting to be "for others" as in, it's my heart to see the people around me become who they truly are, deeply, fully, freely. My calling is to call them into their callings. I want to do this through my words (spoken and written), my actions, my literal gifts to them, my glances, my hugs, even my clothing. We read recently in 1 Peter where it spoke about our giftings being for one another... and today I got it. It's not just my gifting that's for others, ALL of our giftings are for others, for one another.

And this led me to realize, "THIS is why God wanted a family." You see, it's beautiful to see a person functioning in their gifting, to watch Jordyn Cline dance is stunning. But to watch a group of people with different giftings, all interact is breathtaking. It's like listening to a piano, than an orchestra. (This comparison in worship this morning made me decide I AM going to listen to a live performance of an orchestra this year). The larger the community, the more beautiful and complex and overwhelmingly beautiful the expression is.

My final exciting remark is this, the Lord gave me a promise in worship today...
"I will write many stories through you, some with your pen, some with your words, and the greatest with your blood."

I gained one other noteworthy revelation today (also in worship...it was a very remarkable morning):
Adventure will find me.