3 a.m.

I'm not pregnant.
I'm not on a mission trip.
I'm not studying abroad.

Given the statements above, you may be wondering why I even have a blog or why you're even reading this.

To be quite honest, I'm not really sure why I'm writing this. I haven't been able to fall asleep before 4 a.m. for the past week, and I decided that blogging over binge-Netflix-watching might be a better use of my time. So, welcome to the late night scribblings of Cheryl Aguas.

During my sisterhood retreat, they had us hike with girls who we don't normally talk to and we had to answer:  1.) what was the biggest thing we learned about God that semester and 2.) what was the biggest thing we learned about ourselves that semester. And wow. It's incredible and humbling and encouraging to hear the things that God is doing in the lives of those around me. (Isn't it crazy to think that every person we brush shoulders with has an incredibly specific and orchestrated story? Just think on that. Every person you make eye contact with, every by-stander, is made in the image of God. Crazy stuff.) So, I took it upon myself to ask almost every person I talked to thereafter these questions in addition to one more question: What's the coolest thing you learned in school this year? (<-- I added this question because school is actually really cool. Seriously. I know I'm being a complete nerd here, but I love that God made the world intricate enough that we can devote years to getting an education and only barely scrape the surface of His design. Y'all, He's seriously so big; it is blowing my mind constantly!).

So, since it is only three, I'll answer these questions as well. (If you're reading this, feel free to answer the questions in reflection too!)

1.) Biggest thing I learned about myself:

I learned that I am defined by God's love for me, not my love for Him.

I think a lot of the time, I got caught in the hype that I should be known as the Jesus-loving, sweet, and nice girl.
My friends, I cannot boast about my love for God. As Christians, we are not called to simply be "sweet" and "nice". We are not even called to be known, but to make Him known.

First and foremost, we are called to be His.

Being a Christian is not contingent upon how much we express our love for the Lord. We are imperfect. We love God imperfectly. We fail. We mess up. But the beautiful thing is that we are not defined by that.
We are defined by the gospel: Christ's love for us.  "There is no greater love than this: he who lays his life down for his friends." He loves us and covers us, and we are defined by that grace, not our performance-- not our grades, not our reputation.

Let out a deep breath. What sweet freedom there is in Jesus!


2.) Biggest thing I learned about God:

He is delighted when we take delight in Him.

Isn't it crazy that God wants to spend time with us? He looks forward to it. He loves us.
Some days, I would walk to class with a goofy grin because I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about the fact that Creator of the universe is thinking about me. People probably thought I was in love, so I guess they aren't far off the mark. It only makes sense that we fall in love with Who is in love with us. We blow up this idea of "ring by spring", but even the love between humans is imperfect. Yet, we rejoice in it and relish it and write poems about it. So how much more should we delight about the perfect love Christ has poured out for us?

3.) Biggest thing I learned in school:

When sea cucumbers get stressed out, they go through a process called evisceration, which entails them throwing up their digestive system and regrowing it inside themselves.

So, with that fun fact to think over, good night and sweet dreams.

"Here I am, Lord. I'll stay."

Adventure is out there.

Please excuse the tacky "Up" quote opening, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I reflected on this past year. It's December 30, 2014, and, since the roads are too icy to drive on, I have the privilege of letting my introvert self sit in my bed and blog and reflect on this past semester (and life in general I guess). (<-- these alone moments are incredibly scarce when living in a dorm with six hundred others girls)

Since three years ago, my life has been marked with travel. Within two years, I went to Haiti, Poland, the Philippines, Italy, and Los Angeles, and I am currently planning for a semester abroad in Spain. These mission trips came only naturally since I had wanted to do missions since second grade. However, I hadn't fully grasped the concept of missions until this past semester.

In my mind, missions was tied with Isaiah 6:8.

"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'"


Missions was synonymous to leaving. It was about God sending me some place else; being a missionary meant packing up, leaving familiarity, and going "out there" (you know, where adventure is according to the sweet Asian boy in Up). I'd always been comfortable with this idea. I even have a journal filled with places I want to go someday. Even when I reached high school, I asked to transfer, simply so I could leave what was familiar to me. When applying for college, I was desperate to find somewhere away from home, liberal, and diverse. When looking at what I wanted to do, I looked for a job that would get me in and out of school quickly so that I could leave for a third world country as soon as possible.

But, as usual, God wasn't asking me to say, "Here I am; I'll go."
Instead, He changed my heart to say simply: "Here I am."

His will wasn't for me to go at all. During my first semester of college, I attended a Christian conference called World Mandate. College students from around Texas came and gathered for the sole purpose of celebrating Jesus and getting fired up about missions. At one point in the evening, the worship band asked us to spend a moment in silence and ask God to break our hearts for a specific country. After three days of being spiritually saturated, I felt like I could hear God so clearly, and I was excited to hear exactly what he wanted for me.

And while those around me were getting revelations of nations and peoples and visions, I heard God tell me, "Stay." For a moment, I was crushed at the thought of being here. But I realized God has been asking me to stay all along.

When I asked to go to public school, Jesus showed me how to grow and love at my own school. When I asked to go to the University of Texas, God told me to go to Baylor. When I asked to have a career that would let me leave as soon as possible, he made it so clear to me that what he wanted me to do would make me stay in the U.S. for at least twelve more years.

And I couldn't be more grateful.

Adventure is not always "out there." Adventure is wherever God wants us. Sometimes he asks us to pursue it, but other times, the real adventure begins without having to take a step. Thank Jesus that loving God is not contingent on my location. So whether we stay or we go, may my heart always stay in the position of saying, "Here I am-- going or staying-- here I am."