The Empty-Full Paradox

Life isn't always what you expect it to be.

When I was in West Africa, I expected a sense of fullness.  How could the realization of such a seemingly wonderful, God-centered dream not fill me with joy and purpose and passion?  But...it didn't.  My first year-and-a-half there was one of the very emptiest times of my life.

In contrast, had I seen through the halls of time to the day I'd be serving in the States, I would have expected to feel very empty, as though I'd lost my purpose.  I think you know I don't feel that way here.  It seems like life is just simply overflowing and I can't hold it all in.

I laugh.  It's just so backwards.  And yet I see God's fingerprints in this paradox.  It was grace that emptied me and allowed me to see - as one of my teachers back at MTC called it - the weight of my not-enough-ness.  It was grace that brought me to the end of myself, to meet the Lord in that place of need.  And it's grace that heaps my arms up with blessings here at a place I never would have imagined myself in or asked to be in.

That's my empty-full paradox.

But beyond the paradox, I've come to believe I am emptied to be filled...filled to overflowing with His grace that never runs out.