Send Me

Today is the day my whole world flipped right side up. I recieved the comforting news that I had been accepted into the World Race Gap Year program and I could not contain my joy. Upon ending the call, I found myself jumping with joy and a huge smile plastered on my face. I immeaditaly texted and called everyone that has been apart of this journey with me with the happy news of acceptance. Nothing could ever compare to the joy and peace I felt in my heart after hearing the words "congratulations, you've been accepted into the World Race Gap Year program." It's only the start but I can't stop thinking of what's to come and the future God has so graciously placed before me. In a matter of months I will hopefully be on a plane headed to the ends of the earth to spread joy and God's love to all that I encounter. I know that taking this gap year may be one of the hardest things I'll ever do. Leaving all my friends and family for nine months, going to places I've never been before with people  I've never met, and placing all my trust in God isn't going to be easy but I know it will all be worth it in the end when the whole is better for at least one person because I was able to give them the help and love they so desperately needed. I know that if I just open my heart to what God wants from me and the ways he wants to use me that he is going to preform amazing miracles. I feel in the depths of my heart that this is what I am supposed to do and where God is calling me to go. I constantly dream of helping people in some of the poorest places and giving people hope that things will get better and that God has such great plans for each and every one of us. I've been so blessed with the most amazing friends and family encouraging me through the whole process and praying for me and being apart of this beautiful journey with me. I can't wait to see the ways God will use me to further his kingdom and help his people. My heart is overflowing with the joy of such an amazing opportunity to serve and love God's people. I don't know where life is gonna take me next year, but I know it's going to be one crazy adventure full of tears and laughs and lots and lots of love. 

Here I am. Send me. 

Making the Days Count

These past couple months my life has consisted of going nonstop and constantly having things to do. It's felt like I haven't had any time to just sit and enjoy life and all its many blessings. After finally catching my breath after months of constant business, I started thinking. Just thinking about everything and how hectic my life has become. Thinking of my future and the path God is trying to reveal to me. Thinking of my family and my friends. Thinking about senior year and how just a few short months my life will be totally flipped upside down. Then the thought came to me, Why is it that we hate being still? 

It seems that we can't go a minute without doing something. We are constantly filling our time and squeezing in everything we can into the 24 hours we are given each day. We are all guilty of this habit of making ourselves so busy that we can't appreciate the little special moments of life. We can never seem to just take a minute and realize just how beautiful this life really is. Upon realizing this, I've challenged myself to just take a moment out of everyday, just a small moment, to look up. Look up at the beautiful sky we walk under everyday but never truly take a good look at. Look at how God has blessed us each day and what he taught us today. Look at our families and realize how thankful we are for them and their unconditional love. It really is the little things that mean the most. But sometimes we let those little moments slip away until they are apart of a huge memory that all becomes a blur as life goes on. We allow only the big moments to stick in our memory rather than remembering the small precious moments that happen in the day to day. 

"Cause life is not the mountain tops. Its the walking in between."

-Ben Rector 

I don't want to live my life just going through the motions every day. I want to make every day count and mean something. Too many times I have let myself fall unconscious to the blessings each new day brings and have let life pass me by. I don't want to get to the point where you look back and realize how much time has passed of you falling numb to the world around you and what God has been doing in your life. Carpe diem. We must seize the day. Each and every day we are on this earth we need to be joyful and thankful and truly live. Every day holds the potential for something beautiful to happen if we let God work in our lives. Enjoy the people around you and be grateful that God has given you another day here on earth to spread his kingdom.

It's Not The End, It Is The Beginning

Yesterday, the world lost a very special person. Miss Kelsi Little left this world and joined the angels up in heaven. Her life may have been short, but she lived it well. Being brutally attacked by cancer is never an easy thing to go through, but Kelsi fought like hell and truly left her mark on many people. God was able to show her just how widely and deeply she was loved in a way only he could have planned perfectly on just the right day. Without knowing when Kelsi's last day might be, many of her friends and former students put together a small gathering to celebrate Kelsi's life and to tell the many memories they had made with Kelsi. They called it "Kelsi Little Day" and what more appropriate of a title could that have been for her last day here on earth. The loss of Kelsi is not easy to comprehend to anyone who was touched by her life but Kelsi did what she needed to do here on earth so that she could be in her eternal resting place in heaven. Losing the life of such a sweet, encouraging person brought me to thinking just how precious life is and how quickly is can be taken away from us. We like to think of death as the end. A scary, sad reality that our time here on earth is over and we will never return. Bur death is only the beginning. We are simply living on earth, our temporary home, anxiously desiring our true home; heaven. It is hard for us to accept this reality though. We view death as a sad and heartbreaking thing when really it is something to rejoice over because a loved one if finally going home. It is hard for us to look at the world the same after someone we love so deeply isn't in it anymore. But this isn't our home. Earth is not where we belong, we belong to something so much greater. Somewhere so much more divine and eternal; heaven. We exist on earth only for a short period of time for a purpose. We are here to love people and to make forever friends and we try the best we can to make something of ourselves and this one shot at life we have been given. But we have to continually remind ourselves that death is not the end, it is the beginning. The beginning to something beautiful and everlasting. God has a plan for each of us and as cliche as it sounds, it is true. God knows what we are going to accomplish with our one life, he knows the children of his that we are going to grow to love, and he knows the number of days each of us have on our temporary home. The amount of time God gives us may seem short, like in Kelsi's case, but I have come to realize that it is not the number of days we have in our lives, it is the amount of living we do in each of our numbered days that matters. Each one of us, as God's children, have a different mission to accomplish within our numbered days. We are all called to a life of loving unconditionally and furthering God's kingdom. We shouldn't fear death, we should welcome it with open arms as a new rebirth to something bigger than any of us could ever imagine. When my time comes, I don't want people to be sad that I am gone, rather I want my life and the things I did to be celebrated. I want my loved ones to rejoice in the fact that I am finally where my heart belongs. I want there to be a "Reya Martinez Day" and for people to celebrate about the life I lived. None of us know when our own time will come to depart this temporary home for our eternal home which is why we have to continually thank God for the people we love and for the chance to see another day. We are only given one life but if we live it right, one life is all we need.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

 This quote by Oscar Wilde couldn't be more true. We tend to think only about the end and all the things that go along with it. We get so wrapped up in the idea that once life is over here, its over. But life starts when we get to heaven. What we have here on earth is all temporary, but God wanted us to have the chance to make something of ourselves and leave something for the world. We can't let our life go on before our eyes merely thinking about the end, rather we must truly live our life and not take for granted our years on this earth. We must always be pursuing a greater purpose and always striving towards our true home. Heaven.

 

The World Race Gap Year

I'm excited to say I think I am starting to see the future God has called me to. The past couple of months, and really a large portion of my life, I have felt the call to serve others and to be Christ to others. I've always had a deep love for people and a desire to be able to meet their every need. I've always known I wanted to do mission work some time in my life but I wasn't really sure when I would. I had always thought that I would live the typical life, go to college, meet my husband, get a job and have kids and somewhere I would fit in time for mission work. I never would have thought that God may be calling me to take a year in between to do his work instead of going to college straight after graduation. The idea seemed crazy to me at first, and I figured it would probably sound even crazier to my parents who have always taught me how important my education was. So when I brought up the idea, it was safe to say I was completely shocked by their response: that sounds like a great idea. I think that would be a really amazing opportunity for you Reya. The call seemed to be coming so loudly ever since the first idea popped into my head and I was thrilled but fear crept in occasionally. My mind was overwhelmed with thoughts of leaving home for a year and traveling the world to do the mission work I'd always wanted to do.

So I began the search. I would be on the computer for hours on end trying to find a gap year program that could satisfy the desires that had been placed upon my heart a long time before. The search continued and it seemed like I was never going to be able to find a program that I was either eligible for, or one that I actually wanted to go on. I was starting to lose hope and just figured that maybe I would just go to college like everybody else and leave the silly thought behind. I started college applications and all the stress of it seemed to be taking over my life and oddly enough the only thing that could make me stop worrying was thinking of mission work and helping people. God was placing these thoughts on my heart because he was calling ME. He was continually trying to make me realize that I'm not made for an ordinary life but I refused to listen. Somehow, God always brought me back to that thought and I knew I couldn't just continue to ignore it and try and make my own path for myself.

So i began the search again, but this time with a new mindset. I decided I would let God show me where he wanted me to be, not where I wanted myself to be. My sweet friend Delaney and I decided one day in the summer that we would make a day out of it and go to morning mass together then head to barnes & Nobles to research different gap year programs. I knew it the minute I watched the video and read the description that I had found where my heart belongs. The World Race Gap Year. A nine month mission trip spending three months in Central America, three months in Southeast Asia, and three months in Africa. Days would be spent visiting orphanages, doing construction work, teaching and tutoring children, door-to-door evangelization and many other things. Every day bringing a new surprise and way to learn to love all of God's children.

From that moment on, I knew I had to go. I just felt the call so strongly that this was the program God wants for me and the people I will touch are the ones that God wants me to help. Everything seemed to be falling together. An amazing program, the most supportive parents I could have ever asked for, and the opportunity of a lifetime. Since that day, there hasn't been a day that goes by where I don't think of the opportunity God has placed in my life. I pray every day that I can have the courage and the faith to be bold and to live a radical life for the sake of spreading the kingdom of the God I love so deeply. Every time I picture a child in need, I know I must go. I believe God has called me by name to see the pain of the world in a unique way and want to do something about it with the gifts he has given me. Nothing brings me a greater joy than thinking about the possible life God has planned for me after this year. I'm so thankful that I serve a God who is so much greater than all the hurt in the world and wants to use me, an inexperienced, adopted child of his and use me to accomplish great things on this earth. Every time I tell someone my future plans to take a gap year and then go to college I get a different response. Mostly good, hopeful responses that think it's a good idea but I also get the occasional bad responses that tell me I shouldn't do it and that it's crazy. And it is crazy, it's crazy to leave home for 9 months to places you've never seen before and help people you've never met but the though has never scared me, it's only excited me. Every time I let the the reasons of why I shouldn't go creep into my mind, they are completely shut down by the multitude of reasons why I should go. The good far outweighs the bad in this situation. I know this is what I am called to do and this is the live that God wants me to live. I pray that I can fulfill the task and just love people big. After all, Bob Goff said,

Love's plan is pretty simple: Everybody, always.

My job is simple. Follow the path God lays before me. Love and show compassion to every one of God's children. Use this life God has given me to do something great. Make a difference in people's lives.

                                      

The First Goodbye

Today is the day I have been dreading for quite some time. The day I finally have to say goodbye to my best friend and the day a piece of my heart is gone leaving a hole nothing could fill. 7 months ago I never thought it would be this hard to say goodbye. I also never thought I would meet my best friend 7 months ago. I can't help but wish for more time. Sadly, I'm coming to the realization that there's never gonna be enough time with the people you love.

Saying goodbye to Brendan today was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I didn't know it was possible to love and care for someone so much in such a short amount of time. I think what gets me the most is knowing that things will never be the same no matter how hard I try to make them be. It breaks my heart to know that I will no longer be able to call up my best friend and him be at my house in a matter of minutes. Brendan has one of the biggest hearts I know. His constant outpouring of love and care for each and every person he encounters is something I think we should all strive for. I am so thankful that God blessed me with such an amazing friend to live life with and I am so thankful for all the memories I've been given. The amount of joy Brendan has brought me is immeasurable and as much as he says I changed his life, I think he's the one that has changed me. I don't know how I am worthy of such a friendship. The Lord is so good to me. No longer will I be able to listen to an eminem song and not hear him singing every word. No longer will I be able to eat Chinese food without thinking "let's go eat Chinese food cause that's what real best friends do". No longer will I be able to go stargazing without laying in the back of a truck with a bunch of pillows and blankets. Brendan has taught me a lot of things. He has taught me what it means to be a true friend and what it means to truly desire the best for someone. He has taught me that you can make friends anywhere at anytime, all you need to do is be open to it.


My heart is sad because I know that my time with Brendan has come to an end for now. Things are going to be a lot different from now on but I know I will never be the same because of Brendan Mcguigan and his power to change lives. I am forever thankful that God brought such a loving man of God into my life and helped him make such a big impact on me. Although I am going to miss him terribly and as much as it pains my heart to know he's so far away, I know Richmond is where he is meant to be right now and that he is going to do great things there. Praise God that I was given the privilege of getting to know such an amazing person. I now know that there is never gonna be enough time, but if you learn to cherish the moments you can always make up for it. Richmond may be taking away my best friend, but I know Texas will always be home with all of us.

Living A Good Story

Today was nothing special, just an ordinary day. But I seemed to see God in everything I experienced today and I couldn't help but share. I saw God in the breath-taking sunrise my Dad woke me up for, that painted the sky the most beautiful colors and made for a gorgeous sunny day. I saw God in my parents love for each other as I watched the sunrise with them. I saw God in my beautiful sisters as we spent time climbing rocks and doing crazy jumps off them into a surprisingly clear lake. I saw God as we walked into mass today and I was instantly greeted with friends, old and new. I saw God in our visiting priest's homily as he spoke about missions and
our job to help people who can't help themselves and that even though we may think our contribution is small, we are still helping to change the world. I saw God in Father Izzy as he embraced me with the hug of a long lost best friend and claimed he wouldn't ever let me go. I saw God in little Amelia as her and her radiant smile entered graciously back into my heart and as she gave my the best present I've ever received, a shirt with Pope Francis's beautiful face on it. She brought so much joy to me through the simple act of love as she thought of me when she went to Rome. I saw God in the beautiful sunset that he left across the sky as a reminder that life is short but the blessings we receive are endless. He was so ever present in my day and I am so thankful I let him be. Nothing can compare to the joy you feel when you are content and know that this life is good and that we are far more blessed than we'd like to acknowledge. God gave us this crazy, beautiful life and told us to go out and live a good story. I can only hope that I'm living these days out to their fullest, surrounded with a beautiful family who loves me dearly, my faith to get me through the good and the bad times, and the beautiful sky to remind me how beautiful this life really is.

Fransiscan LEAD

July 14, 2014. I boarded a plane with one of my best friends Delaney to finally enter into the week I had been waiting for all summer. I had no expectations of what the week might look like but I was hoping that my faith would be renewed. I knew that God was going to do something good in my life this week but I had no idea that it would be as significant and life-changing as it was.

God came into my life this week and did some amazing, unforgettable things. He has set a burning desire in my heart for him and opened my eyes to the life I need to be living. Because of this wonderful week with my LEAD family I am forever changed. I never want to go back to the way and the person that I once was. Before this week my faith was running dry. I felt like I was just stuck in this rut and didn't know how to escape. I was feeling so alone and distant and God just welcomed me back into his loving arms without hesitation. The love our Father in Heaven has for us is so incomprehensible but to even grasp a part of the tremendous love he has for us will change your life, and that's what happened to me this week. I truly believe that once you realize how much the Lord loves us, you can never be the same. God sent the most wonderful people into my life and I am so thankful for all the laughs and friendships that came from it. Imagine the most encouraging, loving, passionate, on fire for the Lord humans and you'll see my LEAD family. Having the most God-fearing, humble servants of the Lord all gathered in one place to share in the same faith has got to be one of the most beautiful sights to see. I thank the Lord for all the kind-hearted lights that he brought into my life this week. I am forever grateful that I met people who were so hard to say goodbye to. Saying goodbye to the people that had quickly become so important to me was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. It is so hard waking up and not being surrounded by 20 beautiful souls ready to encourage and love on you all day long. I truly knew that God's love for me was so strong when I realized how blessed I was to have 20 new people to call my friends. Their faith inspired me to grow deeper into mine and to seek true companionship with the Lord. These people will always have a special place in my heart and I pray that God continues to work in our lives and hopefully write our stories with each other in mind. I thank the Lord for new friendships and new beginnings.

This week God has taught me humility and compassion through the washing of feet. He has taught me the importance of silence and the peace it can bring to even the loudest of hearts. He has taught me what it means to truly worship and praise him for all the goodness He has provided us. He has taught me love through the sending of 20 of His amazing children of God. He has taught me that there are times when I can't do it on my own and that sometimes all I have to do is look up and ask for His guidance to help conquer the battles of life. He has taught me the importance of prayer and spending quality time with the Him, the one who gave his life for my sake and for the whole world. He has taught me that I don't have to be scared or anxious if I don't get an immediate rush of emotions or answer when spending time with him in prayer because he is working on me and my story even when I am unaware. He has taught me to pray as I AM not as I OUGHT. That I am right where He wants me and that He loves everything about me. He wants all of me. All my brokenness and my problems, all my past mistakes, he wants all of me especially the messy stuff of my life and He longs to make me new. 

LEAD was no doubt one of the best weeks of my life. I can't even describe the amount of joy this week has brought me. God has blessed me with a new family, with 20 brothers and sisters to help strengthen me on this faith journey. A week full of prayer, adoration, and worship has left my heart full and my eyes looking up to the cross. I am so thankful to have been given the amazing opportunity to fall in love with the one who gave us all his love. I am comforted in the fact that If Christ had to endure the cross all over again just for me, he would do it in a heartbeat just like he died for the whole world. This week has brought me exactly what I needed in my life and more. My prayer life has dramatically transformed and I am no longer the checklist christian I once was. I believe that God has a perfect plan for all of our lives and that even through the struggles of life and the pain, He is there trying to write the perfect ending. Our God is not a God who fails to answer prayers or one that is going to abandon us. Our God is forever faithful and will never stop fighting for us. There are no words to describe the impact it truly had on my life but I now know that I am not called to be normal. I am called to stand out and to be radical in my faith. I am called to spread God's love to the ends of the earth and bring praise to his holy name with all that I have.