Do you know God loves you? He loves you so much its MINDBOGGLINGLY INSANE!

There have only been 3 times in my entire life up to this point that I have felt His love SOOO desperately much that I think I might have actually caught a tiny glimpse of what the extent of His love must be…. (Yes, I meant to say that, I know it’s confusing – re-read it)

And one of them happened about 5 minutes ago.

God LOVES you

I can’t help but write right now because my heart is overflowing, bursting, spinning with the intensity of His love.  I am literally still laughing and I have tears coming out of my eyes as I write this.

Who am I to deserve such CRAZY LOVE?!?

“God loves you” – You’ve heard it before. You may even have heard the whole, “You’ve probably heard this before, but do you really know it?” ‘shpiel’ before.

This post isn’t one of those.

Are you READY for the Intensity of His love?

In all my 30-odd years of life I have never once heard anyone say (that I can remember) – You might not be ready for His love.

But, I’m here to tell you today that if you haven’t experienced His love in such an intense way that it almost literally KNOCKS YOU OVER, you probably aren’t ready for it!

He can’t give you the INCREDIBLE gifts He has planned for you unless you are prepared for them.

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A snippet of my testimony

I mentioned at the beginning that I had experienced this crazy love 3 times in my life up to this point. You might think that it was when I met my husband, got married or had any of my five children.  You could imagine it was any number of typical, logical, incredibly beautiful moments,

….but, you would be wrong.

Yes, I felt God’s love for me in those things. I truly have felt my heart growing in its capacity to love in each of those incredible moments. I have experienced His tender loving care through countless friends, opportunities, and beautiful surprises throughout my life, but all of these things they pale drastically in comparison with the EPIC nature of the 3 experiences I will share with you.

What could possibly be so special about these 3 instances that they trump marriage and childbirth!?

They made my whole life make sense.

For an OCD “Why/Because” person this was a BIG DEAL!!!!

The first instance,

was when I was a terrified college senior who had no idea what she was supposed to do with her life…

It was a PROMISE that He held my future and everything was going to be all right as long as I just stayed close to Him.

I experienced this promise it in SUCH a tangible way that that one moment got me through the next 12 years of my life…

It meant EVERYTHING to me.

Then, 3 years ago…

my husband and I were finally nice and established in our marriage, our 3 children, our routines, our town, our church, and our first home. My husband finally had the work schedule we had been working toward since we were married and I felt “home” for the first time since I had been a child.  I loved everything about our tiny little life.

And then my world was rocked by the sudden news that in two weeks we would be moving to Utah.

It killed me….

The thought of leaving everything I had just built to restart in a new place I didn’t know was almost unbearable.

I pulled myself together and begrudgingly wrapped my brain around the whole situation

And then, the whole thing fell through and we never even ended up leaving!

I was happy at first, but shortly afterward our perfect little life started falling apart.

We got pregnant with our 4th child

No, this wasn’t a bad thing.  We were ready and we were excited, but, it ended up being a debilitating pregnancy and I almost died in childbirth.

I suffered through severe Post Partum Depression and PTSD. I also got pesticide poisoning and fluoride poisoning during my “recovery” which made everything that much worse.

8 months later, just as I was barely starting to feel human, we discovered we were pregnant, AGAIN.

WHATTT!?!?

I was blessed to be joyful about the idea of new life even after all that had passed, but I was still dealing with incredible fear.

To make matters worse, during this time, our refrigerator started leaking everywhere, our washer and dryer broke (TWICE), we found out our HVAC system had been broken for more than a year when we discovered the problem and, because of that, we had to deal with a whole house mold situation.

Plus, I was now 2 weeks post partum with my newborn baby girl, which meant that we had 5 kids under 6 (and a half) years old!!!!

Yeah, “some promise”, I was beginning to think.

During this time, we decided to take a 3 week family road trip across the country to spend some much needed time together, and our lives completely changed.

I wasn’t sure how serious we were at first but we started looking for land to build our own off grid home in Vermont. Little by little, the plans became more real and sign after sign seemed to keep pointing us in that direction.

I was praying about it one night and I was telling Him how crazy we felt for thinking we could live this childish (not to mention impractical/impossible) dream with 5 tiny children.

In that moment came the second time I felt His love THAT intensely…

He spoke to my heart in that moment clear as day,

“Do you like your PRESENT, Darling?

It was like He was giving me permission to be happy! Permission to be excited! Permission to believe that this crazy childhood dream that had never gone away might actually be our life one day.

There was a catch, however, to this sign of love that I couldn’t see at that moment.

He didn’t say how and He didn’t say when…

So, we kept waiting.

Waiting, and working, and homeschooling, and blogging, and land-hunting, and going about daily life as usual, just hoping that one day we would see how this was all going to work out.

The land hunt was sad and frustrating.

For a year and a half, nothing was right. Everything was expensive, inaccessible, or just plain bad. Every time we got excited about something, it fell through for one reason or another. We starting getting deflated and started questioning if we had made this whole thing up in our heads. Was it was ever going to happen?

But then…

Today He revealed to me the means.  Yes, there is another super long story – but, that is for another time, once it becomes official, and probably only for people who join the mailing list (hint, hint).

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And He said to me again,

Do you like your PRESENT, Darling?

It was a clear reference to the last time He said it. I could almost hear the “twinkle in His eye” and the smile in His voice as He watched me “unwrap” the mystery of why we had to go through everything we did to get to this moment.

Every. Single. Thing. In my life has lead up to this very moment.

Who knew that a life lived close to Him and as a calling ended up making so much sense!?!?  (Even when it all looks crazy on the outside).

Oh, the JOY!

This past week for me has been all about joy and how HAPPY He created us to be. Today, I realized that His plan for me, for us, to make this happen, is by doing EXACTLY what I love to do most.

Finally, I make sense! Of course this is why He created me with these desires, these passions, these talents! Of course all those things had to happen!

It all makes sense!

What greater gift could there be?  What greater love could there be?

Remember, I will send the remainder of my story to my newsletter subscribers.

And that is only MY story….

Each one of us has a story.

You too are loved THIS IMMENSELY.

YOU have a CALLING, a crazy, scary calling that will make you happier than you could ever imagine.

And, so I ask you today…

Do you know how much God loves you?

Yes, there are little things He does that you might notice (and things you don’t) because He does them constantly…

but, I am asking about something else.

Have you ever been left breathless, in full-on sobs, in uncontrollable, deep laughter, or in complete stunned silence by a tiny peak at heaven?

If not, my darling, there is SOOOO much more in store for you.

Are you ready for it?

How might your life today be preparing you to experience God’s love in an intense way later on?

How much do you TRUST Him?

Are you truly trying to LET HIM IN?

How intensely are you SEEKING HIM?

#ParticularlyCALLED #Togetherinthetrenches #IamCALLED

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