He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.

– Psalm 18:19

This scripture reminds me of when the Lord called me out of graduate school into ministry!  The Lord shifted my heart away from my studies and was revealing things to me left and right through dreams and visions.  It was so much that I could hardly focus on anything!  All I desired to do was focus on the Lord, yet I noticed whenever I went home I could hear the Lord clearer than when I went back to school!  Everything in the Spirit felt off as I tried to force fit myself into this box that I thought I needed to be in!  Every time I found myself in a lab, I could think of a million other places I wanted to be but there!  Yet I always thought that my education and my career would be what defined me, however, the Lord was showing me something entirely different in the Spirit!  Eventually, everything the Spirit was shifting me toward became reality when things at school became inevitably impossible for me to stay there!  I hung up the whole possibility of ever going back to graduate school!  I completely let go and said goodbye to all the dreams I had – everything I was holding so tightly to – in order to follow the Holy Spirit!  Immediately when I got home I found myself having to spend nearly my whole days and nights out in a wide open field with a greenhouse and fruit trees right beside me keeping watch over them because of our neighbors!  One day I thought to myself, how did I EVER get to this place?!!  It was the Hardest time of my life, yet for once I finally felt like it was where the Lord needed me to be and in this wide open spacious place, I could finally feel Freedom!  As I walked around the fruit trees my sister and I planted and breathed in the fresh green country air, I could finally feel God’s presence all around me!  And in this place, I could finally hear His voice clearer than ever before!  The Lord rescued me out of the box I tried to fit myself into and there is no doubt that he brought me out into this spacious place because he delighted in me!