My Place

You know when you are having a bad day or you are just overwhelmed with thoughts or things are just SO crazy and you just want to get out and you have this certain place you like to go that always seems to make you feel better? Every time  I go crazy and have to get off campus I always end up at this one spot with out even thinking about it. I have been going there all year and I didn't even realize it until today.

 

The corner of Wards and Candlers Mt. Road. I would usually end up there because it is the Arby's and Taco Bell's parking lot =) and more times than not I would be eating Arbys or Taco Bell while having my alone time lol but still. I love just sitting there in my car watching thousands of cars drive by and watching the stop lights turning from Red to Green, to Yellow, to Red, over and over and over again. There are thousands of people going by and so much going on outside and yet it is silent in my car. I love that. The best thing is watching the sunset on the corner. It is so beautiful. I go and sit there for hours just watching everything around me thats going on, thinking about life, talking to God. Those poor stoplights have seen more tears than any one human could probably handle.  But it is so relaxing and it keeps me sane =)

I Caught a Severe Case of Nervousness.

Well, my first prayer group was today. It was the most terrifying thing I think I have ever done. As ridiculous as that sounds!! I was so nervous.  I only have 4 girls in my group which is great! And I just have to come up with a lesson or a devotion to share with them every week and then I pray over them all. Two of those 4 girls are on the soccer team and none of the soccer girls ever show up to prayer groups because they aren’t mandatory and they are really hard to get to know because they have such a tight bond with each other and can be very cliquey. So, I have set myself a goal for the semester and that is to break through to them and hopefully see them attend prayer group almost every week. So we will see how that pans out! We had to meet in my bedroom this time because my roommate is a prayer leader as well and her group was in our common area. So that was a little awkward to start it off haha. I was just going to wait it out, if we all just sat around and stared at each other I was going to share the little devotion I made up. If we started talking and getting to know each other I wasn’t going to. We made small talk for awhile so I just decided, once we ran out of stuff to talk about, to pray and call it a night. So I asked for prayer requests and prayed and they left. One of the girls (she is knew this semester and from MI) stayed back so we talked for awhile so that was cool. But, yeah, my Prayer Group only lasted like 5 minutes. I felt so bad but I was so nervous and didn’t even know what to do. And it was already 10:40 so. Oh well. I was thinking about what to tell my RAs cause I know they are going to ask me how it went and I know they are going to tell me that I can quit If I don’t feel comfortable. But I don’t want to quit!! I want so bad to be able to do this! I’ll be praying lots =)

About an hour ago, I was doing my devotions and I was reading in Matthew 10.  It is talking about how when people call you out and cut you down for having Christ as your savior, not to get discouraged because they are actually doing you a favor by opening the doors for you to witness. I know this is taking it a little out of context but this is where I started reading. Matthew 10:20 says (in the message bible) ‘And don’t worry about what you’ll say or how you’ll say it. The right words will be there; the Spirit of your Father will supply the words.’ And then further down in verses 22-23 it says ‘But don’t quit. Don’t cave in. Its all well worth it in the end. Its not success you are after in such times but survival.’ Like I said…I am taking that completely out of context here but it has still encouraged me to keep trying and to not give up on it just because it intimidates me beyond belief!!! Hopefully next week it will be better =) Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers!

An Open Door, An Answer to Prayer.

As some of you know, I have been having the most frustrating time finding a church to attend down here at school. I don’t know if it is just because I keep comparing every church to Gateway at home and if they don’t come even close to it, I wont give it a chance…or if I feel uncomfortable because that isn’t where God wants me to be. Either way, I had been praying the entire semester for God to provide an opportunity for me to get involved with some kind of ministry because I felt like something was missing from my life now, especially after being so involved in youth group at home and involved with all of the kids there. I miss it SO much!! It was almost like I was putting my relationship with God on hold until I found something or somewhere to be apart of. Whether it was with a church, or a youth group, or even just one of the hundreds of ministries at the school, I was just praying that something would come along for me to get involved with. I was really hoping for it to be a youth group at a church somewhere but I was willing for it to be anything.

 At the end of the semester, one of my RAs took me out to dinner and she had told me that her leadership team had been watching me and they really wanted me to join the team as a prayer leader. She told me to pray about it and let her know. I didn’t realize until way after I had accepted the position weeks later that this was definitely an answer to my prayers. I had been asking God for some kind of ministry to get involved in and he opened the door for me to be apart of my hall’s leadership team.

This is way way out of my comfort zone which is a big reason why I am going this, to stretch myself. You have to put yourself out there and be willing in order for God to use you right? I am extremely nervous because I hate talking in front of people and I have never been much of a leader, but I am excited to see what God is going to do in my life through this and what he is going to do in my girls’ life through me. I also know that this will challenge me with my relationship with God and will definitely make it stronger. I can’t wait!

Frustration Leading to Having Faith

So I was reading this book for my leadership class and the author was writing about a salesman that he knew that would fly all over the country selling his products to make a living. On one of his trips he happened to look down from his plane and he saw this truck that was extremely eager and in a hurry to pass all these cars in front of him. The truck kept swerving in and out of the lanes and speeding up and slowing down. The salesman kind of slowed down and just kept observing the truck to see what he would do. Every time the truck went to pass the cars ahead of him he would come to a double line, or there would be a hill or curb or a car coming from the other direction. The Salesman just kept thinking ‘if only I had a way to communicate with this guy I could help him out and tell him when it is safe to go or when to wait, seeing as I can see everything ahead of him that he cannot.

This just really made me think about how God is the same way with us. He is constantly looking down at us just watching, wondering what we are going to do thinking ‘if only they would talk to me and allow me to communicate with them so I could tell them when it is safe to go or when to just wait it out.

 I know, for me at least, that is a real struggle to trust God and to trust that his will for my life is so much better than what I had planned out for myself. Trusting him has been especially hard  since I have been at away at college. Before I left I thought everything was perfect. I had my friends, my family, my church and youth group that I was really involved in, I was in the relationship that I thought was right for me and that was going to turn into something big. And then I came to college and everything was torn away from me. Everything that I though was going to last had eventually ended and I was left with nothing. My world was completely turned upside down. I remember sitting on my bed and just saying, "No, God, this isn’t how everything was supposed to happen, everything was perfect before I came here. I came to college for the experience, for the people, to have fun. I did not come for you to completely reconstruct my life."  I would get so frustrated because I knew what I wanted, I knew who I wanted to spend my life with…or so I thought. I am still learning to fully rely on God because I know that he has my best interests in mind even if I don’t understand how things could get any better than what I had. I cannot see over the little hills or around all the dips and curbs but God can see miles and miles ahead. I have no clue where God is going to take me in the next four years, I don’t even know what is going to happen in the next week or even day, but I do know that God knows what he is doing. He has my life all mapped out and under control. I just have to trust him and pray for guidance and he assures me that everything will be OK again.