A Pure Joy.

Because she listened to me whine, and has been
a huge encouragement!

I will save you the language lesson, because I can’t remember how she said it.  No matter how she said it, it was how I took it that mattered.  I was trying to buy some mangoes and a woman was asking me questions, and I was struggling a little to respond….(a usual thing), when she said to my friend Riley, you speak really good Spanish, the others don’t, you need to teach them.  John must have heard my heart sink because he just patted me on the back and said “it’s okay”…..But it wasn’t okay, it was a cherry on top of some frustrating conversations.  I couldn’t get it out of my head…to me it was another failure.  I know that learning a language is hard, but sometimes I don’t want hard, I don’t’ want difficult and I just don’t want to take my own “suck it up princess” advice- and I just want to whine.  So I did.  (Thank you Riley for listening to my pathetic whining).  But then I thought about it a little…..(okay I am still thinking about it)

I texted a friend and asked for some prayer in the frustration and difficulty, as I typed the text, I remembered my morning devotion… It was James chapter 1. 
“Consider it pure joy brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind……” Pure. Joy.

Pure: Free of any contamination

Joy: A feeling of great pleasure or happiness, rejoice

Not exactly how I was responding, as mine whining was not very ‘rejoice-ful’ and it was ‘FULL of contamination’

The response to the text was a verse from Hebrews 12:11... “You bet, I will definitely be praying….and then this verse: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”…… it was what I needed to hear again, no matter what I was reading in my quiet times, I guess I needed to learn it the hard way and have it pointed out to me again and again.  Thank you friends.

I am thankful for the prayers and the encouragement I have been given, and I apologize for sometimes not taking the encouragement well.  I am learning more and more about myself and my learning style and my pride through this.  I know that this work and trial and error will produce a harvest…later on…. But for now it needs to be a “pure joy”.  And this morning was  a ‘pure joy’.  I attended church for the first time in Costa Rica, and loved it.  Thankfully for all the worship the words were projected on the wall, and my heart became full.  He is the same EVERY day, in EVERY place and in EVERY language. 

His Beauty.