I’ve been meaning to tell you a story.

I love stories.

I collect them like little jars in my heart. Each one filled with a secret, a memory, a treasure, a lesson, and a gift. I’ve been wanting to share one of those stories with you, because I hope it will challenge you to collect stories of your own and share them with others. And that in doing so, you’d come to realize the richness of our lives is preserved through our stories.

My story is this:

I grew up in an ordinary home, in an ordinary town. I went to an ordinary school. Lived in an ordinary house and ate ordinary food. I honestly don’t remember most of my childhood except for it was pretty ordinarily wonderful. Fascinating, I know.

In high school and the start of college I did the ordinary thing, with the usual amount of compromise, and suffered the ordinary amount of regret.

And then, something extraordinary happened.

I met a Christian. Just an ordinary Christian, from an ordinary town, who ate ordinary food, but lived an extraordinary life of faith and dependence on an extraordinary God. And he lived that life out loud.

And because of that, I heard Him, and I saw Him, and I knew Him.

And I realized that we were never meant to be ordinary, but image-bearers of an extraordinary God.

Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created Him; male and female He created them.

And when we realize this, and purpose to live our lives out loud, the people we meet along the way hear Him, and they see Him, and they can know Him. And that knowledge makes them image-bearers too. And lives that were once ordinary become extraordinary.

We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released. Jean Houston

My story is simple: just an ordinary girl who met an extraordinary God. And everything: my husband, my children… my stories… are evidence of Him. And those stories are catalyst to a life that is lived out loud.

So what’s your story? Would you be so bold as to live your faith out loud so that others might see, and hear, and proclaim, that our God is extraordinary!

Praying for you sweet friends.

xoxo,

S