Hebrews 11:1

Hope.

Hope. We all put our hope in different things, and these past couple weeks I have really noticed that I haven’t been my hope in the Lord. I have been depending on people to help me get better, to help me feel the security that I need, and to help me emotionally. I have stopped putting my hope in the Lord, and settling on putting my hope in people. People, I have also learned, will always let you down. They will always disappoint and they will always fail. God, however, is constantly there from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. Always wanting us to reach to Him, to depend on Him, to place our hope in Him to get us through the tough times.

 So why is that when things get the worst of us, we always go running to everything else but Him? I am guilty of this everyday, but I have noticed that when things get really hard for me is when I most depend on people to get me better. To tell me that things are going to be alright, to show me compassion, and that way i know that I still matter. God does that same thing. He holds out His hand when we walk astray telling us to come back to Him, He holds us in His arms when we have a broken heart telling us that everything will be alright, and His beautiful creation tells us that we still matter and He hasn’t left us. I have learned the past two weeks that as soon as you get close to somebody they let you down. They break your heart and there isn’t anything you can do about it but cling so tightly to the Lord.

I have had so much anxiety about graduation. In just 6 short weeks I will be an offical Ohio University graduate. I will be put out into the real world and being put out of my comfort zone. No longer will I Monday-Friday attend classes, and spend my nights doing massive amounts of homework that in the end doesn’t even matter. So why the anxiety? Because quite frankly I don’t know what is going to happen next. I have been recently considering going to Grad school, but do I really want to put myself through that right now? Is God calling me back to King’s Domain this summer? I don’t know. I would like to say yes, because I’m comfortable there and it’s a place I can call a temporary home. Am I going into the work force? Who knows cause I don’t. I have had many sleepless nights the past two weeks because of all the anxiety and not knowing what the future will hold. I’m going to jump and hope that the Lord will catch me when I fall.

The End.

It’s the end of the quarter, the end of me being comfortable, the end of me relying on myself. I have one official day left in the quarter. Thursday, all my assignments will be turned in, all my exams will be done, and I will no longer be on campus. The following Monday is when my college career ends, and I can be considered an official grown-up. No, I don’t graduate until June, but I don’t have any more classes, I don’t have anymore exams, I don’t have anymore assignments, and I don’t have anymore professors not doing anything for 7 weeks and cramming everything in the last 3 weeks of the quarter. It’s the end of everything I know to be “comfortable”. Change is coming big time for me, and I’m not sure what to think of it yet.

It’s been a strange couple of weeks for me as I have been loaded down with homework and exams like never before. I haven’t had enough time for myself, and I can start to see that in my relationships and the way I have been inacting with people. I’m not good at change, I realize that, but what I’m also no good at is taking time for myself, to do things that I enjoy. Instead I sit on campus or in my room all day and into the wee hours of the moring doing assignments, which in reality won’t even matter after Thursday. I’m wasting my time consumed in the world, and because of that I have been over emotional. I have been stressed to the max to the point where I have been saying irrational things that I don’t mean.

I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t been spending enough time with the Lord. I have been spending my quiet times doing homework, I have literally spent all of my time doing homework. Time is something that people waste, and I’m totally guilty of that. I make excuses as to why I haven’t been in the Word and most of them are lies, well actually all of them are lies. The truth is that I am afraid to see what God is going to bring up when I go seek Him out with my whole heart. He will bring up things of that past, things I don’t want to deal with, things I don’t want to think about.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as trust in him, so that you may overflow with ope by the power of his Holy Spirit” Romans 15:13

A verse that I have been sharing with others and thinking how it applies to their life, but in reality I need that too. My prayer is that i will be able to fully experience God’s peace and joy as I move out of my comfort zone and into something new, something different, something not as structured as college. I’m stepping out of my comfort zone, and jumping into deep water.

Rejection

Life is full of it. Nothing ever goes as planned and people always let you down. Graduating college, I’m starting to face the fact that no matter how many jobs I apply for I will get rejected from a few of them. Like recently. I found my dream job, working in a school mentoring high school students full time, money for college loans, bi-weekly pay check. Had a phone interview. Perfect, I got this…right? Wrong. A week later I got a letter saying that their were more qualified applicants and that I should try something else. Blow to my self-esteem. I wanted it so bad, but God wants something more for me. He has the plans for my life, and will continue to close doors until it is what He wants for me. I’m getting comfortable with rejection, and looking for those things that God has planned for my life.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”

Jeremiah 29:11, 13

Word Vomit.

None of this will make sense, but then again nothing in my head makes sense right now.

I’ve been struggling a lot these past few weeks. Struggling with feelings of neglect, feelings of lonlieness, feelings of not being worth enough..etc. Ministry this quarter has been really weird for me, I am making changes knowing that I won’t be able to do the same things that I have been able to do in the past becuase of my mindset of the future. I have really been focusing on the future too much and not enough on the present. I constantly look to see what the next days tasks are full knowing that I haven’t even finished the tasks of the first day. My head is always in the future, and well I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know where I will be this summer and I don’t know what kinds of job I will have after graduation. I have been so focused on the future, that I’m not really seeing what God is doing in the present. And let me tell you He is doing amazing things.

Even though I have been overwhelmed and stressed to the max this quarter daily, God is moving and doing HUGE things in my life. I am begining to trust people with more of my life, and yes it’s scary but at the same time it’s a very freeing feeling. Rejection is not ruling my life as much as it has in the past becuase if people really love me then they will love me faults and all. I think rejection is something that I will always fear, but with God moving in huge ways right now it is not a driving force in my life. God is so good.

I have been having major anxiety issues with school. I have been waking up way to early because I have a fear that I will miss my classes (you ask is it a big deal?) in a way yes and in a way no. I’m a senior, I’m graduating. No worries. Well thats where I fail because i do worry. We got our dates for spring quarter registration and since then I haven been able to sleep very well because I keep having dreams that I didn’t get my subsitutions done and I missed taking a class or something silly like that. Which then brings me to postponing my internship and then possible not doing King’s Domain in the summer. And then I wake up, freaking out and then shortly realizing that there is no need to worry. God has asked for my whole life, not just a part of it. The WHOLE thing, meaning these silly fears. I need to stop picking and choosing what I hand to God thinking that He isn’t big enough to handle it, because well He is. He is way bigger than this and everything will work out according to His plan. But for some reason I still can’t get past the fact of missing a class, an assignment, or even a group project meeting. All these fears irrational, just because everything is on the line with graduating doesn’t mean that God can’t handle this. He just wants me to open up my arms and let go, let go of all these things that I can’t control because God is in control. Not me.  

Did you feel, feel it break
From all the weight of your mistake?
You never knew how much it cost
Feels like your innocence is lost
So much for the perfect life
So much for the perfect day
It’s like no matter how you try
Perfection’s just too far away

So lift them up to me
All the broken pieces
All the broken pieces of your life
To me
All the broken pieces
All the broken pieces of your life

Did you hear what I said?
Did you read the words I wrote down in red?
I was broken once for you
And no one loves you like I do
And that’s the beauty of this grace
It can put the pieces back in place
And shine reflections of forgiveness
In a million different ways

I can take even your greatest mistake
Every scar, every tear, every break
And I can turn it in to something more beautiful
Than you have ever seen
So lift them up to Me

—All the Broken Pieces by: Matthew West

A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plan and a time uproot
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to week and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stone and a time to gather them
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to meand, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

                                                    Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I have been pondering these few verses for a couple days. A time for everything… Yesterday I got tragic news that another friend from high has passed away. The class of ‘07 is mourning yet another person who hasn’t been able to fully live their life. It has been extremley hard for me the past 24 hours and it only seems to be getting harder. A time for everything. I’m going to keep repeating that to myself to realize that God has a plan for my life, for all of our lives, and I may not know it now but in His timing He will reveal it.

Today is my time to mourn, to cry, and pray. Remembering Shawn, Kyle, Tyrone, and Justin today, praying for their families, and for the class of 2007. Life is short, remember to live.

Fall Quarter

I’m officially done with fall quarter. one third of the way done with my senior year of college. Almost time to become a real adult and find a real job and pay off these real loans that I have accumulated.

God as taught me a lot this quarter. Some of it I’m still learning and will always be learning. One thing that God has been teaching me, and how me in unmeasurable ways, is His love for us. The song “How He Loves” is one that always pops into my head (and of course it the Kim Walker version that we listen to all the time at KD), and I get tears welling up in my eyes every time I think about how He loves us. Indescribable feeling of have a God love me when I don’t even deserve it. This song puts it in better words than I ever could, and touches my heart in ways I can’t describe.

He is jealous for me
Love’s like a hurricane,
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of
His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me.

Oh, how He loves us so
Oh, how He loves us
How He loves us so.
(x2)

Yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves.
(x2)

We are His portion and
He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption
by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns
violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way


He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
OH, how He loves
(x2)

Yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves.

Yeah, He loves us
He loves us
He loves us
He loves.

Yeah, He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves

He loves us,
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves

God has also been teaching me to slow down. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance in the rain. I don’t have to have all these questions in my head about my future answered right now. Right now i have to enjoy where I am and enjoy college. Learning to not stress out about everything and slowing down has been a really big struggle lately especially when my senior year is getting closer and closer to the end. Slow down, live life, and rely fully on God to handle my future. Yep, that’s what I’m trying to learn. But God loves me no matter what.

I have a final tomorrow at 8am…I should be studying but I can’t think about anything educational. I can’t think about anything right now. My mind is going all over the place.

I have been hearing a lot about God’s sovereignty and understanding that God is in absolute control over everyone and everything. Learning that God has a plan for my life, even if I don’t understand it, it is still there.

“For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”

                                                                         Jeremiah 29:11

and then it goes on to say

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart

                                                                        Jeremiah 29:13

I have really been struggling to seek God with all my heart about situations. I have been in high stress and anxiety about my future, making plans and knowing then questioning if they are aligned with the plans that God has already made for me. Questioning after 4 years if I am in the right major, seeking after a career that in the end with glorify the Lord more.

God is soveregin. He is my foundation. He is all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and totally in control (or at least He should be totally in control). I still hold onto that one piece of my heart that I won’t let God have for some reason, even though I know that once I let go…freedom is followed right behind. Learning that nothing will happen that is/was not part of God’s plan for my life. So even though I am constantly thinking about my future, constantly thinking about where I will be in 5 years, constantly thinking what my summer holds for me, God knows the plans He has for my life. Things happen for God’s glory, not my own, learning to accept that and learning to move on from it. I will never fully understand His ways, but I must always remember to be about His work.

Life is a processes. I’m not always good at it, but I’m learning. After having a conversation with Rachel Marten, I realized that I really do value quality time with people, and God is the same way. He values the time that I spend with Him learning and living out His word. I always knew this, but hearing it from somebody else makes it click. God values the time I spend with Him. He values me as His daughter, and wants me to spend authentic quality time with Him.

School. It’s almost over. I tend to feel bad wishing time away, I’m a senior in college I should be having the time of my life, but really I just want to graduate. I want to experience God in new ways and see how He is going to use me for His Kingdom in the workplace. I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to try something different and learn new things.

 But I also know that my place is here right now, I just need to sit back and let God do what He has always been trying to do. I’m letting go. I’m done trying to be in control.

My Beloved.

My Beloved,Oh, how beautiful you are to Me! I love you as a husband loves his bride. In My eyes, there is no flaw in you. You are without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish. You are holy and blameless in My sight. You have stolen My heart as a bride steals her husband’s heart.

I am the One who gave you life and made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. I spread the corner of My garment over you and covered you. I gave you My solemn oath and entered intoa  covenant with you, and you became Mine. I have saved you and called you to a holy life—not because of anything you have done but because of My own purpose and grace.

I have committed Myself to you forever, in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I have raised My banner of love over you. I take great delight in you; I quiet you with My love and rejoice over you with singing.

I have prepared a special place for you in My house. It is far greater than anything you could imagine. And that is where we will live, together, forever, and ever.

I love you.