Chantelle . Elizabeth

She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| and as you run, what hindered love will only become part of the story ||

I have recently been on a painfully beautiful journey of undoing and learning what it looks like to operate from a place of knowing who I am in Christ and living from a place of victory - that I don’t actually fight for victory, but from victory. Why? Because the battle has already been fought and I have already won!

Undoing is not an easy process. I am only 26 years old but the journey that I have walked thus far has enabled me to believe certain things about myself and the world around me. Throughout my journey, I came to believe that I had to fight for love. I believed that in order to be loved, I had to prove myself - I had to be good enough. I believed that in order to be seen, in order to be worthy, I had to fight for my position in the world. My life was a picture of survival of the fittest. I had the understanding that my worth was dependent on my works - on proving myself and fighting for what I wanted and getting what I ultimately deserved – good or bad. Mistakes would leave me crippled because mistakes equated to failure and failure was never an option.

Undoing… The process of letting go and becoming who I was created to be. I never arrive and it is always a process. I have been in a process of letting go and reconstructing old mindsets, past ways of coping, fighting, and managing thoughts, feelings, and situations. It has been a journey. It has been a daily choice and there are many days and moments where I operate from a place of “this is how I’ve always done things.” But, it is in those moments where I get to choose – I can choose to succumb to the feeling and react out of fear or anxiety or I can choose to respond from love, from a place of victory.

I am learning what it looks like to love and to be loved by the One who loves me unconditionally. I am learning what it looks like to operate from a place of fearless love - that I don’t actually have to fight for love or worth or position because who I am is not wrapped up in what I do or what I can give. Rather, who I am is based on how He sees me. I am loved and I am love and there is no fear in love; there is not striving in love; there is no need to prove myself in love; there is no failure in love. Love is love, and love never fails.

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| Faithful you have been and faithful you will be ||

2014 has been an incredible year - the most challenging and rewarding year of my life. I have walked through a painful process of self discovery that is integral to the destiny I am created for.

This year was filled with monumental moments and life-changing highlights. I set foot in Tijuana, Mexico, which gave me only a taste of what I am made of. I tasted boldness, courage, and my heart for those who are hungry for more of Him. I experienced freedom and breakthrough in coming home for 4 months in the summer, finally realizing the work that took place in my heart and soul in my first year at BSSM. I walked through a painful process of heartbreak and brokenness that brought me to a place of exhilarating freedom in recognizing my worth, my value, what I carry, and what I have to offer. I learned what it looks like to do life with people and to do it well. I learned how to choose love over fear, every time. I broke cycles in my life that had been there for years and finally started becoming the person I have desired to be for years. I made good choices, I took ownership of my own life, I invited people into my process, and I chased after what I wanted this year. 

This year I became powerful, I discovered courage, I found myself, but most importantly, I found Him. Broken on the floor in my closet in Redding, California, I found the One I have been searching for my entire life. I found "the thing." I found the one thing that I have spent my entire life trying to find. I found my reason for living, the truest true, my hearts desire, the One my soul longs for, and He was better than I ever expected. I found my Father, my Friend, my Comforter. No longer was I chasing after human beings to fill those spots because He became the greatest Friend, my good Father, and the sweetest Comforter.

The Lord was fully committed to me in 2014 and He is fully committed to me in 2015 and every year that follows. Faithful He has been and faithful He will be. I step into 2015 with full confidence that He is who He says He is and He will do what He has promised He would do. His goodness is constant and His love is relentless. Glory to glory is my destiny, no matter what the journey looks like! 

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| and then she became fearless ||

I have chosen to embark upon a journey - a journey of freedom; freedom from myself, my own expectations and expectations others have placed over me; freedom from fear and anxiety; freedom from the lies of not being good enough, not measuring up, not having what it takes, not looking the way I’m supposed to look; freedom from my past, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and insecurity.

Being fearless is not a passive state of being. The journey towards freedom was one of uncomfortable vulnerability and complete honesty with myself and the people in my life. It was a daily choice to break off familiar patterns and cycles, choosing to leap out of my comfort zone, and making decisions that did not always seem fruitful in the present moments but were ultimately seeds being sown into my future and into my destiny.

My journey has been a moment-by-moment choosing to follow the One whose perfect love casts out all fear - to follow His kind voice and walk in His footsteps; to choose the One who stands outside of time, leading me into places that I cannot yet see. I only see what is in front of me. I only know what He allows me to know, but I choose to follow His whispers in the moments that I am currently in. I choose Him over my fear of the unknown. I choose Him over my insecurity of what I will look like. I choose Him over my present wants and desires, fully knowing that He is faithful to do all that He has promised.

True freedom is found in following His kind voice. He never leads me to places I am not prepared to enter. He never gives me opportunities that I cannot handle. He never places me into moments I cannot overcome. Fear is crippling and I was tired of not being able to run freely in the life that He created me to live in its fullness. I want to dance when I hear music, shout when my soul is bursting with excitement, make healthy choices with confidence, and do what no one else in the room is bold enough to do. I want to break out of cycles that this crippling fear has kept me in for so long. I want to step into my destiny, creating a legacy for what comes after me, and set a new standard to replace what those who have gone before me had chosen to settle for.

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| “The Lord’s loving-kindness indeed never ceases. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I have hope in Him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him.” Lamentations 3:22-25 ||

The seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to illuminate this place in my heart where I am overwhelmed with an abundance of joy and thankfulness – this place in my heart where I find it necessary to mindfully reflect on past years and look for the constant thread of the Lord’s faithfulness in every season.

The faithfulness of the Lord has been a central theme in this current season. He has always been faithful to me but I have been experiencing a deeper awareness and a more intimate reality of how faithful He really is. I find myself intentionally creating the space in my heart and mind to go back in time to pivotal moments in my life which carry the most weight in my memory – moments where I felt He was distant and intangible; moments where I made crucial decisions to choose Him or choose something else; moments where I felt His presence amidst chaos and confusion; moments where I first fell in love with Him, followed by countless simple and significant moments in this beautiful love story enveloped in this grand adventure called life.

And oh, what a beautiful journey it has been! Over the past several weeks I have heard the Lord whisper, over and over, “I am faithful to do all that I have promised. I am faithful to do all that I have promised.” I have come to this place in my heart where I am willing to give up everything in pursuit of this love story with Him, however, fully knowing that in the end, He is faithful to do all that He has promised He would do because He is fully committed to me. I am so committed to Him that there is no other option for me.

I am fully convinced of His faithfulness. I know that He remains true, constant, and steadfast in my process regardless of how difficult the journey may seem. I have tasted of, and seen, His goodness manifested in every area of my life – in every season. I know that choosing Him was the greatest decision I have ever made and choosing Him daily will continue to be the most rewarding decision I will ever make.

He never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He remains faithful because it’s His nature. He IS faithfulness, fully expressed. Seasons change, life gets messy, process seems difficult, but He remains faithful to do all that He has promised.

“The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:24

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| "This is the day it all changes." ||  Yesterday, in class, Kristene DiMarco shared a moment she had in worship where she felt power enter the room as she sang, "This is the day it all changes." As she spoke, something inside my spirit completely shifted and I suddenly became so passionate about days where everything changes.  As someone who grew up in a Christian home the term "spiritual high" was something I was used to. These spiritual high's would happen after a conference or a summer camp where I would experience the Lord in a way I had never experienced Him before and would say to myself, "this is the day where everything will change; a day where I will never be the same again." However, that spiritual high would eventually fade away once reality hit and I would be left holding out for the next "day where everything changes." 

When I came to Bethel my "spiritual high" mindset shifted into a place where those days where everything changes became my ultimate reality. I no longer grabbed onto those life-changing in moments in worship in fear that I would miss it, or with anxiety of the possibility that it might be the only encounter I would have with the Lord for the next two months. 

There are moments you have with the Lord that are pivotal; moments that significantly mark you; moments where something inside you shifts into a place where you know that your life will never be the same again. But as Kristene spoke, I became so hungry to have days where everything changes on a regular basis. And these days would only build on each other - no backsliding; no looking back. I want to have days where everything changes simply because of a conversation, something I hear on the radio, a quote I read in passing, a single Scripture verse, a sunset, or a song.

"Be so hungry for God that you never miss a thing! To the level that we are hungry for Him, we will experience Him." I want to be so hungry for God that nothing I experience is ever a coincidence; I want to be in a place where just because of a simple, seemingly insignificant moment, my spirit immediately jumps into a place where, because of that day; because of that moment, I am never the same again! 

[chantellejipp-blog]

|| "In a world where you can be anything . . . Be yourself." ||

The Lord has been taking me on a journey of fearlessness and gracefully revealing to me what it truly means to be myself. Fear of man is something that I have chosen to run after this year, which means that I've been facing, head on, situations and circumstances that completely throw me out of my comfort zone; physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

For the past couple of weeks, the Lord has been showing me this vivid picture: I am standing beside a well. He is standing in front me, staring straight into my eyes and I feel as though I am the version of myself that I have always desired to be. The Lord would continually show me this picture and each time, it was just Him and I and I am completely myself, doing the things that I aspire to fearlessly do. 

I was determined to discover the significance of being myself and standing beside this well with the Lord. I dove into John 4 - the story of the woman at the well. I read through the story in a couple of different versions, not finding anything particularly significant. I read the passage in The Message and something in my spirit jumped. "But the time is coming - it has, in fact, come - when what you're called will not matter . . . It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before Him in their worship. Those who worship Him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

I have a friend here who always repeats this one line to me, "Just do you boo." Being yourself has become such a cliche. We say it to ourselves and to others without really understanding what it actually means to be ourselves. Who we are has never been about what we do or what we love to do. It has nothing to do with what we're good at or even what we are called to do. The Father is looking for those who are completely themselves before Him in adoration. Identity comes from being known by the Father and living out of that place. We discover what it means to be completely ourselves when we stand before the One who knows us completely; the One who created our very being and knows the deepest, most intimate, places in our hearts; the One who knows our greatest fears and insecurities and still wants to stand in front of us, stare into our eyes, and continually say, "Just do you boo." 

All fear is gone when I stand before Him, being completely myself, because I have nothing to prove. Fear of man is no longer something I have to intentionally run after because the answer is in the face-to-face encounters I have with the One whom I fully adore, with every facet of my being. 

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|| . . . and then He said, "Beloved, let's go on an adventure!" || Every year, the first and second year BSSM students venture off the grid for a two-day retreat. In these two days we stay up late, eat questionable camp food, laugh, cry, laugh, cry, build lifetime relationships, and encounter the presence of God in such a way that we are never the same again. And oh, did we ever!  My dear friend Byanca gave me a prophetic word the last night of retreat: "God led you to a room that was completely white; the floors, the walls, the ceilings. It was completely empty and all that was in it were a bunch of paint colours and one paint brush. God is telling you to create - create your new world; create what you want this new like with Him to look like . . . " I was standing in worship and the presence and power of God hit me in such a way that I could no longer stand. I heard the Lord say, "You will no longer let anyone steal from you. I am restoring the standard for what love looks like and I will give you back all that you have lost." I physically felt the things that have been stolen from me throughout my life being returned to me . . . And then it was over and I heard Him say, "You're free. Beloved, let's go on an adventure!" These are moments that forever mark you; moments where you look back years later and pinpoint those pivotal moments that changed your life forever. 

This is a new season. It is a season of restoration and freedom; a season where my life is no longer defined by the things I have done and the mistakes I have made. It is a season of letting go, a season of undoing, and a season of creating, with the Lord, the life that I want to live and the person I want to be.  It is always an adventure with Him. We never know quite what it's going to look like and we sometimes get lost along the way, but when we choose Him, when we choose to be close, we are no longer searching for the destination because the adventure is knowing Him and being fully known and unconditionally loved by Him! 

[chantellejipp-blog]

On August 30th, I embarked on a new journey into a brand new season entitled, Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry: Second Year. Despite my arguments and reservations, I knew God was calling me to come back for another year. As much as I had grown over first year, I knew there was more and that I wasn’t quite finished here yet. So I worked a ridiculous amount of hours each week for four months, packed my bags and boxes into my Honda Civic, and was on my way.

I pulled out of my driveway and I instantly heard the Lord say, “This is the season where you are going to fall in love with me. In this season, I will show you what true love is supposed to look like. I will demolish every skewed perception you have about love and replace them with the tangible knowledge of an unconditional love that ravishes your heart.”

In this moment, something inside my spirit shifted. My heart had made a choice and the choice was this: to choose Him every single day for the rest of my life. My deep desire to intimately know the Lord finally went from being knowledge in my head to a decision in my heart. I was forever marked by love.

Love is a choice. Love is not passive. Love requires an action. There is something beautifully powerful about choosing Him amidst all of the other options. I choose to know Him and let myself be known by Him. Choosing Him requires me to walk a journey of trust and faithfully dive into the mysteries of the unknown, knowing that His ways are always good. 

ALL I want to do is know Him. I don’t always need to know the plan; I just need to know Him. It’s a daily choice but in knowing Him, the choice is easy. I choose His goodness. I choose His ways. I choose to be wrapped up in the One who chooses me, just as I am, in all my humanity, in all my fears and insecurities, in all of my shortcomings and imperfections, and still says, “I love you just as you are.”

[chantellejipp-blog]

"Draw near to me and I will draw near to you." James 4:8 On my 20-hour car ride to Redding, California, The Lord impressed the word "closeness" so strongly on my heart as being the word for the season that I was stepping into; that this was going to be a season of discovering what it looks like to be close to Him and to experience deep intimacy in a relationship with the One my soul delights in; the lover of my soul. What does closeness look like? What does it mean to be close? Closeness is about relationship; it's about connection. Being close is raw, intimate, vulnerable, and honest. Tonight, closeness looked like laying in my closet for hours and tearfully pouring out what was on my heart and honestly expressing the pain I was processing through in the exact moment I was feeling it. Closeness is letting Him in. It's not about pretending to have it all together and letting Him in once I've processed through it on my own. He's not afraid of my stuff. He's not afraid of what's on my heart because He already knows and it doesn't scare Him. And when I'm finished getting out what I need to get out, He always responds. It doesn't always sound or feel the same but He always has a response and it always brings clarity. He always brings peace. I choose closeness. I don't fully know what it looks like but I choose to be close. In this season, and for the rest of my life, I choose to not fully understand what He is doing and why He is doing what He's doing. I just want to be close. Whatever it looks like. I choose Him.

[chantellejipp-blog]

To say that I have been learning a lot about process and life would be an overused understatement. I took a giant leap when I made the decision to come to first year last year. I had come to a place in my life where I had lost myself completely. Perhaps it's because I had never found myself in the first place. I was afraid of life; afraid of making choices; afraid of what was to come.

I have always had this deep yearning inside my soul to know the Lord intimately. I desired to know Him and to be close to Him. I would go through seasons where I would fight for closeness so that I could feel Him. Such seasons were often followed by shame and disappointment - shaming myself for not being able to hold on to Him, and disappointment in Him for not staying close. 

Oh, what a journey it has been to discover intimacy and communion with Him day-to-day, in every single moment. I had been chasing after a "feeling." I would search for Him in the conference "feeling", the post-camp "feeling". I would search for Him in the big moments where it felt inevitable for Him to show up. I would try my hardest to hold onto that "feeling" so that I would never have to feel abandoned by Him ever again. And then I encountered His face; His presence; His closeness that was all around me; relentlessly pursuing me, ravishing my heart in every moment. 

The presence of Jesus is not a feeling. It's not something you receive when you're good enough and it doesn't leave when you mess up. His presence is unconditional. He desires to commune with us in the moments. I have been searching for closeness for as long as I can remember. I was searching so hard and so fearfully that I failed to turn around, look at Him, grab His hand and walk alongside Him. 

It's always been about closeness - to know that He is closer than the skin on my bones and the breath in my lungs. 

I don't always love the journey. I don't always understand the process. However, I do know that He is always close and when I look at Him, everything else doesn't matter anymore. The overwhelming noise in my head subsides and the anxiousness in my heart melts away. I choose Him. All of my days, I choose to be close to Him. 

[chantellejipp-blog]

The drive into Redding was a bittersweet entrance. As excited as I was to be back in the city where my life was completely transformed last year, I was flooded with old memories, anxiety, fear, and an unsettling feeling I couldn't quite pinpoint. 

My summer was a difficult season of healing and growth. It was about learning more about who I am, the strengths I possess, and a lot about my worth and my value - how much I value myself, how much others value me, and how worthy I am in the eyes of the One who matters. I went through a long season last year of raw and naked insecurity about who I was and what I had to offer the world. God stripped off all the performance, the pretend-like-I-have-it-all-together-all-the-time mindset, the walls I put up to protect myself, and the masks I put on to cover up my fears, insecurities, and imperfections. I was completely uncovered and was forced to discover the truth about myself and my worth without all the defence mechanisms and protective agents that I was so good at pulling out whenever I felt vulnerable. 

This summer was a season of coming out of hiding and discovering the person that I was created to be - no masks, no lies, no cover-ups. Just me. It was a journey through messy, raw, and uncovered vulnerability with God, the people in my life, and with myself. It was a painful process but God was so gentle and so gracious and never ceased to protect my delicate heart and soul. 

I am stepping into this next season with more confidence and more assurance of who I am than I have ever had. It is no longer about what I can offer, who I am with, or what I can do. I know who I am and I know whose I am and the strength that comes with that knowledge is more powerful than any title I have ever possessed. 

I am back in a city that is filled with both good and painful memories; a city where I journeyed through the most difficult and most rewarding season of my life; a city where I met people who forever changed my life; a city where I discovered a love that is relentless and all-consuming; a love that ravished my heart when it was in its most broken state; a love that promised to never leave me or forsake me; a love that pursues me on my best and worst days; a love that I will choose every single day, for the rest of my life. 

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I have been overwhelmed by the presence of God in the counselling room and how He moves in the hearts and lives of clients and transforms the darkest of stories and the deepest of hurts. It's humbling to comprehend the fact that I have nothing in and of myself that is effective enough to bring healing and wholeness without being completely dependent on Him. Indeed, there are appropriate counselling tools, but there is nothing more transformational in a client's life than an encounter with the living God. 

I encounter client stories that are completely unfathomable - client's who are neck deep in trauma, abuse, domestic violence, addictions, and are now faced with the daunting reality of an unplanned pregnancy. They sit across from me - someone who is completely impartial to their life story - and they just unload. Sessions that last from one to three hours where these young women share the explicit and painful details of their lives and situations. As a human being in the helping profession, it's easy to want to offer solutions and provide insight. However, grace is a quiet presence. Grace listens and understands. Grace is never judgmental or condescending. Grace is peaceful and patient. I am a holding context for their stories and when they are finished pouring out their story, my job is to ask the Holy Spirit: what is the "sip of water" they really need right now. He always responds with exactly what they need. 

It's easy to get caught up in an agenda when it comes to encounters with people. We only have enough time, patience, grace, love, and words of wisdom that we allot for them ahead of time. This doesn't just pertain to counselling clients either. Jesus met people right where they were at in the moments they were in. We owe people encounters with Jesus Christ. We are His hands and His feet. When we connect to the heart of God and His love for His people He gives us more than enough time, patience, grace, love, and words of wisdom that we could ever need, accompanied by the strength to meet people right where they're at in the most desperate moments of their lives.

"We owe the world an encounter." - Bill Johnson

Encounters change, transform, shift, and restructure. People come into our lives who may be walking through a hopeless, chaotic storm and we are called to meet them right where they're at. We are not always called to step into the storm with them - although God does sometimes ask us to carry anothers burdens with them - but we are called to grab their hand, pull them out of their storm and to see it from a different viewing point; from God's viewing point. Take them to a place where they can encounter the love and goodness of God - whatever that looks like, wherever that is for them. 

Our work is about freedom - freeing people from the darkness of their storm and leading them into an encounter with the One who rewrites stories and gives beauty for ashes. 

[infelice]

[chantellejipp-blog]

Last week I wrote about decision-making and how God trusts us with the choices that we make and how, when we have a heart after God, we can't make the wrong decision. But what happens when we make a choice and we realize that it was a choice we shouldn't have made? We said yes to something or someone and we come to realize that we made the "wrong" choice. Not only do we deal with the disappointment of making the wrong decision in the first place but we also have to grapple with the idea that we feel as though we wasted precious moments of our life by saying 'yes' to something shouldn't have said yes to. Those weeks and months we spent with someone or doing something, that initially felt right, now feel painful and wasted. We go over and over the entire situation in our minds, rationalize our decisions, remind ourselves of the bad moments, and process through the pain of the really good moments, all the while asking God why He allowed us to walk through a season that ultimately led us to a place of deep hurt, wishing we had chosen any decision other than the one we made. 

Isaiah 61:7 says, "Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours."

Because we are under God's unmerited favor, no matter how much time we feel we have wasted, God will always repay us and restore to us what we lost. What we see as wasted time and unfruitful seasons God sees as precious areas of influence and powerful testimony. Time is never lost. Seasons of our life are never wasted. Indeed, we are faced with the realities and consequences of the decisions we make but nothing is ever wasted in the Kingdom. We live and we learn. We make decisions all the time; some good and some not so good but instead of having a pity party for the decisions we wish we hadn't made, we choose to extract the good that came from each decision and not dwell on what we could have, should, have, would have done better.

We learn valuable life lessons in every season of our lives and learn more and more about the plans God has for us in each season. His goodness is always present - even in the moments we feel we messed up. His love is always unconditional - even in the moments we can't feel it. His favor is always upon us - even in the moments we choose not to grasp it. And His timing is always good - every moment spent with Him is never wasted.

[chantellejipp-blog]

Our youth pastor momentarily brought up the topic of indecision last night. He had us discuss with each other why we have such a difficult time making decisions and how we know how to make the "right" choice when we're faced with a difficult decision. I most definitely had a thing or ten to say about decision making . . . 

Research shows that we make approximately 35,000 decisions on a daily basis; most of them are small decisions: What do I want to wear? What do I want to eat? However, there are those decisions you face every so often that carry much more weight where you feel as though they are crucial decisions that will define the course of your life. Psychologists describe 6 decision-making styles:

Impulsive: you go for the first choice that is presented to you

Fatalistic: if something is meant to happen, it will - it's fate

Compliant: you go along with the crowd or someone else's opinion

Delaying: you need more time, or you'll think about it later

Agonizing: you feel overwhelmed and can't make up your mind

Balancing: you weigh all the factors and then make a decision

Obviously, this list is not exhaustive but it definitely describes the way human beings go about making decisions. Even the very act of not making a decision is a decision in itself. So the question remains, how do we go about making a decision when we're faced with one that seems impossible to make? 

One thing that I learned over the course of my 9 months at Bethel, and am continuing to learn, is that God trusts us with our choices and our decisions. Clearly, we can make the wrong decision but when we are in the will of God and our heart's desire is to love, follow, and honour Him, we cannot make the wrong decision. Whatever choice we make in a decision will be accompanied by different blessings and challenges but there is no wrong decision. The decision that we choose to say "yes" to and follow through with is the right decision.

Ownership is an integral part of the decision-making process. We don't like to make decisions because we don't want to be responsible for the outcome of the decision that we make. "Indecision is caused by fear." We don't like to make decisions because we are afraid of making the "wrong" one and having to live with the outcome of that decision for the rest of our life. However, there is a powerful sense of responsibility that comes with making a decision, owning the decision, and choosing to be responsible for the outcome of the decision we made. We no longer feel guilty and shameful for making the "wrong" decision because in our decision-making process, we weighed out the pros and cons, and we have chosen to take ownership of our choice and all that comes with it. Furthermore, this ownership of, and responsibility for, our decision keeps us from turning back on the decision that we made because we know why we made the choice that we made.

We make decisions every day but when we understand that God completely trusts us and we know that we have Holy Spirit providing us with wisdom and discernment in our decision-making process, and community around us that provides insight and perspective - we absolutely can't make the wrong decision. 

[chantellejipp-blog]

"Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks months or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it."

I can speak from personal experience that I have not mastered the art of living in, and appreciating, the moments that each day brings forth. My overactive, over thinking mind has a way of always seeing the moments that are in the future instead of the moments that exist that very second. I am always one step ahead of myself all the time: What do I need to do tomorrow in order to achieve what I want next year, in 5 years, etc.? 

Coming back home to Calgary for the summer I told myself that I was going to "live in the moment." Another cliche, yes. But I had to really ask myself, "What does living in the moment actually look like?" I'm still going to have a plan. I'm still going to have goals and dreams and aspirations for the future, but I choose to not let those things take away the joys and the appreciation for the moments that I am currently in. Living in the moment looks like having a conversation - whether it's 4 minutes long or 4 hours long - without planning out my to-do list for the evening. Living in the moment means fully engaging myself in my day-to-day, moment-to-moment interactions with people. Living in the moment means taking the time to relish peaceful and joyful moments and being thankful for the simple things that I am appreciative of. Living in the moment means listening and engaging; it means being grateful of and thankful for; it means laughing and enjoying; it means being intentional and purposeful.

Living in the moment is a choice. I have to choose to engage with and take part in the moments that God gives me every single day. I can choose to get wrapped up in the stress of the day or the overall frustrations of the week, OR I can choose to live each moment as though it is a moment that I will never again have. I can choose to take the time to really listen to the person sitting across from me and engage with them and their life; I can choose to appreciate my peaceful drive to work every morning and my first, second, and third cup of coffee; I can choose to relish the moments where laughter is free and present. Every day I am given the choice to choose to be in the moment and in these moments God presents me with opportunities, conversations, and pieces of wisdom that I will completely brush past if I don't choose to grab ahold of them. 

[chantellejipp-blog]

I've been doing a lot of self-reflection the past couple of weeks. Perhaps I have reached a quarter-life crisis and am looking back on the last 25 years of my life, reflecting on the things I did right, what I could have done better, and the parts I completely screwed up. It's funny to look back on my life with so much more perspective and clarity, slightly wishing that my 21-year-old brain had the cognitive capacity to see life the way I see it now. "You live and you learn" is the old saying that brings justification to the mistakes that we have made in our past. And it's true . . . we make mistakes - some much bigger than others and we deal with the consequences and repercussions of our choices. Then we learn - hopefully we come to a place where we realize that we don't want to keep making the same mistakes we've been making and we make choices that lead us down a different path.

It is imperative that we do not let our mistakes define who we are and where we are going. Life is messy. That is something that I have only recently come to comprehend. I grew up with a rather idealistic view on life and how it was going to play out and have slowly been learning that life is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. But it's not about the messy things we face in life; it's about how we choose to react and respond when life gets hard and how we come out of such circumstances. There is much to be said about those who live seemingly smooth lives and seem to never make mistakes or make bad choices. However, so much beauty lies in the lives of those who have struggled, who have made mistakes, and who have conquered the things in life that tried to hold them back. Psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, captured a significant piece concerning beautiful people. Beautiful people are those who have known, experienced, and overcome hardship and have chosen to look at life through the lens of compassion. Beautiful people maintain a perspective on life that those who have not endured struggle do not possess. Beautiful people have the capacity to relate to those who are in the midst of hardship. Beautiful people are able to say, "I know how you feel and I promise you'll get through it." Beautiful people empathize and understand. Beautiful people do not just happen. 

Life is messy. We are all aware of that, but these beautiful people are the ones that inspire us to live lives of perseverance, compassion, pursuit, and unconditional love. They inspire us to fight through the hard times and to be continually thankful for the moments and seasons that make the hard seasons worth fighting for.