Motivation

One word.

Exams.

So, needless to say I am short on nerves and high on anxiety. Also needless to say I probably won't have another post until all this madness ceases and I get back from Louisiana! Speaking of Louisiana, I can't wait to be "home"! I love spending time with my crazy, loud (did I mention crazy?) family. But this is not about family -I'll talk about that later.

Motivation is so hard to come by right now! However, I am so constantly amazed at how people step up when you need them to! Another reason why living in community with an awesome group of girls (or boys...or adults) is so vital and so rewarding! Especially since all of us are about to go through this together! Exams in college are a big deal.....so glad I'm realizing this now rather later! I just realized that I have an over abundance of exclamation marks in this paragraph. Probably because I'm hyped up on coffee (the savior of college students).

ANYways......it's hard to get motivated to study. This is especially bad when a couple of my grades are border line...hmmm. So I will probably be out of contact for the next week or two due to late nights either at work or at the library. 

However, a motivating verse for me is 1 Corinthians 10:31. And I'm not going to tell you what it says. Look it up yourself.

Breaks

I'm so sorry it has been so long since I've posted! But it was so nice not being required to do anything for a week! But now it's back to reality. And as I sit here watching the Georgia game and blogging, a million things I have to do are running through my head and I feel compelled to explode. Because breaks are never REALLY breaks, are they? It's a short period of time that man created to fool you into thinking that you don't have anything to do until you get back to reality and are slapped in the face with two papers, translations and math homework to be done in a relatively short amount of time. But what am I doing? Talking to you.

Today's topic? No idea. I haven't really found anything in the recent days that has struck me as important that I haven't already talked about....but I guess I could tell you about random things. Random things are fun, right?

Well, over my "break" I got to see all my best friends from high school! Between bowling (rather badly), a very Panera dinner, abducting people from their retail jobs at the mall, attempting to make Oreo balls and catching up on the latest drama I would deem it a successful break!

 Not to mention the insane amounts of food and making some memories with family and those who love us. Isn't it fun just to forget about everything and just enjoy being with people? I love just talking, listening and laughing about everything and about nothing.

I suppose the take away from this rather scattered, random and pointless post could be to spend valuable time with the ones you love because  you never know how much longer you're going to have with them. I am so blessed to have the friends and family that I do and never want to take them for granted.

Oh, and Black Friday shopping was an extreme success.

Give Thanks

I know it's still a little over a week away, but I think it's about time to start our Thanks-giving. A few of my Facebook friends have, since the first of November, been updating their statuses each day with something they are thankful for. How great is that? They truly understand the meaning of Thanksgiving.

It's time for...you guessed it! A history quiz! We all know that the Pilgrims came over on the....good job. The Mayflower. And they all wore those cute little hats with big buckles and they had a jolly good time with the Indians and they had turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Negative.

The first Thanksgiving was in 1621. The Pilgrims did in fact come over on the Mayflower and were able to initiate a sort of friendship and alliance with the Indians. But do you remember they year that they landed on Plymouth Rock? It wasn't 1621! Their first winter was devastating. Imagine how discouraged they were to have traveled so long under such harsh conditions only to be greeted with the harshest of seasons. And you do remember why they fled England, right? Religious persecution, A+ so far!

So, their first winter was harsh and unforgiving. 45 of the 102 on the Mayflower died in the first winter, and with other deaths throughout they year there is only estimated to have been 53 people alive to celebrate the first Thanksgiving along with about 90 natives that had befriended them.

The point of me telling you this rather dull and depressing side of the first Thanksgiving is to show that we have exponentially more to be thankful for! The past year or two I have struggled to be thankful for anything other than a select few people in my life. I know. It's bad, but I'm just trying to be honest. Sometimes we get in such a funk and we think that nothing else could possibly go wrong and that there is no coming back from this. But let's compare to the Pilgrims. They had fled religious persecution only to be greeted with death. They had only succeeded in building four houses during their first winter to house over 50 people. I think you get the point.

We live in a place where we are free to proclaim our faith without fear of being killed on the spot. While it is becoming increasingly hard, we are in no place to complain, but to rather fight all the more for our Lord and Savior. We have roofs over our heads. 2.3-3.5 million people IN OUR COUNTRY do not have that luxury. How saddening. We constantly complain about not having this or that and comparing ourselves to others and their belongings. 163,000,000 orphans. In the world. Right now. In 2 Corinthians 8 Paul commands us to care for the widowed, orphaned and the sojourners. We obviously aren't doing our job very well, are we?

Be thankful. That's all I ask. I have come to a place in my life where I have FINALLY realized that "all things come together for the glory of God" Romans 8:28. We have more to be thankful for than a roof over our heads and food on our table. Stop being so stereotypical, America. We have a Lord that is reigning and will reign from everlasting to everlasting. We have his breathed and inspired word at our fingertips and we have the ability to freely proclaim it! If we could bring ourselves to the shocking realization that some people are worse of than our spoiled little selves, the number of orphans, the number of homeless would decrease, and the number of blessed children of the kingdom of God would increase.

What more of a reward do we need? 

Pain

It's real, isn't it? It hurts like nothing you've ever felt before. It comes in versions of physical and emotional. The funny thing is that when we get hurt, really hurt, our nervous system sort of goes dead for a minute to save our body from the pain that will come later. It's like that moment of slow motion that not quite prepares you fully for the blow you are about to encounter. Doesn't our heart do the same thing? When something truly awful happens our heart, or our head rather, protects us by saying that "it's almost over" or "it's not as bad as you think" or "you don't need them, you can handle this on your own."

It's a lie. This is one thing I just don't like about the human psyche. We trick ourselves into thinking that things aren't as bad as they really are or that things are way worse than they really are. I think I'd almost rather feel all the pain at once than trick myself into thinking that it's all going to be ok when it clearly isn't.

I've learned by now that losing friends is a part of life. Yeah, it's a rather sucky part of life, but a crucial part none the less. Why does this happen? Do people change within a couple of weeks? Is it a gradual, yet inevitable phenomena? Is there such a thing as lifelong friendship? It's all just rather abstract.

I suppose that I'm thinking about this because when you think that someone is going to be part of your life forever, closer than most sisters, it hurts when that tie is broken. And I mean, REALLY hurts. It's worse than a breakup... it's like one day you're chatting over Panera and the next you don't exist. And why? I don't really know. I suppose it was an odd match from the beginning, but I thought that we could make it work because we cared so much for each other. Where did that go? I know I still care, but how are you sure they do?

And as I write I see a quote that states that "true friendship isn't being inseparable, it's being separated and nothing changes." Well, something changed. To be honest, I don't know what or who it was, but I know I don't like it.

But you have to get over it. You can't let one person hinder you from meeting new people and enjoying where you are. Rekindling old friendships and working on new ones. I have been so blessed to have been in my Lifegroup and we are all quickly becoming great friends and we have a great time together, but I still find myself wishing that I still had that kindred soul.

Oh well. I suppose this too shall pass for reasons unknown to me and what comes of the future will far surpass anything I could have imagined.

Focus on the ends, not the means. We will all end up where we are supposed to be with who we are supposed to be with no matter what storms God takes us through to get there.

Sweetly Broken, Wholly Surrendered

Does anyone else feel like we abuse ourselves? Why do we focus so much on what other people do to us when we do so much to bring ourselves down?! It's ridiculous and we ALL do it about silly stuff.

We give ourselves bruises. We give ourselves constant reminders of how we have screwed up, don't we?

Funny but not so funny story: at Lifegroup I had a bruise on my leg and somebody asked me what happened. Well of course I didn't know, so I sarcastically said that when I get mad at myself I punch myself in the leg. While that was silly and so NOT true it's such an accurate representation of what we do in our heads.

I woke the other morning feeling really down about myself because my roommate are trying to lose some weight together and we had given in to a little late night snack. But of course I didn't feel bad about it until the next morning. And all day I was in a foul mood  because I kept reminding myself of my failure instead of focusing on the day and making it better than the day before.

One of my favorite Relient K songs says "yesterday was not quite what it could have been, as were most of all the days before.." How true. We always beat ourselves up about how badly we do throughout the day and choose not to look at what we succeeded at. If the worst you've done all day is had a piece of cake I think you're going to be ok! The next day I started saying a prayer on the way to class for God to give me the strength I need to say no to temptation and to treat my my body like the temple that I know it is. And guess what? It worked!

But back on topic. Instead of beating ourselves up about what we mess up on why don't we just surrender it all to God? We KNOW He will take care of us, don't we? But we all want to prove that we can be in control. But man, that gets so exhausting! Sometimes it's nice to let someone else take care of you instead of having to act like you have it all together.

Instead of giving ourselves bruises why don't we instead think about the bruises Christ endured for us to live our lives to the fullest. When we do that we will become this beautiful picture of a sweetly broken soul that is wholly surrendered to the Lord Almighty.