Hey friends.  When I wrote this back in November I almost immediately posted it but did not follow thru with it.  At the time, the Lord had me interacting with someone that was challenging what it meant for me to be a woman and to dream of continuing to live my lifestyle while at the same time consider God’s proposal to me of entertaining relationship as in regards to marriage.  The challenging of its impossibility last November helped only to solidify within me two things: 1)  that I was who God had called me to be and was not going to compromise on that for the sake of being loved by someone this side of heaven and 2)  that surely God himself was the one talking to me about a relationship and had been communicating to me about it and I was hearing him clearly and I would believe him.  I wrote this letter in response to this individual.  Two months later I met my now husband Joel Quinones.

Happy Reading.

“Hey _______, I am going to venture to be honest here trusting that for whatever purposes, the Lord would use it for good.  Remember that sigh?  I think it was me just remembering that you and I aren’t necessarily looking at the same horizons.  […]

I wrote a small note on facebook expressing a slight window of what I’m about to share with you here when I returned from India on my last trip.  I’ll go and make it public if you ever want to check it out.  I think part of the wonder that God has created me is because I’m a woman.  If I were doing what I’m doing and living as I’m living, as a man, it would be slightly less remarkable.  You’re a man, you can do as you want and go as you please, attached or unattached.  But who is a woman if she is not a wife or mother?  Where is she going, what is her value, what is her purpose, who does she think she is?

I have found I am the daughter of king.  I was born to influence the destiny of nations and am already doing so.  I am destined to sit with kings and reveal the ways of my father.  I am meant to be a mouthpiece and to speak.  To one yes, but also to many.  I am meant to release glory wherever I set my feet, in the middle of every culture I touch.  Glory is released through my presence wherever I go and people encounter God through encountering me.  My dancing, painting, writing, speaking, singing, and laughing reveal heaven and its sound of freedom.  I am a belle of liberty.

There’s something inside of me that ministers to the nations and I am altogether a willing party of releasing it.  He continues to fan the things I never sought out that he’s awakened my life to (writing, painting, speaking, praying, etc).

I have no lack.  I have no lack emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, or companionship-wise.  I have truly found Christ to be sufficient in all things.  And I am happy.  I am not running, chasing, or searching; I am following.  Following his leadership, his voice, eyes, his grace, his movements and gestures.  It is fun for me and it is what I always will do.

Just as I follow him in and out of structure, it would be him I would be following through the ins and outs of relationship.  I have given him all of my heart and my life as well.  If he so pleases to receive more glory from the ease of ‘my everything’ being fully satisfied in Him as a single woman, it would be my delight in this brief window called life, as my eternity with him has already begun.

When you prayed over the phone for finances for my trips I realized I don’t do that.  I don’t know if I ever have.  I just believe.  And he holds me when I don’t and he still comes through.  It’s like he’s the one sending me and he takes care of the details in his own timing and I just let him.  My history in the Lord with finances and the nations involves no doubt, no worry—just peace.  I believe he’s training me to steward large amounts of finances one day, but they won’t be mine, they will be entirely his and it won’t come from me marrying into it or winning the lottery. 

Where my journey of faith has led me recently has been in my interaction with you—entertaining in the natural even the idea of relationship.  It is only by faith and by his spirit that I have even been led to consider a marriage relationship as a way he wants to reveal his goodness through my life.

You were right—I do live in a dream, every day I do.  And they keep coming true. The reality that God desires me to desire the impossible and then enjoys me executing it in the earth with him is a part of our normal.  He has shown me, over and over again, the potential of walking out the dreams he dreamed for my life alongside another person who also shares his heart for desiring to see those dreams fulfilled whether or not I have the privilege of stewarding a womb. 

There is a fullness of the expression of God’s nature that hasn’t been realized in the earth because the fullness of God’s intent in creating man and woman as one together in the church hasn’t been realized.  I am not making a something happen or know what God’s doing but I am excited at what he whispers to me in the night and allows me to see on the horizon.  I will change and dramatically alter my generation by my mere existence.  And I’m having a lot of fun right now.

You’re right. I’m not looking for stability.  I’m not looking for protection.  I’m not looking for safety.  I have found all those things in him.  I care nothing for being the wife of a doctor.  I am already the wife of a king.  One thing I will always look out for is my maintaining my freedom; whether it’s maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships, or clarifying my partnerships with organizations, or laying hold of again personal perspectives as my life unfolds; I have found a liberty in Christ which is too costly for me to compromise on.  Ever.  And I believe marriage can facilitates that rather than reduces it.

But that freedom is not maintained by my understanding or by my own efforts; it is by his spirit.  If he tells me to sell myself into slavery it is my glorious freedom to do so.  I will fear the outward appearance of nothing.  And very emphatically disregard others estimation of it.  If the Lord, by his sovereignty in my life, sent me into a mortgage, a day job, and full-time mothering, never to see spanning coastlines below me through the clouds, never again to preach the gospel to distant islands, never again to behold the wonder of everything un-American, I would go. 

By golly it seems it would be harder for me than being sent to a Middle East nation and dying a martyr at a young age, but I would go—or rather—I would stay.  The Lord loves the people here, within this system, and he desires to impart vision to them as well beyond the confines of their own boundaries.  He desires to expand the reality of peace, the creativity of innovation, and the eradication of oppression globally through his people in this very nation brimming with potential energy for God’s advancing glory.

I have joked in the past that while my friends dream of men, I dream of nations.  I have never planned my wedding.  Yet I have seen in my dreams so clearly gatherings of people in foreign nations moving under encounters with God that I had the awesome privilege of helping facilitate.  But even the vision of that has been reduced in my mind.  Even though God has used gatherings and meetings since the dawn to time to address people corporately, he still, like in the wonder of the wilderness, desires a community discipled in glory.  A kingdom—a people—whose ways aren’t defined by time and location, and a people who live lives as an expression of so much more than a meeting—the very reality of a person—Christ Jesus. 

The messiah of humanity that crucified all its forms of oppression and slavery through the culmination of his perfection in submission to death; the Fullness of Endless Life himself swallowing whole every lie that accused his very nature; and as a by-product released a fearless people in inseparable union with the One who has overcome.

And so my friend, I say none of this as a reaction or in defense but merely a means to share vision I carry inside of me.  I will continue to live a dream that I have dared to dream in finding shared vision in another.  Thank you for helping me see, know, and define once again who I am, where I am going, and who I am with.  I communicate this with you not only for your sake, but because I see the wife you will someday be with, and you, my friend, have the privilege of helping her realize in Christ who she truly is, the freedom she possess and the potential in love she was created for in this life.  Thank you for believing in her and believing in all that God created her for, and that, in Christ, she can truly do all things.

And so, my friend that was a lot to read and I didn’t even know I had it all inside of me.  I guess that’s what came out.  I think we’re both great in ourselves and with one another as I walk out my destiny.  I’ve had fun peering into the journey the Lord has you on and interacting with you, and you will always be family.  This is in no way a goodbye or anything.  I just sometimes communicate clearer when I write down my thoughts.  Thank you for being honest with where you’re are at with you vision for this year.  I appreciate you knowing and sharing!  In some ways I have expected to interact with someone while I’m frolicking in the nations, because I know they’ve already broached so many subjects with the Lord that comes along with operating that way.  So thank you for reiterating my freedom!  Thanks for being so kind to me ______ and thanks for being my friend.”    November 3, 2013

The definition of this word is still being discovered and unveiled.

It’s like God is trying to make visual his image as it was intended to be by uncovering that which was covered by mankind. God created man and women in the fullness of his reflection; a living, breathing, growing, changing, expressing, self-discovering union between spirits; halves revealing wholeness. What I’m writing about here doesn’t pertain exclusively to marriage either.

Is any individual incomplete in Christ alone?!? No! Our lives were eaxh created for his glory and his pleasure; we are all a part of this family he purposed in the earth. But when there is two designed to exist as one and one of the two is lacking, then the picture of the whole lacks as well.

I don’t understand it all, but a super important part of experiencing heaven on earth is the words we say. The words we speak reflect the reality we percieve and believe, whether its true or false, fearful or courageous, pleasant or sucky.

In the case of revealing God’s image through two becoming one, a voice is yet still needing to be found. Now this part is almost frightening to me. The idea of loud women-according to my experience- can be very unheavenly like. Pushy, bossy, demanding, manipulative, gossiping, deceptive, jealous women makes this very dangerous–what heaven is doing. Still, in light of all of the above, heaven is still declaring, “TURN UP YOUR VOLUME WOMEN OF GOD! BELIEVE IN THE VOICE I’VE CREATED INSIDE YOU AND LET IT BE HEARD!”

Let me clarify what I’m meaning by saying loudness and turning up the volume, it has nothing to do with sound levels or strength of speech. In any given mixed-gender room, or even a single gender female environment, there is often the dimished value of voices that are valuable. This is done not by others but by the one to whom the voice belongs.

God has a priority right now of females believing the Christ inside of them. So often there is an internal discrediting, personal discouragment, self-doubt, partnered with a lack of recognition and external support but heaven cares. To heaven, your voice matters daughters of god.

I could mean this in a church leadership setting. I could mean this on executive teams in business. I could mean this in positions of government and although this is true and neccessary in all these places, more often than not this reality hits closer to home.

It appears in compromised issues of the heart, neglected and ignored promptings of his spirit are due to unbelief, doubt, and disqualification–internal resistance to the fullness of life. But this life is also silenced due to the percieved inconvience it places on those most intimately involved in a woman’s life.

Sometimes this ‘sacrifice’ of silence is viewed as love, sometimes it is, but sometimes its a place of hiding or an excuse. Please don’t hear me incorrectly. I’m not celebrating demanding, self-focused personalities. What I am celebrating is the river of life in full that flows through every living, breathing daughter of god, created to express the glory of heaven.

Your heart was created and design by an awesome God and you carry his DNA. You’re born from above and the justice, compassion, vision, innovation, and leadership you walk in simply is meant to be enjoyed in its expression.

So often we can discredit what the Holy Spirit is saying out of fear of disagreement, disapproval, inconvience, lack of shared vision, or finding ourselves alone in what we’re saying but these are not the conditions that validate or invalidate what the Holy Spirit is saying to you or through you. Peoples responses to your authentic expression don’t forge your identity.

You, women, have been given an authority from above with the seal of god’s approval for the messages he’s written on your hearts. Please don’t wait any longer to be recognized or called out in order to no longer deny the things that excite your heart and make you feel alive.

God created you with passion that’s meant to be his radiance. You glorify god by having the courage to just be yourself and believe in yourself, knowing that God delights in you as you. I think women walking their true form helps allow men to do the same. In this divine exchange he somehow delights in revealing to us his face in our midst.

Upon his throne with him is your resting place of grace and ease. Your point is valid, your feelings matter, there is room for you to speak your mind and its okay to be wrong. It’s called l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g.

God is not glorified by a band of cowardly women who by their fear deny the power and presence of the one living inside of them. He has shown you what he’s shown you for a reason. He has spoken what he’s spoken to you for a reason.

It’s not about going out to work hard at anything, God’s really good at his job-or rather just being himself-but you are meant to experience the freedom of your own validity and to experience the joy that comes with the confidence of being at rest within yourself as he designed you to be. Little tastes better than ones own authenticity.

Bow to fears that lead you to silence and immobalization no longer. You will not be met with punishment, anger, and rejection–well you may–but along with it there will be no regrets, no shame, and no turning back.

I’ll I’m doing in writing this is repeating what seems to be a priority for him in my life. I believe in you. Have fun. Take risks. God bless. Greetings from Spain.