Stronger weapons

"This road is anything but simple
Twisted like a riddle
I've seen high, I've seen low

So loud, the voices of all my doubts
Telling me to give up
To pack up, leave town

Even so I had to believe
Impossible means nothing to me

Can you lift me up?
Turn the ashes into flames
Cause I have overcome
More than words can ever say

I've been given hope
That there's a light on up the hall
And a day will come when the fight is won
And I think that day had just begun..."

~Kate Voegele

For Kate and Leah- Because someday, you'll get this reaction too...if not already. I love you.


It happened multiple times today.
Jaws dropped upon hearing that one sentence I refuse to resent.
Today was orientation in the MA program for Psychology and Counseling.
After pleasantries, people would ask me if I was new to the area.
"No, actually, I just finished law school here." Cue puzzled looks, dropped jaws, and somewhat snide comments about "another degree."
I get it, people think I don't want to go get a "real job." So untrue.
I love to work, and I love doing something I know will help other people, but I'm not finished yet.
My grandfather told me once that he had no issue with education, but that if I really wanted something, I needed to do it before I was a wife or a parent, or I might never do it.
People find out that I have a Masters and a J.D. already, and they wonder what in the world I'm still doing in school. The answer is "I'm not finished yet." I've been given very clear dreams, and very fierce passions. My first masters was completely paid for, and yes, I have school debt, but I have spent considerable time budgeting loan money carefully since I was 17 years old. I have considerable school debt, but I've been paying on it since the day I got here. I understand people giving me looks, or saying things, I guess, but, after leaving here for two weeks to take the bar, I can say with renewed confidence that I am where I should be, without question.

26 years of life, and love have taught me a few things, and one of them is that a person should look at all of the variables before she decides to freak out, get upset, or even take someone's opinion to heart.
It's kind of like a baby who, upon realizing she has a voice, decides to use it.
God gave me a unique anthem of advocacy, and in order to sing it out as loudly as I was created to do, I have to follow the music.

I love the music. Really, I do.
I know some people won't agree with me, but I'd rather live in a small space, and be obedient, then to disobey in a mansion. Ultimately, those dropped jaws aren't providing for me, and I don't have to answer to them if I'm disobedient. I will never go hungry, and I have always had what I needed, sometimes at the last minute, and sometimes in ways I never expected, but every single time I smile when it happens...everytime I am blown away. I love it that way. If everything were so easy, if I didn't have to trust in God's call for me, if I didn't have to understand fully that I am who He asked me to be, and more importantly, that He is who He told me He would always be, I would get complacent.

It occurred to me in the two weeks I left to take the bar that fear of being captive to the past scared away from being so blissfully excited about what was coming for me...
So, when all these people said "You're doing this again?" I cringed, I heard, I entertained, for a brief moment, the most disgusting doubt. Then I had a professor tell me I had been delivered from captivity and would not return.
It struck me in that moment that there's a lesson here that I'd want to voice to every one of my girls if I had them all in the same room.
The lesson is this:

Keep going. Every situation, every life, every walk, will have its darkness, but continuing to move in the direction of the light means that nothing will prevent the light from being shed upon the movement you make. Keep going.  Obedience is never cast aside. Just keep going. Don't fear. Sure, it may be dark for a second...don't worry, you're surrounded. You've got a posse... one of them will inevitably light a candle, and in due time you'll run full speed toward The Light at the end of the hall, and when you get there, you'll be glad you weren't detoured by a little darkness, a little rain, or a voice who rose up against you.
Keep going. Your weapons are stronger. I promise.
Keep going. Rise up.

 No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their righteousness is from Me,”
Says the Lord. Isaiah 54:17