A bit of news from around the world...

So, I have a new friend from Germany. Her name is Nicole and she introduced herself via email recently. Her English is great. My German...I'm not going to lie...it stinks. Thank God for Google translator! No, seriously, I learned how to sing "Stille Nacht" in 2nd grade and can count to "Ten" and use some manners, like "danke" and "bitte" and "gazundheit" (I actually have no idea if I even spelled these correctly, but you get the picture). She said she wasn't a fan of anonymity, so sent me a few photos and shared her story, along with an introduction. (I'd post pictures but did not ask her permission, nor will I include details w/o her permission...)

Anyway, you know how there have been people in blog world that have claimed to have sad, tragic stories and duped hundreds, if not thousands? Well, apparently Noah's YouTube video was claimed by some girl in Germany as being her cousin. This new friend, Nicole, who emailed me and has shared her beautiful story with me about her family, saw Noah's video and knew instantly it was "American"...she was sweet and said that it was because our hospitals look different, that theirs are more "white and sterile looking", but let's be honest, Americans stand out like sore thumbs...we need to work on that. Anyway, she contacted the girl who had even translated Noah's video into German and confronted her. The girl apparently retracted her statement and took her "claim" off the video.

Random. I know.

And yet, totally NOT RANDOM.

You see, through this other girl's attempt at recognition and attention, another woman, who told me had stopped praying and didn't think about God or His goodness anymore, found the story of a sweet boy, a true story, because seriously, who would make this stuff up, and realized for herself that "meeting him" via the Internet was God's way of drawing her back to Himself.

I'm personally not offended the other girl claimed to be Noah's cousin. I mean, who the heck wouldn't want to have been related to that handsome boy? Come on! But seriously, this isn't even about Noah...

It's about a lot of things:

• How God can use any means He desires to show His love for us.
  
• How He will turn anything satan intends for evil or our destruction into something for His own glory and our good.
  
• How He's big and not limited to our finiteness.
  
• How He refuses to, and was never meant to be, put into a box.

It's also about the fact that each of us is unique and quite extraordinary. Each of us has a story. God has designed us for beauty, and even though many of our stories have scars, and even open wounds, the beauty that lies deeper than the surface comes in not trying to live the story of another but to confidently trust that the story we are walking is the one before us...one designed by the Architect of the Universe...God's story. And the way we live it beautifully is by walking out our story one day at a time...

I really do hope that one day, that girl who claimed to be Noah's cousin, finds her story, with God at as the Lead and her at center stage. And I hope you do, too...