2012 : Boards, Builds & Kenya

2012 is off to a great start and this year I want to do a better job at keeping everyone up to date with the moments that fill my days! So with the first month of the year behind us, I thought I'd get this underway.

At the beginning of January I hit my next milestone in life and turned 31! Honestly, the years are flying so fast at this point I've given up trying to understand. I figured there was no better way to ring in 31 years than throwing myself down a mountain snowboarding. A group of us from Casas took off to Ruidoso, NM and spent the day on the slopes. This was the 2nd birthday I've ever spent away from my twin sister but they made my day amazing. I can't remember feeling so loved in such a long time! (Chantell and I celebrated together with a cake earlier in the month!)

I built my first house of 2012 for an amazing girl named Martha. She is 26 years old and has lived more lifetimes in those years than most of us will ever begin to imagine. There was something about her that captured me and I couldn't get her story off of my mind. Maybe it was the burn scars covering her arms from when she was in a bathroom that got bombed and she was caught in the middle. Or maybe it was the fact that she spent the entire day while we were building washing hers and her children's clothes by hand and she has to do this every two days. Or maybe it was walking into her home and seeing a bucket filled with water with an extension cord running into it as she showed me that it was the metal plate of the iron heating the water for her to wash clothes. Maybe it was taking a panorama picture of her home on my phone, and going back to my home that night, laying on my couch and dragging my finger across a screen as her wooden pallet walls filled with holes of light flashed by and my solid walls surrounded me. Regardless, Martha stayed with me, she changed me, and every night when I look at the lights of Juárez I thank God that one of those lights is her new home. Please pray for Martha. Although she received a home, her family is still struggling. She might be forced to put her young children into an orphanage so that they can be taken care of because her husband has abandoned her and she has to find work of her own. I sigh a deep breath when I think of how hard her life has been and continues to be. But I rest in the fact that the same God that holds me is holding her and I am beyond grateful that He allowed our world's to collide.

On a completely different note, in about 12 hours I will be on a plane starting a journey to Kenya! Two of my closest friends work with an organization called Nuru International and are living and working in Kenya to help end extreme poverty. I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to go see their work and Africa for the first time. Please keep my travels and all that they are doing in your prayers. I'm sure I'll have great stories and pictures to update you with next time around!

I hope that this finds you in the midst of your own great adventures, amazing stories, and surrounded by a God that loves you! Thank you for making my life possible and sharing in it with me. Much Love, Brittany

(click on the link below for a 360 view inside Martha's home in Juárez, México before receiving her new one.)

http://360.io/JV3CpA

Loved

He led me to a place of safety;
he rescued me because he delights in me. (Psalm 18:19 NLT)

I think one of the greatest things missing from most of our lives, is the understanding that the God of all creation delights in us and even loves us.

It seems that so much of the hurt and the heartache of this life stems from feeling unloved or unknown.

How would we live if we really knew and clung to the fact that in this moment right now and always, we are so loved?

Freedom

I look around at the appliances in the room. I wonder about the people that made them. The hours they worked for the amount they got paid. About their faces, who they are, their families.

I think about my friends just a few miles away in Mexico. I think about Gloria every night when I lay down to sleep in my comfortable bed, in my heated home, exhausted from a hard days work. I think about Gloria as she is standing at the factory working through the night as I lay my head down. I think about her standing outside and waiting for the bus in the cold. And I think about her exhausting 12 hr day of assembling pieces in a factory to make almost nothing as I lament over mine of doing things I love with my friends and getting the privilege of using my life to bring God glory.

I think about freedom, and college and being asked when I was 7 what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think about applying for the Air Force Academy at 18 and the heaps of college applications that came to my house. I think about the decisions I've made, the freedoms I've had and what's been handed to me. Like my entire education because I made good grades and knew how to hit a tennis ball. Because of that, I was granted the freedoms to be asked and to answer, "what do you want to do when you grow up?" It gives me the freedom to ask that same question now.

I think about this strange universe that we live in, different than all the other worlds around us. As though we are our own planet and our only example is ourselves, which can be a deadly one. And I think of how we use these freedoms we've been given. The freedom of education, of asking "what" you want to do, the freedom of options and hope and possibility. And then I look outside. I see our fancy cars and our houses. I see my own. And I see our streets filled with us driving to and fro around our little bubble until we have no where left to go.

And that's it. All this freedom. All this possibility. We have no idea what we hold in our hands because we have never known anything less. We have no idea what our lives could do if we looked around us; outside of us. I have no idea.

value of a life

tonight i watched a man lay in the street bleeding.  wheel chair on it's side.  medical supplies and beer can strewn about.  and i thought about this man's life.  i thought about the fact that he is someone's son. maybe he was someone's life.  he is a man that was created and formed perfectly and intentionally, with a purpose; with a plan.

maybe it's because of the new year.  maybe it's because i've been looking at life and reflecting on where i've been and where i want to be.  but all i could think about as i watched him from the rearview was who this man was; who he is.  this life.  this journey. in so many ways we're all the same. where we've come from. where we're going. there are the forks in the road that change us, that mold us, that shake us, that we never fully recover from. there are the ones that make us want to just forget where we are or what we're doing.  so many times there is pain and brokenness that is so hard to carry, it's easier to just lose our way.

i don't know his story, but that man that people walked past and stepped around tonight is another person just like you and me. someone living out the exact same days on this earth as i'm living out mine. his life is of so much value and so much worth.  yet he seems to have no idea of all that he was created for, as he throws it all away.

2011: Moments in Time

I'm beyond grateful for the moments that made up my year 

and the people that make up my life.  Thanks for an amazing

2011!

Long Expected Jesus

Something's missing this Christmas.

We celebrate Christmas tomorrow and it doesn't "feel" like Christmas yet. Something's missing and I can't put my finger on it. I did all the things I normally do to celebrate the holiday. We cut down a tree, decorated, did our annual Christmas festivities, and then I came home to GA a week before Christmas to celebrate with my family. But something's missing. I thought about the things that make it feel like Christmas to me. Usually all of these annual events, coupled with a few airings of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and then sitting with my family surrounded by lights from the tree while watching Elf pretty much does it. Especially now that I live far away, being together with my family during this time is what Christmas is to me. But still, something is missing.

I got lost this year; lost somewhere between the traditions and busyness that seem to make up the Christmas season. I've had my fill of stores and consumerism in the past week. That didn't make it feel like Christmas either. And despite the fact that I'm more amazed than I used to be by the idea that there is a day that people give you all kinds of gifts, (something about working with families living in extreme poverty has tweaked my excitement from a sense of Christmas entitlement to an extremely humbling feeling of gratefulness) alas, Christmas is in the morning and still something is missing.

As I drove to the store this morning and listened to the Christmas song I can't seem to turn off, I think I finally figured it out. The lyrics say, "Come thou long expected Jesus." As I drove I thought about what makes me feel like it's Christmastime. Although I know the reason we celebrate this holiday, what makes it "feel" like Christmas to me are movies and cookies and hot cider and cheese and crackers and my family. Traditions make me feel like it's Christmas.

Christmas in our culture, even with all of our crazy traditions of fat men in suits and elves and snowmen has one resounding theme; the excitement of awaiting something. It's what we are awaiting that we've gotten mixed up. All I've known of Christmas is what I grew up feeling as a child. There was this sense of overwhelming expectation for gifts, excitement for something waited for, something unknown, something I'm longing to have. As an adult, I'm trying to understand what Christmas is to me now.

Obviously, I've never known a day on this Earth prior to Jesus' birth, so the story that we read of a savior being born has truly never been more to me than that; a well known story.  A tradition.  But tonight I tried to imagine what it was like in the day of Jesus' birth to understand the true meaning of Christmas.  What the people were awaiting in that time was so much more than a gift under the Christmas tree, they were awaiting a savior to be born that would save their lives. Truly, the greatest gift they've ever received; the greatest gift we've ever received.

The lyrics of the song I can't turn off say this,
"Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart. "

This is what the people were desperately awaiting; hope and freedom in the form of a savior. The joy of every longing heart. They were awaiting the answer.  And that is what came this day that we celebrate. The same savior that they longed to be born, is the one that we celebrate today. As I see the stars in the sky and wonder about the wise men following them, this story has come to life, and all of a sudden, I feel like I fully understand.  My lack of feeling the joy of Christmas is replaced with the giddy excitement not of my 4 yr old self when Santa brought my scooter, but of my 30 yr old self so excited to celebrate the birth of a saving King. There is a reason that the gifts and traditions don't feel like Christmas, because they aren't, but rather done in celebration and worship of my king.

This year may you find and know the same excitement of long expected joy, hope and salvation as those in the stories we read.  "Come though long expected Jesus!"
For the first time I understand that THIS is Christmas.
 

CNN Heroes- rebroadcast Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

In case you missed our 2 minutes of fame!!