Hello, my name is Kayla.

So now that you know what I am not, it is time to show you who I am.

I am a sinner who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ. I am forgiven for every selfish act, lustful thought, and ungracious word. I am the Lord's, a new creation (II Cor. 5:17). I am fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God and bear Christ's image (Ps. 139:14). I am what God tells me I am, not the lies that the world dares to deceive me with. I am a bondservant of Christ, free from my sin and now a slave to righteousness. I am free from my sin, having been forgiven of every major and minor sin that I have committed in the past, am committing now in the present and will commit in the future. I am free from condemnation (Rom. 8:1). God is always with me and he has promised to never leave me or forsake me (Heb. 13:5). I have strong confidence in the Lord and the Lord is my confidence. I am a beautiful and mature young woman of God who has purified me by the blood of His Son. I am his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that he has prepared me for (Eph. 2:10). He has begun a good work in me and has promised to bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). I am therefore, valuable and significant. I am fun, funny, silly and yes, a little weird. I am smart and have valuable opinions and insights to offer others. I am a child of God (John 1:12) and I am precious in his sight (Is. 43:4). God will give men in return for me and peoples in exchange for my life (Is. 43:4). He has loved me with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3). I am lovable and worthy of pursuit for the Lord has loved me faithfully and pursued me relentlessly. I am who God made me to be and far be it from me to be anyone else.

This year is the beginning of a new season in my life. I'm throwing away the mask and forgetting my fears. This year I'm embracing the person that God created me to be and if anyone doesn't like me it doesn't matter because I wasn't created to please people; I was created to please God. His is the only opinion that matters.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come." ~II Cor. 5:17

"I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." ~Ps. 139:14

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." ~Rom. 8:1

"for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." ~Heb. 13:5

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." ~Eph. 2:10

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." ~Phil. 1:6

"But to those who did receive him, who believed in his name he gave the right to be called children of God." ~John 1:12

"Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for you life." ~Is. 43:4

"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you." ~Jer. 31:3

Stolen Identity continued...

My identity had been stolen by fear; by passing judgment on myself and others before even giving them a chance, before giving myself a chance. I felt like everyone was shutting me out, that they didn't like me or they thought I was weird or something. Then I realized the obvious--I was the one shutting everyone out, keeping my heart closed toward them and labeling them as unworthy of my trust. And I realized that the reason was that I wasn't comfortable with who I am and not only was I not comfortable with me but I didn't know who I was! So around this time a speaker gave a talk on finding out who you are (God has a funny way of teaching you what you need to learn at exactly the right time). One thing he said was that to find out who you are you have to figure out who you are not. The next morning my friend shared with me that for her devotion she was making a list of everything she wasn't and was then going to write a list of whatever was opposite of the other list. She encouraged me to do the same and I did. So my readers, here is what I am not:

I am not a relationship addict, a flirt or desperate for attention. I am not someone's toy. I am not a bra size or a pant size. I am not the clothes I wear, the house that I live in or the car that I drive. I am not the people I know or the attention I get. I am not the job that I work, the school that I go to or the major I pursue. I am not what people say about me or think about me. I am not how much I talk in groups or how much people notice me. I am not the devil's slave, a slave to others or even a slave to myself. I am not the sins I've committed, the past I'm ashamed of or the problems I've created. I am not alone and I am certainly not forsaken. I am not my struggles, my weaknesses or my insecurities. I am not the mistakes that I make or the stupid things that I say. I am not the instrument I play or the things that I do. I am not how many good quiet times I have in a week or how many times a day I pray. I am not the lies I've believed in the past or the lies that I believe now. I am not stupid, boring or inadequate. I am not ugly, worthless or unimportant. I simply am not.

Stolen Identity

This summer I learned that I care too much about what others think and say about me. I compare myself with others and always judge myself to be inadequate. I find it difficult to relate with others because I don't want to risk being real with them. I don't want to show others my true self because I feared they wouldn't like me, that they would judge or reject me. I wanted to let them into my life but my insecurities held me back. Instead, I would run away. The first couple of weeks of STP I kept to myself as much as possible. I preferred being alone to being around people because I knew I was safe alone. Safe from the judgement and rejection of others, and safe from embarrassing myself. As a result I noticed that I didn't bond as well with the girls in my cabin as everyone else did and I missed out on a lot. I didn't want to spend the rest of the summer on the outside of every inside joke so I tried to rectify the situation by being more outgoing. In my first attempt to be more social I went out with a group of people to grab some food. As soon as I got in the car I regretted my decision to go at once. My entire demeanor changed and it seemed that I was incapable of even manufacturing happiness. The second time I went on a hike with four other girls. I thought being with a smaller group would help matters but one small incident put me into a pretty terrible mood and I couldn't hide it. I'd always been able to mask my feelings fairly well. Why couldn't I do it now? From that incident and for the remainder of the hike my thoughts were focused inward. I couldn't understand why I was always the one who had trouble fitting in, who had difficulties opening up to people. I seemed to miss out on everything and I didn't understand why and it made me upset. All throughout my life I've felt like that, like a black sheep lost within a hundred white ones. When I found others that I could trust, that I could truly be myself with I stayed with them and they became my refuge but to the rest of the world I wore a mask of continual happiness. Nothing was ever wrong and nothing bothered me or made me upset. However, I soon realized that the line between my true self and my mask had become very vague. I didn't know who I was or what was part of the real Kayla and what was only manufactured. My identity had been stolen.

LuV iS a VeRb

As part of the program every Thursday we were required to take three hours, from 8-11am and have an XTAWG or an Extended Time Alone With God. This time was to be spent in God's word, in prayer, in meditation and just being still. As someone who struggles in her quiet times, this terrified me. The first Thursday came around and a lot of people were just so excited to get into the Word. I was smiling, trying to be excited but inwardly I was dreading the next three hours of my life. I did have a little bit of guidance from articles like "How to Spend a Day in Prayer" and "31 Ways to Praise" but I still wasn't thrilled about this whole XTAWG thing. After the first one, people would talk about what God had taught them or what verse he had laid on their heart. I remember coming up dry not feeling that I had any meaningful experiences during that time. I hoped that no one would ask me how my XTAWG was because i didn't want to have an unsatisfactory answer.

I didn't feel like I was experiencing God or capable of experiencing God the way my friends seemed to be and I was frustrated. I had also been struggling with feeling the love of God in my life for some time. I was even at the point of doubting my salvation, feeling like my heart was behind my head in that my head knew what the truth was but my heart lacked the same certainty. This scared me. This issue came up in one of my conversations with my team leader, Carolina. She asked me, "What do you think the signs are of someone whose heart has been changed by God?" I responded saying, "A repentant heart, a desire to be godly, confessing of Jesus as Lord and Savior, etc..." She asked me, "Do you have those desires? Are you willing to repent?" In tears I nodded yes. But again, this was only reassuring to my head. What about my heart?

I was doing my XTAWG outside and I was reading I Cor. 13 and the book of I John. (That's a lot talk about love by the way.) I paused for a moment and thought about how my friend Emily had gone in to work an hour early so I could get there at the time I had been scheduled to come in and I looked around me at the majesty of the mountains and the beauty of the earth around me and I remembered the work of Christ on the cross and I realized that God loves me. Pretty profound right? Ha! All these years of being a Christian, growing up being told that God loves me and this is my big revelation. Yes, God loves you, Kayla. I thought I knew that but something about that particular moment made me believe it, made me appreciate it.

God's love is not the love spoken of in love songs or the feeling of eternal bliss at the beginning of a marriage. God's love goes beyond that. It's something that we know we have by what God has done for us not by what we think we feel. Feelings are temporary and cannot be trusted. But God has shown his love for us through his Son, through the beauty of his creation and through other people. Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice, an action. Love is a verb! I challenge you this day to take the love that God has given you and to lavish it upon others. Love others extravagantly!

"God is love." I John 4:8

"Love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." I Corinthians 13:4-7

2 months + STP = 1 unforgettable summer

Imagine that for two months of your summer you will be living in Pigeon Forge, TN in a cabin with 11 other people (strangers, maybe acquaintances at best), working at Dollywood, and focusing solely on your relationship with Christ. Having been denied access to TV and internet and being cramped into tight quarters, you are forced into a world where you can't escape the present reality by running to your room and locking the door behind you or getting on facebook chat to talk with a friend who only tells you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear. You're forced to make good use of your time because if you don't do Bible study now there will be no time to do it later. Your day is scheduled from the moment you wake up to the moment you collapse on top of your bed from exhaustion. You wake up no later than 8am so you can do your quiet time, if not because you want to then because someone is bound to ask you about it later. Then you do a little bit of Bible study or whatever and by 10am it's time to get ready for work. Work from 11-7:30 and it's 8pm by the time you get home leaving you less than 10 minutes to get yourself somewhat presentable for A) evangelism, B) workshop, or C) Nav Night.

Sound intense? Yeah, it was. Would I do it again in a heartbeat? Yes, yes I would.

I spent my summer focusing on three things: 1) my relationship with Christ, 2) my relationship with others and 3) myself. I studied the book of 2 Timothy, did daily quiet times and weekly XTAWGs (Extended Time Alone with God) where I would spend three consecutive hours simply focusing on God, His word and prayer. I learned how to get along with other girls through living with them as well as relating to the opposite sex through work, Team Date Nights and casual interactions. I also engaged on 1:1 conversations with my team leader whose job it was to disciple me and to help me along the way during this spiritual journey. Through those conversations I was able to learn more about myself in 2 months than in my entire lifetime, but we'll get into that more later.

This blog begins as a description of what I learned at the Navigators' Smoky Mountain Summer Summer Training Program 2010 (SMS STP 2010). It will continue as a way to release a mask that I've worn for years without realizing it. May these posts about my experiences be as encouraging to you as my experiences have been to me.

Thanks for reading!

<3 Kayla