Don't Look Back Now

Have you ever heard that saying: "Don't look back, that's not where you're going"?

I think that that is one of the saddest sayings in the world....

I was just looking back through a bunch of pictures from over the past year. So often I ask myself why I can't go back to the way that things used to be. When my life was driven by the next homework assignment to be submitted and the next time that I could get together with my best friend for a movie night.

Sometimes, I really miss those days. Oh, how I miss those days!

It is so easy to live a life of reminiscence; a life of regret, remorse, and deep longing to go back to the good old days when you were "carefree and happy."

It is so easy to live life looking ahead at the future; always dreaming about the next thing, always hoping, and living in a fantasy world that will only disappoint and not be everything that you expect.

It is so easy to live life in any tense but the present.

To be sitting at my desk, writing this blogpost, and knowing that right here is where I was meant to be. No where else.

To pull together my history and who it has made me and my dreams and who I wish to become and to knit them both together into a neat little pattern that makes me who I am now.

God is the God of my past; He created me and guided me to this place. He is the God of my future; He holds it in the palm of His hand.

And He is the God of my present; this is where He has me now, He has given me this moment and He asks me what I am going to do with it.

I can throw the present away wishing for better days long gone.

I can pass it by while daydreaming of what is yet to come.

Or, I can hold on to it and make it worth every second, every moment spent.

God has invested this time in me.

He could have chosen someone else.

He could have created someone else.

But He didn't... He chose to invest Himself in my life.

What return can I give back to Him?

Assr vísa ykkarr brand.

(May God guide your sword.)

Elizabeth Marie Kauffman

Some Good Things Really Stink

Seriously, has anyone noticed how bad aloe vera smells? About twice a day I have a battle between what my nose and therefore my gut can handle and how bad the pain and flaking redness on my shoulders actually is. Usually the pain and flaking redness wins and I just suffer through the application and hope that the smell disappears really fast.

I've been posting a lot of my deep, internal thoughts lately, but now I thought that I should update you all a little bit on what I'm doing outside of the emotional and spiritual realm.

Well, so you may have already picked up by now, but I am currently in Nicaragua.

Have been for the last month and a half almost, and I don't leave for another, oh, over a month and a half more.

My job here is to create the content for a website that the ministry REAP Granada is having designed to show their supporters what they have been doing. This includes taking pictures, filming and editing videos, and doing some writing.

My time here has been absolutely incredible so far! God has been teaching me so much in so many ways, I have made some pretty amazing new friends, and my thirst for adventure has been ignited to the max. Not to mention that this has given me a chance to use my photography for something meaningful and important. 

Some of my favorite photography experiences so far have included watching the natural environment of the Pacific Ocean, volcanos, and a rainforest, but also street photography of the buildings, the lives, and the culture here, and (probably the one that I hold dearest) getting to take pictures at a jail. 

I'm a people watcher and storyteller at heart.

Leave me alone in a mall for an hour and I will have the backstory, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and ancestry figured out for the people standing across from me. We pass by so many people on the street, I'm always wondering what lives they hold and what their stories are.

I try to pull this mentality into my photography as well.

You'll have to tell me whether I succeed or not.

In the midst of taking pictures, shadowing the missionaries around, and experiencing the culture of Nicaragua, I have succeeded in scorching both of my shoulders and the tip of my nose during a two hour ride in the back of a truck followed by a walk on the beach to get a bunch of pictures. Although I had thought that I had been smart and put sunscreen on, apparently it wasn't quite enough as the worst sunburn I have had in my entire life can act as proof. Now, despite the awful stench (that reminds me a whole lot of what vomit smells like), aloe vera has become my best friend. The bottle of "Darmacare Gel De Zabila Aloe Vega Gel 100% puro" migrates around my room with me, remaining within arms reach at nearly all times.

I'm going to end this post on these notes:

1. I am having a wonderful time in Nicaragua stretching myself, learning new lessons, and using my talents to bring God glory.

2. Never underestimate the power of the sun and especially, never underestimate the soothing powers that something of seemingly toxic smell may have. "Don't judge at first whiff" if you will. 

Assr vísa ykkar brand.

(May God guide your sword.)

Elizabeth Marie Kauffman

 

The Naked Warrior

A door in Granada, Nicaragua

I've been on this earth twenty years, five months, two weeks, and six days today. That may seem like a long time to some of you, while to most I'm still just starting out. But if there is one thing that I've learned during my twenty years, five months, two weeks, and six days alive, it's how much God desires  for His children to trust fully and completely in Him, to depend solely on Him and on nothing else.

It feels like about every other month I have to relearn that lesson of trust.

Each time takes me one tiny level deeper into knowing who God is and who I am in Him.

And yet within another month I will take a step back from where He wants to take me.

Why do I do this?

It makes no sense, and yet it happens with a faithful routine.

Then God patiently picks me back up when I've lost all hope and turned away from who He is. He squeezes my hand gently to get my attention and ushers me back to the path towards true comprehension and understanding.

You see, He loves us enough to stop, reprimand, and prod us forward.

He isn't content to let us remain in a content, comfortable, simi-happy state. He wants so much more for our lives.

I have come to recognize that each step that I take towards understanding His vision for my life, His vision for all mankind, I have had to give up something within myself.

I must give up comfort and familiarity.

I must give up security.

I must give up my image, what people think of me.

I must give up my dreams, my goals.

My control over situations went clean out of the window.

It's painful to be stripped down to the core of your being, to lose everything that you had built up around you as the armor of your identity.

These are things that you learn as a baby, things that new experiences, changes, traumas, delights, or rewarding situations teach you slowly, steadily.

Like a soldier we wear our identities like a shield. We use our dreams, goals, and control as weapons to fend off the strange, mysterious, and insecure.

We claim that we go into battle for Christ.

But God asks us to strip of our armor. Right there in the middle of the field, He asks us to throw away our weapons and then continue our march into battle.

Our natural response is that He's crazy. He must not really mean what He's asked.

Photo by Scott Kennedy ( http://chirpingmug.com/ )

We may obey, but we also try to get away with as little as we can. We drop one piece of armor, but keep the most important, most vital, pieces. But God pushes gently, and we drop another piece, but we keep our weapons.

But what God desires is for us to willingly, and happily drop both armor and weapons at His first request and then not walk, but run into the battle field.

Do we have so little faith that we cannot believe that He has everything under control, even when we do not?

Do we forget so easily everything that He has done, that we do not remember how He can swoop down and rescue us in a moment's time?

I have spent the past month in a culture where most people do not not share a common language with me. All of my life I have trained myself that I must push myself out of my comfort zone in order to talk more with others, to be bubbly and social, and attempt to be the life of the party. But now I can't. Although I've been trying to learn the language, I am unable to confidently speak much more than the courteous "Hola. Come estes?" "Moi bien, y tú?" "Bien, gracias."

God has brought me to a place where I must learn to find my confidence in something other than how many sentences I feel that I have added to a conversation.

You see, God likes to strip us down to our very core, the base of who we are, and then He reconstructs us. He changes who we think we are into who He knows we are. The past year has been a series of demolitions of myself.

Now He is clearing the ground and readying the foundation to be poured.

I stand defenseless in enemy territory.

I stand defenseless, but not undefended.

Assr vísa ykkarr brand.

(May God guide your sword.)

Elizabeth Marie Kauffman