1800's house + beautiful artwork = third-world country, here I come!

So I have been waiting all day to update everyone on what God is doing! It pumps me up!! Yesterday, we finished Sequoyah's house, the one with all the crazy stuff happening, and to be honest I was afraid to go to the house on Sunday, but by yesterday, I didn't want to leave. God gave me a heart for Sequoyah and her neighbor Jazzbo (ha, love the name! and yes, they have a little "thang" goin on). They are the craziest, most "different" people I've ever met, but Lord have mercy, I have listened to story after story, and I just absolutely love the people! I feel like God has given me a new love for people and a new burning passion for Himself, as I have been praying for. I have struggled forever with anxiety, just always feeling overwhelmed by things, and so lately I've been praying for God to take that away, to increase my faith, and help me see things more clearly, as He does. I want to see and love people the way He does. And I want to fall absolutely and passionately in love with Him. And I cannot explain the things He has done in my heart just this week. Every day as I have been working, He has constantly been on my mind. God and I have laughed together, cried together (in my mind, because my eyes don't tear easily anymore, which is sad), I've gotten mad while He laughs, and we've just enjoyed each other! The song "Yearn" by Shane and Shane is my theme song for the week. (It says, "I want to yearn for you; I want to burn with passion for You, only You.") I want to fall in absolute head-over-heels love with my God and with the people He has created, and I feel like He has done that this week. I have been much less anxious that usual, except for earlier tonight when I had an anxiety attack, which went away with time, prayer, and trust, as I felt God gently drawing me nearer to Himself and inreasing my faith that He is all I need. As I look back over the summer, the past two weeks, and my entire life, I can see in a new light traces of God's hand at work. It amazes me that every single moment in my life comes together to make me who I am, a vessel for the Lord to use in incredible ways. (A good song for that? Bless the Broken Road..my goodness, they've got me listening to country!) And I've decided that the reason I've never truly been satisfied with society and with "stuff" is because I've not been created for it (of course, we know that, but do we actually live and believe it?). It seems like it really takes us going out completely on a limb, trusting God to lead us on and take care of our every need, to realize that He is truly all we need. It is easy to sit in a nice air-conditioned, padded-pew church building and sing about how God is our All in All or our only hope, or all we desire, but it is different when you go to a house that belongs to an incredible artist with three children who have all lived in a house with no walls and wide-open windows for 4 years and spent 3 winters without insulation or any kind of warmth. The house? Beautiful. Cassie's (the mother) artwork? Incredible. The small "farm" on their property? Priceless. It made me cry. And it is here, and it is in the face of Jazzbo, a rough pot-bellied man with tattoos all over both arms, who smokes and lives with another guy in a house with a roof that needs to be replaced, but who cares for people like no other, it is in these places and faces that I see Christ. And it is this Christ, this Love that has given its all for me, that I give my life to follow. We sing the song that says, "I give my life to follow everything I believe in.." but what does this truly mean for us? For me, it means the poor. That's my passion. That's my heart. And it didn't come from me. But I love my God more passionately for having mercy and grace upon me and opening my eyes to the greatness of Who He is in the face of precious people. And as I sit here, writing about this Love, listening the 70's song "Let's Groove Tonight", I worship my God. I pour out my heart to Him as I pour out my heart to You about how He is loving me and loving these families. I don't think I can ever look at the world in the same way again. The way I've seen my Lord work, the way I've seen Him love the people that the world turns away, draws me to my knees in prayer and praise, begging God to lead me to those who don't know Him. "May the Lord bless us and make His face shine upon us, that Your ways may be known on Earth, Your salvation among all nations..." And so I pray that they may know. God, that they may know...