His Love Pursues {Guest Post :: Jen}

Jen is a friend that I have never met {in real life} but I feel like I have. Does that make sense? We made a connection over our time in Africa, and then in the choice to sabbatical. It seemed like the Lord brought her into my life at JUST the point when I needed a friend who understood the hard place and decision we were having to make. Jen makes her house a home with husband Jeremy and her two blonde-haired beauties {1 boy, 1 girl} in Texas. The way she has made space for God to use her in her artistic endeavors has and continues to inspire and challenge me. From photography to knitting to trying out new & healthy recipes, it seems that there is not much that Jen cannot do when she sets her mind, heart, and hands to it. Her blog home is I Believe in Love where she shares all of her artistic ventures. You can also find her kind, heartfelt, and practical words at Today's Mama.

His Love Pursues

Relentless love... The word that comes to mind is pursuit, God's pursuit of us, because of His love. Welcome to my story of God's relentless love for me...

I've been in the non-profit, full-time ministry world since 1996. What an amazing journey of traveling to 17 nations with my husband and kids! In 2005, my husband and I, along with another friend, founded Ten Thousand Homes whose aim is to bring HOPE and HOME to orphans in southern Africa. However, by 2009, I was spent. After 13 years, I was exhausted in every possible sense of the word. I knew I needed some sort of break, but there was a tug of war going on in my heart. I (and my husband) thought that if I just changed some things up, it would be ok. After all, there were children with no parents and they needed people to love them, and I was tired? Come on. God's love for those kids is relentless, but so is his love for me. That's when I heard it....

"Come away and rest."

I was truly ignorant on what a sabbatical meant but after coming through to the end, my heart swells and tears pool thinking about His love for me. It was in that year and a half of sabbatical that God showed me my passions. He brought healing to relationships and gave me space to dream. I'm not a natural dreamer, but as I tore down the walls of why I couldn't dream, they came. Some of them were small, like having one of my photos published in a magazine, and others were big, like traveling the world with my camera and telling the stories. I know dreams are just dreams. They're not necessarily goals and just because you dream them, doesn't mean they will happen. But God, in His incredible, relentless love for me, allowed them to happen.


Within a few months, my blog was published in Artful Blogging and I was asked to go to India and use photography to tell the stories of girls rescued out of prostitution. I was blown away to see dreams coming true right before my eyes, and all I could say was, "Thank you, Jesus."

As I've come out of sabbatical, I've realized that the kids in Africa were taken care of despite me stepping away (smile) and that the dreaming and understanding more of how I'm wired and what my passions are, are all helping me to be more effective now. He sees the bigger picture, and it's His love for us that drives Him to pursue our highest good. For me, it was admitting that I needed to rest...

This month I have asked some of my fellow bloggers to join me here at The Little Missionary Girl All Grown Up to share how they have seen the Relentless Love of the Father in their lives in moments of brokenness, heartache, and valley-of-shadow moments. This post is the 7th in the series of that exploration into the passion of the Father for us

across miles, across personalities, across hearts that are His.

To read more of the posts, click here and here.