2012: A Year of Fulfillment

Yes, it really, really, really was.

This was the year, God said: Go! Start! Make a move! And within months, Alabaster Mobile Clinic was a living, breathing, entity. On February 6th 2012, it was formally recognized in the state of California. 7 years after I had heard God's whisper, 6 years after I had carved its name on a small bark of tree.

And then it was as if, I didn't choose it, but it chose me. 6 months later, a 200-person concert took place, a month after that, 1,336 patients were treated on a continent I know is my second home. I had entered God's stream and He just carried me.

And then on one seemingly random October day, my soul was united with its other half. A random twitter feed and less random Skype conversations, were all we needed. Within days, I knew...before I had ever met him in person. And now exactly 3 months later, I know who I will be waking up to every morning till the day I die.

Fulfillment.

And in the midst of all of this, a 5-year journey ended with a burly gentleman announcing in front of thousands of people, "Shannon Fernando, MSN-FNP." A journey that initially began with so much confusion, 13 rejection letters, wrought with needle sticks, long night shifts, union disputes, sprained wrists from combative patients, and also the realization of my calling not only as a healthcare provider, but as a teacher.

This was also the year, God delivered me from shame. Restored precious friendships. And taught me the importance of worship. Showed me that in my weakness, He is my strength. That His grace is sufficient, whether in the jungles of Kenya, or when leading worship on Sunday mornings in Pasadena, CA.

All in ONE YEAR.

He said this would be the year of fulfillment and it truly was. Every promise God ever spoke over me, whether months ago, or years ago, came to fruition THIS YEAR.

After 7 years of singleness, through all the doubts, uncertainties, mistakes, I don't enter 2013 alone. But united with an amazing man, whose name I will take in 11 months.

I enter 2013 with so much expectation. Knowing that God's people in Africa await. I enter 2013 with a new job title. So much unknown, and yet, so much peace.

We serve a God so lavishly loving, we can't fathom it. I don't fully understand a God who would keep His covenant with such a failing, fickle being like me. And yet He does. He remained and remains true to His word.

He said, open wide your mouth and I will fill it. My cup overflows.

So it is only fitting that on my last day of 2012, I spend it in calm, silent reflection. In peace. In humble gratitude before my Savior. Because, all I have and all I feel as this year closes is:

Awe.

6 billion - 1

6 billion people on this planet. So many random choices, interactions, situations, and I could have ended up else where.

But out of 6 billion people, God chose one.

One.

See in my unbelief, I started to think that maybe God didn't have just one person for me. That perhaps it was all just chance or right place, right time stuff. My fairytale belief in soul mates started to falter.

But on December 8, 2012, every expectation, every preconceived notion about love, every doubt was shattered. Obliterated. See the pain of every no and locked door is completely overshadowed when you stand before the door so easily and widely open. 

I stood at the airport that night, so nervous I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

But then when my one appeared at the top of the escalators that night, I knew. It wasn't a flood of emotions, a tangible feeling, or even a physical reaction. It was just knowing. Peace.

There is something so mind-blowingly simple about God. God, in His God-ness, actually makes this very controversial and sometimes painful area of our lives, very simple. It is we who make it complicated.

See, when God in His God-ness chooses one from 6 billion, all complexities actually fade away. You don't have to psychoanalyze it. You don't have to over-rationalize it. You don't have to ask people's opinions about it. And you don't have to explain it...at all. It's as if God absorbs all those complexities and you are left with just a simple knowing. Peace.

It just is.

I knew before I ever met you, before I ever touched you, that you were the one I would vow for eternity to spend my life with.

You are perfectly imperfect for me. My other half.

You are the missing puzzle piece to the canvas of my experience. The piece that will now turn the trajectory of my life to places I never knew possible. The next chapter in my book of life. You are the answer to that prayer she prayed 30 years ago, the fulfillment of a longing he had 33 years ago.

You are everything I thought I didn't want and most definitely everything I need. Everything.

God made it so very simple, you see. In His God-ness, he brought together two of the most random people from across the universe, only to show us His not-so-random ways, His loving, magnificent, gracious love for us. To show that He can make possible the impossible. That He can redeem what the world says cannot be redeemed.

Our story is not the norm. For many it may be difficult to understand.

But I can't shake the truth. My simple knowing. The peace I have that transcends all understanding.

I choose you. For better or worse. I choose you.

12.7.13

Restoration

Today was a culmination of something. It was a beginning, although it was also an end.

The end of my Master's program and the beginning of this next incredible season of my life.

I believe today marks a new season for me, a season of restoration, which I believe will be the theme of 2013.

A Year of Restoration.

See what most don't know is what was lost in order to reach this day. What God had to lovingly, but sometimes forcibly remove. What had to be sacrificed by many.

6 years ago I received by 13th and final medical school rejection letter. It was one of the darkest times of my life. Lost, confused, rejected.

But today, all that seemed to have been lost that day, in that season, was restored. Not just restored, but overwhelmingly restored.

Yes, my dreams of being a medical doctor were lost. But, my calling to be a healer was restored and fully brought to fruition, on this day, where my final instructor said: "I would be happy to have you as my colleague. Welcome fellow nurse practitioner."

See the truth is, when we believe in an everlasting, almighty, loving and faithful God, nothing is ever really lost. All circumstances work unto our good and ultimately for His incredible glory.

I wouldn't have had it any other way. This incredible YES obliterates every no I have faced leading up to it.

The Book of Joel, chapter 2, vs 25-27 state:

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
    the great locust and the young locust,
    the other locusts and the locust swarm—
my great army that I sent among you.
²⁶ You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
    and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
    who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
²⁷ Then you will know that I am in Israel,
    that I am the Lord your God,
    and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed."

I praise God for His uncanny ability to restore what was lost not only to its fullness, but beyond its measure. 

I can truly say today I have plenty to eat, I am full, and God has indeed worked wonders. And most importantly I know that in all of this:

There is none, absolutely none like our God.

Age: 28

There are not enough words to describe the immense love and care I have experienced this year, especially for this season: the 28th anniversary of my birth.

All I can honestly say is: God is so extravagantly, abundantly, overwhelmingly loving to His children.

In just one week, one birthday, God answered so many of my prayers and made so many of my wishes come true.

I have never in my life felt so fully and completely loved by my family and friends, just for being me.

And as I reflect in incredible gratitude for the love shown to me, I realize that it is all God's love and grace for me.

We serve an incredible God who loves us so well that many times we are awed into silence or brought to our knees in gratitude.

We love a God who takes our most wild and deep desires and brings them to fruition in His perfect timing so that a blessing can be fully enjoyed.

God's YES is huge! Mind-blowing, earth-shaking, drought-ending.

I am so in awe of a God who loves us so specifically, so intimately, and so abundantly.

It's a love so very undeserved that it's hard to fathom. Cannot be explained, or even fully described. Just experienced.

God has shown me truly that His love has no bounds. That there is no limit to His mercy and compassion for us. That His love is not dependent on how much we want things or deserve things, but simply on who HE is.

God is love.

And on my 28th birthday, I experienced God on an entirely different plane, a whole new level. In a way that has brought me to my knees in gratitude.

I will never understand why the God of the universe chose me to live in His courts, to experience His love, to dance with Him. But I will never, ever, ever take it for granted.

Thank you Jesus for loving me so very well in every season.

Knowing

Today I got out of the boat. And decided to walk on water.

At any point, I could drown. I could see that I'm actually walking on water...an impossible thing...and sink swiftly.

And yet, here I am. It feels like the first time I set foot on African soil with a smile and a dream. The first time I gave an injection to a patient. The first time I held a microphone to sing.

It's a beautiful, terrifying, magical feeling.

I don't know much, but I know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

And yes, the greatest thing I know is this:

I know you. It's like I have known you my whole life.

It doesn't make sense.

It's not logical.

It's walking on water.

And even if I sink, even if I almost drown,

It was so worth getting out of the boat.

11/9/12

And God said, you shall be single, and saw that it was good

I have written many a blog about being single. After all, it's been 7 years since my last serious romantic relationship so of course, you know I got stories to share! ;)

I often wonder, why is it that I'm STILL single? Why is it that many girlfriends of mine have moved on, met men, had babies, and here I remain...

I know many beautiful, powerful, strong, accomplished women who have these same questions. The eternal why. We placate ourselves with speculations about who God is and why He has kept us to Himself. Maybe He has simply rescued us from bad men. Perhaps it's because we are just too busy. Or perhaps because the right guy just hasn't come along. The list of justifications goes on and on. The older we get, the more complicated the list becomes, because our fear of being single forever keeps growing and growing.

But see, we are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why God, we should be asking, now what?

The word of God says, to God a day is like a 1000 and a 1000 is like a day. The God of the universe knows no bounds of time and space. This very fact makes our attempts to psychoanalyze God's reasoning for keeping us single for X amount of years a joke. We can't characterize God with human arguments because He is wholly Other. Too good for us to imagine. Too holy, much smarter, and much more creative.

I will be 28 years old in two months. This strikes fear in many of my family members - mainly women, women who married between the ages of 20-24. Were they better than me? More beautiful? More wise? Less picky? Just luckier? In a different generation?

Or perhaps, that was just God's plan for them - different from His plan for me. I won't lie and say I am 100% completely content being single. I have a deep, deep longing to be married. To find a man that will love me just as I am. To be taught by God to love till the edge of my ability and sacrifice for my husband and children.

And see, that's ok. There is a holy dissatisfaction that arises in singleness, that doesn't mean it's not of God or wrong, or that God isn't good. It's something that God in all His goodness allows us to experience because maybe He wants to draw us closer to Him. Maybe there's a gift in this for me...even that is not for me to know, but simply trust in Him.

It's ok for me to be uncomfortable and on some days only mildly hopeful in singleness because perhaps that is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Again, it is hard for the human heart and brain to understand this phenomenon - that good can arise from hardship, answered prayers from locked doors, life from death, fruit from drought. But that is the very nature of the Kingdom of God. Not that He devises hopelessness and barrenness, but that He causes dry bones to live. Strength in weakness.

I read somewhere this quote: "I am single because God is so abundantly good to me, because this is his best for me. It is a cosmic impossibility that anything could be better for me right now than being single, The psalmists confirm that I should not want, I shall not want, because no good thing will God withhold from me."

Amen! Sometimes God's goodness is manifest through periods of confusion, doubt, emptiness because there is a space between God's gift and promises spoken in the heavenlies and the working out of that goodness in the raw, messy, human experience. And in that space, God is not absent, but wholly present, wholly good, wholly equipped with good gifts for us.

I am going to stop rationalizing this space. Oh God is preparing me still, or God is preparing him still, or God is waiting for me to be healed of this thing, or God is waiting for me to be less busy, blah blah blah.

It's frankly exhausting to try and figure out a God who stills roaring oceans, makes mountains fall, but also was born in a manger and walked with sandals, most likely torn sandals. This God is too big, too intimate, and too beautiful to comprehend.

So, I will simply accept my dissatisfaction, longing, and curiosity, not in a martyred way, not in a defeated way, not in a sad or angry way, but in an OBEDIENT way.

Not my will, but HIS be done. That is the essence of true discipleship and love for God. So yes, I'm single, I don't love it, but I accept it, wholeheartedly, with all my questions and doubts, because the God who allowed Sarah to give birth at age 100, can allow me with all my complexities and lengthy period of singlehood to one day read this blog and say,

Praise God for His perfect timing and for not always giving us what we want, but for ALWAYS giving us what we truly need. 

For you

To those I love on three different continents. This is for you.

May you find always only one thing in anything and everything I write on this site:

That to be loved by God and to love God is the only thing worth living for.

Shalom.