Oh hi! It’s Hailey and I’m so glad to be writing to all of the blog readers, IN THE SUN. Currently, I’m sitting on the back porch and the sun is shining right on my face and i’m watching Maggie Miedema (dog) sun bathing as well. Looking back at the beginning of the month, I cannot believe we were at Career Calling Vocation Retreat? That feels like it was months ago. Anyways! I was reading a devo this morning from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day, and it shocked me how perfect it was for wrapping up February; the month of learning about ourselves more and more and being better stewards of the gifts the lord has given us.
Scripture: Psalm 139: 13-16
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Devotional: Written by Parker Palmer
Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.
It is a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it- and I think I am not alone. There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one's self. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?"
When thinking about Psalm 139, I directly correlate it to beauty/the flesh because that's all that I have seen it correlated with online, in political discussions, and amongst girls in bible study. But the truth is that the God that created my flesh is pleased beyond measure with who I am as a soul and what gifts I bring to the table; all that he created me to be.
I am still, and probably forever will be, chewing on the results I was given from the tests I got to take for the Carrer Calling Vocation Retreat and all of the information I got from family interviews that went into writing my (30 page by accident) Genogram paper. But the Lord designed me in these ways: to have my story, to have my gifts, to have my unique view of who God is in my life, and to be made aware of how I can use all of it to be a living sacrifice in the exact way Hailey Cook is supposed to be.
Top 5 songs of the month:
Oughta See You (The Way I Do)- Flatland Cavalry
Alleycat- Mumford & Sons
Icarus- Mumford & Sons, Gigi Perez
Jesus, My Brother- Live by Mission House
Everything Harry Styles has ever released. Getting ready for the BIG DAY FRIDAY!!!!
See you again soon (with a new Harry Styles album and even more sun than now)!!!
-Hailey Cook