28 Days of Thanksgiving {Single Edition}

Has anyone else noticed their facebook newsfeed being constantly bombarded by a million and one well-meaning/some trashy/junk/cry fest articles & videos along with the five thousand thankful posts? Don't get me wrong I love these & I read more of them than I am willing to admit at the present moment. But for the most part, my brain has been on complete overload with all of it ... Not the point of this post ... moving on. I do genuinely love the thankful posts, but for some reason {unbeknownst to me} I can't get on that bandwagon & post those every day.

So in typical God fashion, here I am on my humble little blog of 20 something followers expressing a reason *all 28 of them* for every day leading up to & including {THANKSGIVING}about why being single is good. {Short disclaimer: this by no means is intended to undermine the blessing of marriage or make it seem that I think I am any more blessed than the next average jane. I am simply following God in obedience by taking this opportunity to see the blessings God has given me during this season of my life *which just so happen to be directly correlated to my singleness & my desperate need to be more thankful in my circumstances*. Okay. end of my not so short disclaimer.}

Every year around this time, the lovey dovey posts multiply by the thousands {and rightfully so ... no judgment here} as well as all the perfect Christmas card photos displaying couple after couple madly in love. Excuse me while I barf. haha. just kidding. kind of. No, seriously ... please post yourselves silly to give as much publicity to whatever blessings God has given you from the moutaintops, because seeing happiness, blessings, & uplifting material boasting about our amazing God on social media has become so few and far between that it's important that the world sees at least a little bit of Christ in the so-called Christian community. Not to mention, I have a tendency to view singleness as a punishment or something when in reality it can {can being the key word depending on your my disposition} be just as rewarding and blessed.

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Well, here goes. Buckle up. The ride could get bumpy.

I'm thankful for ...

28} My quiet cellphone. That sounds weird, but I'm less than thrilled with my phone blowing up on a regular basis. I like not having to watch my phone. When I am conversing with another human being via text, I find it annoyingly necessary to immediately respond. I am not a fan of delayed/ongoing/nonchalant/stupid conversation. So yes {despite how desperate I was as a teenager to have boys text me like they did my friends}, I like a quiet and/or silent cellphone.

27} Being able to make independent decisions without muddying my internal waters with someone else's feelings/thoughts/ideas/opinions. {Don't get me wrong ... I also acknowledge how nice it would be to share life decisions with someone ... just seeing the glass half full here}. I only have to consult God for His guidance for life decisions. no one else.

26} A king bed all to myself. That should speak for itself.

25} & while we're on this general topic. No snoring. {Insert relieved face here}

24} No one to consult about what temperature to keep the thermostat on ... other than my parents who happen to foot that bill.

23} Sitting at home on a Friday night in my PJs watching as many girly tv shows & movies I can find.

22} No-shave winter. Okay, so I do shave occasionally during winter, but the beauty of being single is that I have no one to impress & time is already limited in the morning ... so the first thing to get cut off my morning to do list is the shaving.

21} No stress over ridiculous girl moments I have with warring thoughts of "What is he thinking?" "What did he mean by that?" "Does he even like me?" So not worth it.

20} Not having to spend ridiculous amounts of money on someone for Christmas & birthdays that they probably won't appreciate anyway ... Goes both ways with someone buying me something that I might not be super appreciative of {although I pretty much love all gifts that come from the heart}.

19} Never having to dress up for anyone. Do I choose/have to dress up on Sundays & for work? yes. Do I dress up for any occasion other than that? no.

18} Not having to think about someone watching me eat in what is already a potentially awkward situation {especially with stinking braces ... but side note: braces are coming off in t minus 28 days. whoa buddy}

17} Having a beautiful white Christmas tree covered in pink, purple, blue, & green ornaments. I love having one of the girliest trees on the planet. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

16} & on that note. Being able to buy pink everything. bathroom, bedroom, pillows, plates, cups, etc. I love pink & I'm not ready to give that up just yet.

15} Friends. In my experience with friends, {girl} friends cease to exist when a significant other comes into the picture. Now I may be speaking out of stupidity/lack of experience in this particular situation, but if/when I am ever in a relationship, it doesn't make sense to me to put a friend on the backburner ... but maybe that's just because I've spent the majority of my life on the backburner to everyone else's boyfriend. That's right. I did notice. It did hurt. & the good news is that I've learned from it & I hope to never make my friends feel the way I've felt. Having girls that are as close as sisters who can build us up & uniquely know how our brains function is so important. God gave us friends for a reason, but needless to say I'm thankful for the friends I have right now & the time I have to spend with them. {Sorry didn't realize that was such a touchy topic for me ... moving on}

14} Not having to share. This sounds selfish, but give me a break ... this is not easy coming up with TWENTY-EIGHT reasons that I'm thankful for something that I struggle with being thankful for. :)

13} My independence. & at least give me a little credit for a past blog post about relinquishing some of my obsessive built up need for my independence. That's been mostly shattered by my current living status ... aka my parent's house. But even still, I sure do love my independence, & God is the only dependence I currently see as necessary.

12} Being able to eat at any restaurant I so choose. If I want to eat at subway five times a week, I'll be darn, that's what I'm gonna do. Thankfully, there's no one there to complain about that.

11} & for that matter .... Cooking/Eating whatever I want. Minus my parents, but I'm working on that one.

10} Having the task of cleaning up after myself only ... & if my mom reads this, it's really not necessary to make some mean comment that I don't clean up after myself anyway.

9} Only being financially responsible for myself. & if you know me, you know that's hard enough as it is.

8} The luxury of getting to leave work, go home, & just enjoy the peace & quiet with no plans or schedules. My planner is already crazy enough without someone else doubling that on me.

7} A career that I love & am very passionate about. God called me to speech pathology many years ago, but had I met someone & married in college, I probably would've never followed through with my master's degree. If you've ever talked to me for more than 5 minutes since I started college in August 2007, you know my heart is overseas. The truth is IF I had met someone & gotten married right out of college, I would have probably insisted that a master's degree was unnecessary & encourage said husband to immediately move us/family overseas. So praise the good Lord Jesus above that He didn't allow that & that I am now in one of the most challenging and fulfilling jobs I could ever imagine. Whew ... I sure am thankful for Jesus.

6} A closer walk with the Lord in times of loneliness & fear. When I feel like I can't handle being single for a moment longer, I feel the Lord take my hand & whisper into my heart. "I am enough for you."

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5} The opportunity to just work on me {inside & outside for that matter} & get rid of some of my baggage in life. God has been using this time in my life to refine me. Most of the time it feels like He has me in the fire, but I'm okay with that as long as it draws me closer to Him.

4} The time I have right now to spend investing in & ministering to others. All types of people & especially girls of all ages. My 8th grade sunday school girls. All of the GAs at church whom I have gotten the opportunity to share my passion for missions with.

3} Being able to spend all of my holiday breaks with my family instead of splitting my time & seeing less of my amazing family. {Noted that I'm sure I would love in-laws if I had them; yet, I don't have them... so I'm thankful for the lack of in-laws in my current circumstance}

2} The ability to be able to jump on a plane at any moment & drop everything to go on mission trips over holidays and summer break. I want to tell people about Jesus here & in every deepest, darkest corner of this world. I long & desire to be apart of God's work all over the world to tell every boy & girl, man & woman about the love of Jesus. It is my joy & pleasure to give back what has been so graciously & mercifully given to a wretched sinner like me. I truly believe that God is pacifying my heart in the here & now with a summer break to spend overseas until His plan takes me there more permanently.

1} Being exactly where God wants me & today that is single. I'm most thankful for the fact that God has a special plan for my life. Psalm 139:15-16 says, "My frame was not hidden from {Him} when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, {His} eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in {His} book before one of them came to be." I'm thankful that I'm single, because God has planned for me to be single for His plan and His glory. & that's a good enough reason for me.

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Yep, I think that about covers it. Now please hear me when I say, that IF by some miracle of the good Lord Jesus above I do ever get married, I will probably have to eat every one of these words & actually rewrite this post stating the complete opposite. But in my life {today} these are things that God needed to remind me of to break down my preconceived plans for me & teach me that I have so much to be thankful for & even more to continue working on/growing in the Lord. 

Maybe one day I will have 28 Days of Thanksgiving {Married Edition} ... Only God knows. & if the day never comes, I will rejoice for the life I have been given & praise His name until kingdom come. The greatest blessing on earth is the miracle of the Gospel. God made a way for us despite our dark & sinful ways. He stepped in & sacrificed the innocent blood of Jesus for you & me to gain inheritance in His kingdom. 

Shouldn't every day be Thanksgiving for that reason alone? 

Learning to be the Light, 

Jenna

The In Between Part 2

Oh the in between times of life. Although the particular in between this post was specifically referring to was back in the summer, life has taken me by surprise and kept me so super crazy busy. So for part 2 of those in between times.

I have a big girl job. get out of town. How on earth did that happen? I left the country {aka insert 6 week trip to Ukraine}back in May with no job offer and no assurance of any job. Heck I actually turned a job down in hopes of the current one I have now and because God told me to {gotta love when God tells me to do something that makes no sense to any one in the entire world ... not even me}.

Big girl job hit me like a ton of bricks. literally felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me when I was recovering from my tonsil/nasal surgery. So needless to say I was hot mess, but I braved the venture out in the real world to check out my very own SPEECH ROOM. Back up. Did you hear that? I have my own speech room? whoa buddy. That takes a second to sink in. Here's some before photos of my blah room:

I couldn't handle the blah, so I attempted to make it look a little snazzier and more like me. Check it out.

Whooooooo loves good speech???? This speech therapist does. ;)

This girl has her very own speech room. And we are 7 to 8 post school starting yet it still hasn't completely sunk in. This definitely makes me feel grown up. Praise the Lord for the job He has provided, and the sweet, precious kiddos I get to love on each and every day.

If all goes as planned, you have lots of blog posts to look forward to including a series of {why} posts that God has recently laid on my heart. Get ready. I'm back to the blogging world.

Learning to be the Light,
Jenna

The In Between Part 1

Staring at the keyboard and praying that your fingers will just start typing some meaningful words in that blank white box is overwhelming. Especially when you've inadvertently neglected your blog for the past {oh I don't know like 2 months}little while. I have good intentions and a heart so full of emotions, challenges, lessons, and craziness that I just haven't known where to start. It has felt like a very "in between" time for me. I technically accomplished the summer plan of traveling around the world only to sit down and wait for the next thing. So let me just fill you in on "the in between."

In case you missed it, I got back safe and sound from my kind of home away from home. The last few weeks of my trip were a complete blur, so I'm not entirely clear on what happened except that the whirlwind that was my schedule just got away from me. If you keep up with me on any from of social media, you would have to have been living under a rock to have missed a precious little, blond-headed, Ukrainian girl who stole my heart right out of my chest. If you need a reminder, here she is:

I don't know how I walked away that last day without becoming a complete mess. But by the grace of God, I trusted that He has that little girl and her precious brother {& all those other little blessings} in the palm of His hands. That last week went by so quickly that I barely had time to catch my breath before I set out on a plane ride back to the U.S. I was thankful to be home, but I didn't stay there long.

Only long enough to love on these two little boys.

And of course we had to commemorate my homecoming somehow. 

Just less than a week later, I made the ever longer journey from Olive Branch down to Clinton to be the camp missionary at Garaywa. I've always {& I mean ALWAYS}loved Garaywa. As a cabin leader, it helped shape and mold me more into what God wanted me to be faster than almost any other experience in my life. You try being thrown into a cabin with a peer {for the purposes of making my point let's compare this to living with a spouse}for less than a week and then ... {brace yourself} 14 little girls between the ages of like 8 and 11. Talk about a crash course in parenting/motherhood/marriage aka some intense life experiences. But from that time on, my heart's desire was to come back as camp missionary. From the first time I was a camper, to hearing the missionary as a cabin leader, to being the camp missionary the fall mother/daughter ... I had to do whatever it took to get back there this summer.

One word to sum up me week at camp: Blessing. {you didn't think I could come up with just one word, did you?} I never dreamed that my week would be as absolutely A-mazing as it was. The cabin leaders. The best. The lead team. The best. The campers. The best. You get the picture, huh? I seriously could write 7-10 individual blog posts on that week alone, so I'll leave it at this. If you want to hear about my week at Garaywa, I'd love for you to just ask. {Seriously. It just blesses my heart to get to share about it}.

Well, let's continue on in this crazy blog post of my part 2 summer ramblings. Garaywa was epic, but Saturday and my time to leave came all too quickly. Fortunately {like I said before, cabin leaders=the best}, some of the awesome cabin leaders invited me to walk The Color Run ...... check that off the bucket list. I must do it again. It was an absolute blast. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Naturally, after having all that fun, there had to be a downer, so in I went to surgery to have my tonsils removed, my septum straightened {or something like that}, and my turbinators trimmed {yep, we definitely have turbinators or maybe it's turbinates in our noses ... either way, still a funny name}. Despite my objections, my mother took a before surgery picture.

Thankfully, she respected my wishes and spared me from an after surgery picture. Because after surgery, I entered into the two WORST weeks of my summer. I was technically sitting pretty until about 6 days following my surgery when I ran out of pain meds. I officially ran out of the real pain meds on Saturday night {only 8 days following my surgery}. Never have I experienced such severe pain. Boy, am I glad that is over. I was even one of the lucky ones who experienced a side effect of surgery which severely decreased my sense of taste. I. was. miserable. But now I'm 100% better and all the more appreciative of being able to swallow solid/crunchy/normal foods with no pain. Most unexpected side effect of nasal surgery: nonstop sneezing. Just keep your distance. I will sneeze at least 15 times a day. if not more. But what really got me through was the sweet little things like this precious card from my fabulous sunday school girls ... this seriously meant the world to me.

In the midst of recovering from my lovely surgery, I was attempting to make the most of what was left of my last summer as a {techincally} university/grad student. I saw family. sister. brother in law. brother. sister in law. nephews. aunts. uncles. cousins. grandparents. I think that pretty much covers it. I was keeping busy. And last but not least whatsoever, the biggest change in my life here lately is starting a big girl job as speech therapist at DeSoto Central Elementary. Yep, my mother once again went against my objections and took an incredibly sappy photo of me leaving for my first day of work.

There you have it. Jenna McMurphy, M.S., CF-SLP. That feels good to say.

Next up on my blog catch up will be my speech therapy room before/after pictures. I've been a little crafty here lately.

This is all what I have decided to fondly call "the in between." I've been in between a whole lot of things, God has been relentless about holding me accountable during this "in between" time to committing every single moment to Him. I'm just so thankful that God has brought to this moment, and I can look back on this summer and the fun I had and know without a doubt that He was glorified and made more of. I love living life for Him. It makes it all worthwhile.

Learning to be the Light,

 

 P.S. Sorry for the picture overload, but I felt it was necessary. :)

Everyone Needs A Little

... rest. joy. and a song to sing in the darkest night. hope. love is the greatest of these.

{thanks, Kari Jobe, for a little inspiration.} This is the song I think of when I think of the people all around the world who just need a little love. a little hope. a little peace. a little joy. That's what I feel like I can give even when I only have one day. If I'm the only Jesus they ever see, I pray that I can love them even a fraction of how Jesus loves them. I gave as many hugs and smiles as I could in one day. It's amazing what you can communicate without using a single word. Which reminds me of the power of pictures. Words really aren't needed when you see these precious faces. Here's my last two days in pictures ...

Such a precious girl who touched my heart through every hug and smile. 

Playing Red Rover with the kids.

Lunch with all the kiddos.

My lunch ... which was oh so delicious. 

Craft time. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation."

More crafts.

My amazing translator, Tanya.

End of the day. Proudly displaying their artwork.

Sweet smiles and faces even if they continue to speak to you in Russian. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. 

The whole group. Slava bohu (Praise the Lord)!!

I cannot even begin to put into words how blessed I was at the end of the day. I felt the love of Jesus just being around these children. I pray they felt the same. God is so good, and I am beyond thankful that He doesn't need my words to accomplish His work. Thank you to everyone who has prayed for me, and I ask that you continue to pray as I finish out my last two weeks here {two weeks that will be VERY busy to say the least}. 

Learning to be the Light, 

Jenna

Just a Simple Touch

I love traveling. I love foreign countries. I love trying new things. I love smiling at complete strangers. I love listening to songs being sung in multiple languages. I love feeling God's presence in a country that's not my own. I love seeing God move and work in a group of people who are trying to better understand the truth of the Gospel. I love this opportunity that God has given me to serve Him here in Ukraine.

But .... there is still an enemy out there trying to sabotage God's work, and that enemy knows my weaknesses all too well. {side note: It is very tempting to only write on here about my victories and excitement, but then I wouldn't be giving you the real me. I have to be true to what God has called me to do, and today He wants me to share the struggles and the victories. end side note.} There is one thing that can send my thoughts into a tailspin straight down into a never-ending pit of darkness ... and that my friends is a {scary, scary} place. The one thing that I dislike most about being in a foreign country is being in a room full of people speaking a foreign language that I don't understand. I don't know why, but for me, this is one of the most overwhelming, draining, and difficult things. This past Sunday night just so happened to catch me off guard. I wasn't protecting my mind from the attack of the enemy, and if it wouldn't have drawn so much attention to me, I very likely would have started beating my head against a wall. It would have been far more pleasant than the turmoil in my mind. I couldn't find my way out of this pit I had slipped down into. The struggle was so real despite the fact that no one else in the room even knew it was happening.

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But at the same time, I wasn't going down without a fight. I was begging and pleading with God to throw me a rope down into this dark pit and pull me out. As it's said so much more eloquently in the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge, "God delights in revealing himself to those who will seek him with all of their hearts. He is an extravagant, abundant Lover, and he loves to reveal his heart to us again and again."

As the service ended, I saw a woman who I had met before at a another church in the Kharkov region quite a few years ago. It was clear she didn't recognize me at first, but after sharing I remembered her {through a translator as always}, she grabbed my hand. Such a simple gesture. But she didn't let go. It was the strangest thing. I'm not really the "touchy-feely" type especially with strangers, but this was different. {Warning: I'm about to sound like a crazy Jesus fanatic ... which I am, so oh well}. It was almost as if in that moment I could just feel the love and presence of God filling my heart to the brim and overflowing. Whereas moments before, I was in a dark place where the enemy had left me to fend for myself ... Now Jesus was reaching out to me, grabbing hold of my hand, and assuring me that He will {never} let go. I was overwhelmed. Just a simple touch. From a stranger nonetheless.

"God wants to share in this life together with you, to share in your days and decisions, your desires and disappointments ... He wants to pour his love into your heart, and he longs to have you pour yours into his. He wants your deep heart, that center place within that is the truest you. He is not interested in intimacy with the woman you think you are supposed to be. He wants intimacy with the real you." {Captivating}

I could have not shared this story, because it was a real-life struggle that shows you that I am nowhere near perfect ... and honestly never will be. I didn't want to share this story, because it means admitting that I struggle. all. the. time. But I will never find that deep intimacy with my loving and intimate God if I'm not the truest me. This is as real as it gets.

Learning to be the Light,
Jenna