The Holiday Sessions

Hello, old friends. So, here we are, on the last post.

I fully understand that it is long past time for me to close out my beloved Walkabout Sheila, and I apologize for the (very extensive) wait! I'm not sure what happened that made me put off this final post for three months after my Australian adventure ended, but it probably had something to do with the few weeks after I got back, which turned out to be pretty darn busy, reconnecting with friends and family, and so on. But nevertheless, we made it. As I turn the page on this portion of my life and race headlong toward the next chapter, I feel more than a little sentimentality settle into my heart. I learned and grown so much in the past year, both in my faith and in the way I see the world.

God has done fantastic things in me. I feel able to accomplish anything that I set my mind to, and more importantly, anything God has planned for me! I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. (Phillipians 4:13). And he certainly has done that. I don't think I would have been able to get through this whole amazing, challenging experience with my sanity and emotions in tact if not for Jesus Christ.
I am brave. I can stand up for myself and my decisions, sometimes not able to argue my point very well, but able to know that God is on my side, and if I am following Him, He will take care of and provide for me, no matter what. I have developed the strength to wait for His timing, because His timing is perfect in every sense of the word. Wait for the Lord. Be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14). I may not know what tomorrow may bring, but I know that I will not fail anything that God has set out for me to do, and I know that anything He has set out for me to do will never fail. I am officially worry-free. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? (Matthew 6:26-27). I am excited for what my future will bring! Next week, I am following my heart and my Savior and starting Massage Therapy school! I have never been more pumped up!
I learned in 2014 so much about people that I wondered how I even was a functioning member of society before this year. There are so many people in the world, and they all have hopes and dreams and fears and demons, things that build them up and things that tear them down. They all have different things that are important to them, and ideas about where they fit into their world. Being in a city as diverse as Perth, I was wonderfully astonished at how people from so many different countries and cultures could be so alike. We are all in this world together, because we all have one very important fact in common. Jesus died for every single one of us, no matter what background we come from, no matter what we have done in the past, no matter if we have rejected him completely throughout our whole lives. And He would do it again for any one person on the earth, just to give that person a fighting chance at love and everlasting peace. I heard John 3:16 from the Message version of the Bible at church on Christmas Sunday, and goodness gracious that verse spoke to me with more power than the thousands of times I had heard it all throughout my life. This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. (John 3:16 MSG)

I hope this post blesses you and encourages you beyond what you would think possible, as it has done for me. It's amazing how having nothing to say can supernaturally explode. I had no idea what I was going to write about when I sat down at my computer this morning. And yet, there it is, God's profound statement of love toward anyone who will listen!
Happy 2015 to this marvelous world! May every person on earth be filled with the Holy Spirit and feel the presence of Jesus Christ!

Amen.