The sincerest of welcomes to my newest endeavor/adventure!

I have been absolutely inspired by the rise in blog posts I see on my Facebook feed, of topics ranging from food to farm life to ministry updates. All of these things I love, by the way.

The idea for a blog came about while I was away this summer at Wind River Ranch for my second time on staff as the ranch videographer/photographer, or more commonly and lovingly referred to as “camera girl”. My number one priority in my life (besides my Savior, of course) is people. So I make it my business to connect with my friends in whatever form that takes. Alas, there are only so many hours in a day, and as the sweet friends and guests I got to know from all over the country and the world started accumulating, I thought to myself, “There is no way I can keep in contact with everyone individually, as much as I would like to!” And so the idea to keep a blog was conceived…

I am calling it Water From the Rock based off of the story in Numbers 20, which is one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible. The Israelites are wandering through the desert wilderness and start to complain that Moses brought them there to die. So God tells Moses to strike a rock and water will flow from it so that they can drink. Moses, angry and probably dehydrated, strikes the rock twice with his staff. Water starts to flow, but because Moses distrusted what God said and struck the rock twice and did not consider Him holy in his sight, the Lord says to him that he (Moses) will never bring them into the Promised Land. The place was called Meribah, and is referenced frequently later on in the Bible as a warning against hardening the heart and not entering into the perfect rest that comes from God, specifically in another one of my favorite passages, Psalms 95:8…

“Today, if you would only hear his voice, do not harden your heart as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness…”

I know what it means to harden your heart all too well. But I also know what it means when water bursts forth from the rock in your life, when things click and finally make sense and are at peace. It is a very important story to me because it soothes my soul when other words most of the time do not…

I adore reading my mentor Haley’s blog. Hers is a blog solely devoted to ministry updates and the happenings of her time here on staff with the Navigators at the University of Southern Maine, which I attend and am heading into my junior year at. Disclaimer to anyone who has read hers, mine as you can tell, is going to be very similar. But I get to add fun stuff, like stories (we’re gonna have a lot of those cause I’m a storyteller folks), pictures, poetry, rants, everything! Strap in your seat-belts, ’cause this is going to be a wild ride!

I mean, if you know me well, you know that everything I do is, and I usually drag the people I’m with deep in as well. I implore always to find the fun in everything. I have been this way since I was a child, truly. The only difference is I’ve gotten (slightly) taller. I’m just a curly-headed, big brown-eyed child in the body of an adult now. Oops…

I don’t really know what this is going to look like yet, but I’m REALLY excited to have you guys walk alongside me together in it! Posts could be once a week, once a month, or even once a day-wouldn’t that be an adventure?! This is going to be a place of stories, whether from my past or what’s happening right now on campus at USM, a place of reconnection for those I have not been able to talk to in a long time, and a place of release for me, which might just be the most important part. Know as you read these posts that this is what my mind is like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have an inner monologue that never takes a day off. It’s like a film reel on an old movie projector-that thing will spin and spin and spin unless you turn it off or it runs out of film. I don’t see either of those scenarios playing out anytime soon, so in the meantime, let’s walk through this journey together. I can only tell you about the life I’m living right now, as a 20 year-old christian female college student in southern Maine. But perhaps it is a life you have never gotten to truly see into before…

~J

P.S. The URL is funky because if I wanted it to be waterfromtherock.wordpress.blog, I would have had to pay. And if any of you know me, I’m incredibly cheap so fromtherock.water.blog it is!