Just look at Simba in The Lion King. Nala says, “Why can’t he be the king I know he is? The king I see inside?” His father tells him to “remember who you are.” He has forgotten his royal heritage.

My other favorite example is Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. You know, some people were upset with Peter Jackson’s interpretation of this scroungy ranger who seemed like he’d much rather be hiding away in the woods than leading the kingdom of his birthright. Tolkien’s character always knew his identity — and he acted like it. He was strong and confident, prepared to step into his destiny from the moment we meet him in Bree to the day he’s crowned king in the citadel; he was just waiting for the proper time.

I love Aragorn, he’s one of my favorite characters, and yet Jackson’s (and might I add the beautiful Viggo Mortenson’s) interpretation draws my attention and my sympathy more so than the Aragorn in the books. In fact, I remember feeling sad after reading and realizing that there was no “put aside the ranger, become who you were born to be” plot for my favorite hero.

Because I love plots like that, don’t you? Stories where the hero doesn’t want to be a hero, where the king would rather help in secret and quiet because he doesn’t think he could ever be a great king. I feel much closer to those kinds of characters than I do to the one who knew all along who he was and what he was going to do, and that he would do it greatly because it was his destiny to do so.

The truth is, though, that we too have a royal destiny, and we need to be acting more like the book Aragorn than the movie version. We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings, and yet we are reluctant to claim our inheritance.That is why these characters like Simba, the runaway prince thrust into kingship, or Aragorn, the ranger afraid to embrace his destiny, call out to us from the cinema screens — and even the Bible. Just look at Esther, the orphan girl who suddenly held the weight of a nation on her queenly shoulders.

We want to believe that we could be kings and queens, that we could have some royal, important destiny, but we know we could never achieve it — that’s only for characters in stories to do. So we watch these characters struggle with fear and doubt because we hold those same fears and doubts so close to our hearts.

The difference is — Simba does become king, a great one. Aragorn regains his throne and Gondor’s rightful king returns to restore life to his people. Esther embraces her royal purpose and understands that she was brought into the palace for such a time as this. And that’s what we love about those characters, they can do what we think we can’t. They seem so ordinary, so flawed, like us, but by the end of the story, they step into kingship and save the day.

But so can we. Our God, the King of Kings, made us to be His royal children, and He “invites [us] now out of the shadows to unveil [our] glory” (John Eldredge, Waking the Dead). The world needs us to embrace our Heavenly heritage and shine like the princes and princesses we are. While looking up articles about Aragorn, I found this one quote that really hit me: “In the books, Aragorn spends his life in steadfast preparation to reclaim his heritage.” (from this site) Shouldn’t our lives be like that too?

I don’t want to hide in the shadows anymore, I don’t want to shy away from the chance to be a true princess. I have a royal destiny, a grand inheritance, and I want to claim it.

Do you?

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,500 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 25 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Let me just stop right there and point out the dramatic lie. As I’ve been preparing to return ‘home,’ God has spoken numerous times to my friends in Edinburgh and has told them to tell me that I’m not going backwards. Literally, He has been very adamant about getting the message across to me that coming back to America is not a backwards slide, that I’m not going to lose what I gained. On the contrary, I’ve been given words like ‘Taking off’ and ‘Launching pad.’ I’m supposed to be going forward, so God says.

However, I’m beginning to notice that it’s easy to feel like you’re going backwards when you don’t know what going forward is supposed to look like. Because I don’t. I have no idea what’s supposed to happen in my life right now. I have no idea what the next step is; all I know is I want to finish school, but I’m dreading being stuck in this state for another year… and school doesn’t even start for another month anyway.

That’s why I think it’s so interesting that one of the songs I’ve gravitated towards while being back is titled ‘Between.’ Because that’s where I am right now. Between. Between what I really don’t know, but I have to trust God that what He says is true. I have to trust that I’m not going backwards, but forwards. It’s just so hard.

‘the day between the soil and the sky / the emptiness, a void, a heaviness, a sigh.’

‘and i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know how / to follow, to follow, to follow’

‘in the silence i am tricked into thinking you’ll forget / and i’ll be stranded like a man in a mine…’*

But God, You are so faithful. You won’t forget. I don’t want to be tricked.

You have been so faithful in Edinburgh:
speaking to me, leading me to friends, drawing us closer together and closer to You, providing the money for what i needed when i needed it, directing my steps, giving me two churches to call home, and filling me with strength and encouragement daily.

You were faithful there. You will be faithful here.

A way in the desert. Streams in the wasteland. See, I am doing a new thing!*

God, You are so good. I have to trust in Your promises; I can’t go backwards.

*Lyrics to ‘Between’ by Courrier
*See Isaiah 43:19

The children of Promise have deserted her.

[They’ve walked away from their inheritance.]

They’ve forgotten their names,
the names she gave them.
Instead of Cherished,
her daughter has taken the name Worthless.
Instead of Prince,
her son carries the name Slave.
From Beloved to Despised,
From Secure to Lost,
From Redeemed to Fallen…

They have grown weak, weary, and poisoned–
filled with food that is no good for them,
food that does not come from their mother’s table.

They run, they hide, they leave her by the wayside,

But they will always be children of Promise. She made them, that bond can never be broken. She cannot go back on who she is; she will always be their mother.

The children of Promise have an inheritance that can never be lost or stolen or exchanged. The blood remains the same; they–belong–to–her.

They will always be children of Promise, and she will welcome them back with open arms–
If only they’d turn around,
And remember the One, the promise, who gave them life.

Fall is almost over in Edinburgh and winter has already begun to set in; the smell of frost is in the air and Christmas preparations are well under way. I love it!

I’m currently working on my last three papers for the semester, and they’re all going to relate to Scotland in some way. (I know, I’m super clever and deserve extra credit.) Anyway, once they’re done, I’ll have two and a half weeks to enjoy Edinburgh without having to worry about school work, and then I’ll be on my plane back to America… It feels so surreal.

As I’ve mentioned before, I feel pretty peaceful about my short amount of time here. I’m not freaking out about seeing the rest of the country or going away every weekend, and I’m not completely sure why, but I think it might be God telling me that I’ll be back here some day, that I shouldn’t feel rushed in Scotland because my time here isn’t over in December… That’s just a thought, but we’ll see where He leads.

One important thing I wanted to mention: The other day, someone from back in the States told me they hoped I was enjoying my ‘vacation.’ Now, they were joking, but it struck me and I haven’t been able to put that word aside. I’m sure most of you don’t believe that I’m in Edinburgh for vacation, but I just need to state it for my own sake — this is not a vacation. I’m not here to relax by a beach. (Although I imagine most Edinburgh tourists aren’t here to do that either.) This is not an escape, or a getaway, or a holiday, where I just go away for bit and then return to my normal life. This IS my life. I live in Edinburgh right now, I study in Edinburgh, I go to church in Edinburgh, and I’m here to learn what God wants to teach me. I’m grateful that I get to live out this season of my life in an amazing city that I get to explore every day, but please don’t call my life a vacation.

Anyway, putting all that aside, I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for reading this blog, for liking my facebook statuses and photos, for replying to my tweets, for praying for me and encouraging me.

Lastly, I just wanted to leave you with some words the speaker said at church today:
“God deems this fallen humanity as something worth fighting for.”
Amen. Our God is so good, may you see His glory on this wonderful Sunday.

I know it’s been a while since my last post for Kingdom Dreams. I’ve taken a bit of a break while I’m here in Scotland to figure out other parts of my life and to think more on how best to chronicle this journey of dreaming… But I’m starting to realize that I can’t just set dreaming aside, compartmentalize it, and go on with the rest of my life – God won’t let me.

It’s funny, I haven’t really been focused on writing this dream blog, but God keeps bringing up the idea of dreaming. For example, I had coffee the other day with a friend of a friend, and he started talking to me randomly about the importance of dreaming and tells me that he works for City of Dreams, an organization much like Kingdom Dreams based here in the UK.

And another thing – I don’t know if it’s just been the time away or the conversations with other Christians or what, but God has really been molding and forming a specific dream inside me that somehow got pushed to the wayside whenever I thought about Kingdom Dreaming in the past.

I’ve had this dream pretty much since I was eighteen-years-old, when I saw the poverty in Cameroon and knew my friends back home needed to be made aware of what was truly happening in the world. Since then, the dream has blossomed into telling the stories of aid workers, missionaries, and the people they encounter and work with on a daily basis. I want to record the marvelous things God is doing around the world; I want to raise awareness and proclaim His glory through writing and photography.

But so far, my dream has been just that, a dream. A thing I mused with God about in my spare time, but I was never really sure if it were even possible, or how I would even go about making it happen.

I’ve already mentioned this dream casually to five different people here in Scotland. I don’t know why, God just keeps bringing it to the forefront of my mind. And do you know what each and every one of these people’s responses have been? An outpouring of encouragement, telling me I’m headed in the right direction: “That’s a great dream,” they said. “There’s definitely a need for that. We need story-tellers like you,” and even, “I know some people involved in things like that, do you want to meet them?”

God must be grinning up there, saying, She thinks this is just an idea, something that might never work out… Let me show her how real and possible it is for her to do this.

God won’t let me let this dream go. And even while I may have forgotten about it, He was already working out the details and connections necessary to make it a reality. Because it’s not my dream, it’s the dream He has given me, and He will see it through to the end.

I knew I needed to post this tonight because I’ve already started to push this out of my mind again and forget about it… But tonight at Crossroads we talked about the call God’s placed on each of our lives and the unique assignment He’s given to us as individuals, so I’m thankful that He will gladly keep reminding me of what I can (and will) do (or am already doing) for Him. I pray that He would remind you too. <3

HOWEVER. I live in Scotland, man! I don’t want to be rushing my time here just because I’m missing the little comforts and conveniences of home. So with that in mind, I’ve been compiling a little list, a list of the things I love about Edinburgh. Here is an excerpt, in no particular order:

1. Looking out my window and seeing this every day:  

2. The fact that ‘tea’ never means just tea, and that biscuits/cookies are almost certainly included whenever you have a hot beverage (even if it’s after a three course meal).

3. Seagulls. Now, most people think this is weird, as I don’t know too many people who think seagulls are cool, but to me, seagulls represent the seaside of my childhood. I grew up on the beach, but I’ve been living away from the ocean since I turned 12, and it’s nice to just hop on the bus now and be at the beach within a half hour (althought it’s freezing!). I can see the water when I walk around the city, and it’s nice to hear the cry of gulls as I do my homework.

4. Accents. I know it sounds silly, but I really do love just listening to people speak around me. I think it’s going to be quite a blow to come back to university in the states and have to listen to professors speak in an American way.

5. Pretty money. Sorry, America, but Scotland’s money is just prettier than yours.

6. This city is a literary goldmine: Dark winding spires, stall pointy steeples, imposing themselves against the vast black sky… Deserted ancient graveyards illuminated in the rays of the afternoon sun, raindrops twinkling on the stones… It’s impossible not to feel inspired in this city. Granted, most of my blog posts, as you’ve seen, have been about having writers’ block here, but I think I’m just still letting the city sink in, and even though I probably won’t produce a great literary work while here, I just enjoy walking and observing this city steeped in history and beauty.

7. Occassionaly seeing this guy around every now and then:

8. Feeling like family at the churches I attend. I don’t mean this as a slight to American churches, I’m just saying that I will miss the families I’ve grown to be a part of while here in Edinburgh.

9. That being said, when most Scottish people say farewell, it’s never a final goodbye, only, ‘Bye just now.’

But hey, I’m not leaving yet! I’ve still got loads of Edinburgh and Scotland to enjoy, experience, and explore. I don’t need to be itching to get home just yet.
I’ll end this post with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid’s description of the city that reminds me of how blessed I am to get to live here ‘just now.’ <3

But Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream
Fitful and dark,
Unseizable in Leith
And wildered by the Forth,
But irresistibly at last
Cleaving to sombre heights
Of passionate imagining
Till stonily,
From soaring battlements,
Earth eyes Eternity.

It probably also has something to do with the fact that I want each blog post to be perfect or meaningful in some way. But as my friends at The Write Practice say, perfection is not important, vulnerability is. Perfection is the enemy of creativity.

So, with that in mind, I think I’m just going to do a brain dump on you now, and see where it takes me…

Did you know that I’ve been away from home for two months now? Yep. I passed the two month mark three days ago. And yesterday I hit the two month mark for going home.

I’m halfway.

Whether I’m halfway through, halfway to, or halfway between, I don’t really know — and between what, exactly?

I’ve been away for two months, and there’s so much going on inside me that sometimes I feel like I could burst into tears at any moment…
But it never comes.
I just want to have a breakdown session, just to get it out, just to cry, because it worries me that it’s not coming out.

And it worries me when I don’t write.

Did you know, too, that telling me I’m going ‘home’ soon doesn’t make me feel better? It actually kind of freaks me out.
Like I said, I’m halfway. But halfway to what, I have no idea. Because the future is uncertain.

But my God is certain.

See, that’s like…three blog posts in one. This is why I haven’t posted, because if I were being the perfect blogger, I’d separate these out into three longer posts and develop my thoughts more and come to a conclusion at the end…

But that’s not why I’m writing this post. I’m writing this post because I need to keep writing. I need to keep processing. I need to keep getting things out instead of holding them in because I’m afraid I’ll never express them perfectly.

And so now, I’m just going to hit ‘Publish’ instead of the ‘Save Draft’ button, and let myself be vulnerable. Because otherwise, I’ll never publish anything at all.

And why does it seem to happen so often?

Oh, well, I’ll unleash it one way or another, even if it’s just scribbling for my own enjoyment where no one else can see but the One who made me in the first place. You see, I need to create, even if no one on earth sees the final product… But I want you to see it, I want to express myself, to express Him; I want to show you that Light that’s chased me. Sometimes I feel I just can’t get it out.

My current playlist involves Sleeping at Last, and as I wrote this, their song “Next to Me” came on, it starts like this:
Oh, our futures were written with crayons in coloring books
It was misspelled and outside the lines and we loved how it looked.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to connect this to the rest of my blog post, but it’s just so creatively cute that it struck a chord with me. I would love a coloring book and some crayons right now. I would attack the paper, giving the princess blue-orange hair and coloring outside the lines to create fun shapes and background patterns… Simple creativity without hindrance, that’s all I want. Maybe God would put it on His fridge — you know, just between Monet and Da vinci. His fridge must be humongous to hold all our scribbles…

I think creativity is a mark of the Divine within us… And it makes God smile to see our attempts to be like Him, to paint the sky with a brush as He did with His hand…

Thank you for letting me ramble out this stream-of-consciousness post on being creative. I hope you can be creative today, too. <3

I just got back from having “tea” with a delightful elderly woman and some of the Chinese girls I met at church. And when I say “tea,” I mean a three course meal with tea and more dessert at the end, followed by a second round of tea with toast and biscuits. The starter was a fruit salad, the main course was baked chicken, and the dessert was cream-puffs and ice cream. This woman, Rita, spoiled me severely. I’m pretty sure I had at least six cups of tea, copious amounts of chocolate and sweets, and I left completely satisfied and a wee bit sleepy! We talked a lot about Rita’s life, faith, America, and China… Rita has been following the Lord “for a hundred years,” she says, but really since she was twenty-two. Her house is decorated with multiple Bible verses, and she started our tea with a prayer of thanksgiving. It was wonderful to be in her house, to be invited in to share the afternoon with her. God is good.

Tomorrow, I’m taking part in another Scottish ritual of sorts: watching the Scotland verses England Rugby match! I’ve never seen Rugby before (except on that one episode of friends where Ross gets totally destroyed…), so I’m really excited to watch the game with some committed fans — Let’s go Scotland!

Have I mentioned yet how much I love living here? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about traveling, about getting out to sight-see and explore the different touristy areas of Scotland… I would still like to do these things, but they just don’t feel like a priority to me right now. Is that bad? For the first month I was here, I would stress out about all the places I needed to go, the things I needed to see, and all the fun trips my peers were planning and how I wouldn’t have enough money or time to join them… But these past few days, I’ve just begun to not care so much about that.. Because it seems that every time I think about trying to go away, I realize there’s something going on here in Edinburgh that I don’t want to miss, like a church event or a hang-out with friends (or tea with Rita). I think — and I’m still in conversation with God about this, but — I think that I’m here to do things like that. I’m here to hang out with people, to build relationships, to encourage and be encouraged… I would much rather be doing that then seeing something once, taking a picture, and checking it off my to-see list.

Don’t get me wrong, I love exploring God’s glorious land, and I really do want to visit the Highlands and see more of Scotland’s beauty… but I think I’m getting better at not worrying about it so much. I want to leave it in God’s hands, and if I make it to these amazing sights, then so be it, but if I don’t, I know my time in Scotland will have still been worth something. I don’t need to see Loch Ness to feel I’ve made the most of my semester abroad. Although I’d love to spot Nessie some time, I know that God has me here for greater purposes than just seeing. He’s led me into relationships that are full of His light, and He’s shown me areas where that light needs to be just a little bit brighter… and that is why I’m here.

God, I’d love to see more of this beautiful country you’ve placed me in, but I’ll trust in Your timing and Your plan. No matter what happens, You won’t let this time go to waste. Thank You for reforming my desires, easing my stress, and helping me to see that there is more to Scotland than seeing the sights — there are people to love, and they are just as beautiful as misty lochs and vast landscapes. Amen.