The place where God calls you is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.
God’s will …
and what you dream about in your deepest dreams
line up so well,
you can usually chase your dreams
and you will more often than not
find God’s will.
Bittersweet day…
My boyfriend is officially all moved into his new dorm. I cried, just like I knew I would and I could tell it was hard for him too. I’m missing him already even though it’s only been a few hours since we parted - don’t get me wrong though, I am so very excited for him and this incredible opportunity. I truly believe that it’s going to be a great experience for him and that he’s doing the right thing for his life, and I am so proud of him and everything he has already accomplished and all of the things I know he has the potential to accomplish.
It’s going to be so hard being away from him though, he truly is my world; I am so in love with him. The only thing that really makes this easier is knowing that this is a temporary step on our journey to forever. I’m not worried about us or our relationship because I believe that what we have is strong enough to conquer the distance and the time we will have to spend apart.
On another note, I started reading this book (it’s actually a book that Garrett had to read for school). It’s called One.Life by Scot McKnight, I’ve only read the first chapter of it, and it’s already incredible. I can tell it’s one of those books that’s really going to make me reassess everything that I think and feel. It’s already introducing the concept that God is behind all of our greatest dreams in life, and that by chasing after those dreams we are often subsequently putting ourselves directly in the path that God wants us to follow with our lives, and living out our destinies. It’s already got me thinking what are my deepest dreams, and am I really doing all that I can to ensure that they come true?
Time In Between
“Don’t take much for this crazy world to rob me of my peace, and the enemy of my soul says You’re holding out on me - So I stand here lifting empty hands for You to fill me up again; but it’s the time in between that I fall down to my knees, waiting on what You’ll bring, and the things that I can’t see. I know my song’s incomplete, still I’ll sing in the time in between.”
I’m so frustrated and overwhelmed with work and everything else that’s going on right now, between my insane work schedule, moving into my new place, school getting ready to start, and my boyfriend moving away soon it’s just a lot for me to handle. I’m really just trying to pray and believe that God is going to help me get through all of this because I just don’t see how I’m going to be able to do it on my own. This song (Time In Between - Francesca Battistelli) was stuck in my head all day, and tonight I realized how much it really applies to my life right now. I know that God has always made a way for me, and provided for me in every imaginable way, and in every situation in my life, and I’m trying to trust right now that He’s going to help me with this mess. As I sit and pray and praise, all I can think is that I am truly lifting empty hands up to Him to fill me up again with peace and strength and in times like this, that’s really all I can do.
A Woman After God’s Own Heart:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and reflecting upon my life lately. I’ve really been taking a long, hard look at where I’ve been in my past, and the place in my present that it’s led me to, and also where I would like my path to take me in the future.
There have been times in my history where I have been die-hard in my spirituality, clinging onto God, and faith as my answer to the struggles in my life, and as a means to become the person I feel destined to be. However, there are also times in my life where I have certainly “walked in the darkness” as those in the church would say, where I have fallen away from my spirituality and who I am in Christ. A friend of mine asked me this morning where I stand in my spiritual walk, and if it’s something that I care about - and it really got me thinking.
I guess in order for you to understand where my walk with God truly started, I need to take you back a few years in my life. Keep in mind, I grew up in the church, it’s something that has always been a part of my life, but anyone that’s been around church for any length of time knows that there is a difference between really being a part of the church, and embracing it, and just filling a seat on Sunday morning. Almost five years ago now, I was 15 and a Sophomore in high school - I had been becoming more involved in my youth group and church and you could definitely say that it was a significant part of my life. Then I was struck with the most difficult trial I have ever had to walk through, the separation of my parents. This event was Earth shattering for me, it was as though my entire world and existence was crumbling apart before me, and I was completely powerless to stop it. Instead of turning to any of the other coping mechanisms that people so often find themselves caught up in, I turned completely to God, and embraced the only solid and unchanging thing in my life. I’m the kind of person who struggles with being weak, and asking for help even when I might need it, and I have a tendency to be a people pleaser, to be the kind of person who puts on a smile for the world even when they’re falling apart. For this reason, there were very few people that were even aware of what was going on in my life, and because I didn’t really talk about my struggles with anyone, it caused me to draw even closer to God because I didn’t have to tell Him my story, He already knew. There were so many times that I can remember lying in my floor desperately crying out to God and then just sitting there in his presence, feeling his love embrace me when I needed it the most. This was the only thing that helped me to get through my parent’s divorce, and it was this comfort that I turned to time and time again to heal me.
Not only did this drawing close to God help me to grow up, but the situation that I found myself in resulted in my maturing very quickly. I truly believe that I wouldn’t have the capacity for compassion, and understanding that I now have were it not for the fact that this was genuinely a life altering experience for me.
As the months and years began to pass by, my father had found himself someone else that made him happier than I had seen him in a long time, and my mother was finding strength and wholeness again as well, and I stopped needing to be that source of strength for them, and I found that I didn’t need to be quite as strong. In this realization that I was going to be okay, my spiritual relationship began to decline, not significantly, but just to be less passionate - I fell into a normal “Christian” routine at this part of my life, and continued with that as I entered into college.
Once I started school though, my church attendance began dropping, and slowly but surely, my prayer and spiritual life dissipated right along with it. I fell into the “typical” college lifestyle, drinking, smoking, and having meaningless relationships - all of which added together leaving me feeling a sense of emptiness. When I look back upon those things, I don’t regret any of them, because I’ve learned from every single one of them. I don’t think that we should ever regret things in life, because even through the negative experiences, and the things that we might wish that we had done differently, they teach us things and they mold us into who we are, and who we have the potential to become. Many of my eye opening experiences in college have made me much less judgemental, and a more open minded person and while I might not be proud of some of them, I can say that I am proud of the person I am becoming, a person I wouldn’t be without having had those experiences.
The past few months however, I’ve really been trying to regain my spiritual connection with God that I once had. It’s been a difficult journey trying to get myself back on the path that I know I need to be on, and should be on especially since I work and it makes it harder to go to church. However, I’ve been trying in my prayer life to really regain that connection, and that relationship that I once used to have. I have been a person that has lived both for God, and for the world and I’ve found that while yes, there are things that I have to forfeit when following my spiritual walk, the cost of getting off that path is much higher than any I pay to remain on it.
I know that it’s not always easy to follow God’s path for your life, but I have seen from past experience that it is so very worth it. I want to be the kind of woman that my 8 year old self would have been proud of, that she would have looked up to. I want to be the kind of woman that my grandparents and parents are proud of, that lives a life that lets them know they did a good job raising me. I want to live a life that reflects the light of God that I know dwells inside of me as His child. I want to live a life that I can look back on one day and be proud of, I want to look back and know without a doubt that I was a woman after God’s own heart.
