End of the year! =(

It's amazing how fast a year of school can go by.
I finished my last final around 8:30 this morning and I still don't feel like it should be over yet. Sometimes I wish that they could just let us live here year round but during the "summer time" months—just not have school work. That would be so awesome. Especially since George Fox feels like my "home" now.

I have built so many different relationships that I am not ready to leave behind yet. I mean, I know that I will be returning here in 4 months but it is not the same. I can honestly say that I have met people that I know I will be friends with for life. They are just so amazing and helpful in whatever I need. They have been there to just listen to me or to have fun whenever needed.

I have the best floor EVER!!

Best roommate EVER!!

Best friends EVER!

I feel like this is how I felt leaving from high school and moving down here, but for some reason it does not feel the same. Before I moved down here I was really upset that I was going to be leaving my friends behind, but it just feels so different because you bond with college friends in a completely different way than with high school friends. I mean, you live with them! I am so very blessed to have had such amazing friendships come out of my year here. Everyone is here for the same reason, to get an education in a Christ-centered environment, and I couldn't ask for a better college experience.

I am BELOVED. =)

But looking back on the times when I was sad to leave my friends behind, I don't think it even closely compared to how upset I was about leaving behind all of the mentors from my church behind. I have so many people form Calvary that I delay miss seeing every week and talking to. I still miss them so much and I sometimes still have a hard time with that. But I am so very blessed to have so many opportunities of great mentors here at Fox. I have had SO many conversations with my AC, Sarah Jobson, and I absolutely adore her. She is just so amazing and I am very blesses to have someone here on campus that I can turn to in times of need, even if it is just a good hug.

This year has been full of so many ups and down. But I know that anything and everything I went through was just a learning experience. God knew that at the end of the year, I would be happy. I am SO very blessed to have had this amazing opportunity to come to the PERFECT college. I cannot wait to be able to spend my next 3 years here!

Next year is going to be a different experience though. Because of financial reasons, I am going to be living in an apartment off campus. Although I am pretty excited about that, I am also kind of bummed because I really waited to be able to have that real college experience of being on campus at all times. But I feel like I am the kind of person who is going to keep involved in everything that is going on. I do not want to let having to move off campus keep me from having the best college experience possible.

Plus, next year I am going to be playing softball! Although I will be having to wear a back brace, I am not going to let it hold me back. I will be responsible about it though at the same time. Through this back injury, it made me realize how much you use your back and how much having it injured holds you back.  I will be trying out in the fall to see how my back can handle it, and if it can I will be playing in the spring. I am very excited about this because I miss it so much.

This summer is going to be completely different experience. I am going to be living with my Aunt Jody and Uncle Les down in Creswell, OR. I have never lived with anyone on my dad's side of the family before, My aunt got me a cooking job in a diner there, so I am pretty excited about that because I absolutely LOVE cooking! I think the one thing I fear is trying to find a church down there so that I am staying connected with my faith. None of my family is Christian, so this is going to be a journey that I am going to have to take myself, but I am ready!

Counting down days until I am back at Fox!!!.... Literally.

121 Days until Fall Semester starts!! =)

Trust.

I have always wondered what it is like to completely and fully, without any hesitation, TRUST in the Lord. I mean, we all have heard this before and I know numerous times I have said that I trust Him and always will, in which I do, but isn't there always some little bit of control-freak in everyone?

I have had trust issues my whole life and it seems like trusting God is one of the hardest things to do as a Christian. As we observe our lives, it seems like the question, "Is He REALLY listening?" comes up too often. Trusting in God is so vital to our spiritual lives, yet our faith is so weak. If we only knew the amazing way that the Lord would open up to us if we would just open up to Him in belief.

And the Lord has done an interesting things... the more we trust in Him... the more He rewards us and reveals Himself to us. But when we doubt Him and don't have faith, nothing happens. He doesn't try to prove Himself or surprise us with a revelation to show us that we're wrong.. It's all up to us.

Do you want to see miracles? You need to believe in miracles. So you want to see God move in your life? You have to trust Him to move in your life. It seems so simple, yet very, very hard.

I feel like sometimes I have tried all of this and it never works, ya know? But it has taken me to go through a whole lot this year to realize that through everything, something is happening...

God wants to see if we will still trust Him even when out prayers don't turn out the way we want. He is trying to help us grow in our faith, and in order to do that He continues to raise the bar little bits at a time. As we grow spiritually, He asks us to believe even more, and when things become difficult... He wants us to believe EVEN MORE.

You see, He has His plans and we have ours and they are usually VERY different. God does have a mind of His own, and of course we are disappointed when we don't receive the answers we are looking for. But do we still believe? Do we doubt Him? Do we doubt ourselves?

I feel like too often when I had a prayer that goes unanswered, or opposite of what I am wanting... I gave up on Him. And that is NOT what He is wanting. Even though what I wanted didn't happen, I should still believe and trust Him to do what is best.

Belief and trust are the key... I need to keep on trusting regardless of what is going on around me, even when things seem hopeless. God is real and very aware of everything that goes on with me, and He knows most of the time I doubt Him. He has wanted me to take that leap of faith in trusting Him with all of my life... And since I have done that— He is finally able to wrap His arms around me. Jesus asks us to have faith as a little child. But as an adult, my past disappointments had corrupted me.

I am finally seeing all of this clearly after many coffee and lunch dates and late night talks.
Why had I ever gotten to the point where I even thought about doubting our all loving, all knowing, all forgiving God.

Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD is the Rock eternal.

Isaiah 26:4.

Lord, please help me to keep trusting you.

Help me to never doubt anything that happens

because You have the very best plan for me.

You have been so good to me, and I have no 

reason to doubt You work in my life everyday.

I trust you completely with my life.

Scars.

I read this blog today that is written by the wife of the old pastor at Solid Rock in Beaverton, OR. I couldn't help but take a good chunk of it to share and write about it on my blog because this stuff is so dear to my heart. Her post really made me think about how blessed I am to have found and met this Man in my life that has changed everything about me and lets me know I am beautiful everyday... Even with my scars.

"The good girl gone bad was surrounded by bad.
Then one day she heard a story about a Man who could make bad people good. She didn't believe it at first. After all, none of those other things had worked. The bad seemed stuck.
No matter how she tried, all that darkness deep inside wouldn't stay down.

Days passed, weeks, months, until the day came when the Man-who-could-make-people-good invited the good-girl-gone-bad to come close. And when she did, He held out His hands to show her something really, really awful while He told her something really, really, beautiful.

The something awful was the scars. Ugly, oozing holes right through her hands.


Blood.


Pain.


Badness.


Everything in the girl wanted to turn away from those repulsive scars, yet something held her there, transfixed by this Good Man holding bad in His hands.


That when He told her something beautiful.


"The scars," He said, "were for you. All the bad you have ever done, all the bad you will ever do, all the bad you have become, is covered by those scars. Not hidden, not ignored, not pretended away, but covered by a love that changed everything. And what's more, I will use these sacred hands of mine to make you new. To change the way you are. To throw the past away. To hold you close so that you never have to hide again..... To make you GOOD."


And He did!


This blog post had me in tears. She was talking about a God who made her good even though he clearly saw all the scars she had. Even though He knew that she would eventually doing something and again turn away from Him.

This sounds allllllll too much like my story. And sometimes I think I take for granted how great of a God I have. This year I have had my fair share of ups and downs. But boy did He put me at the right school. I have so many great people here that I am able to just talk to and pray with about ANYTHING. And to know that your professors are more than willing to help you through situations and sit and pray with you as well.

My story always brings up the song Bring the Rain by MercyMe.

"I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise you with all that I've gone through.
The questions just amazes me.
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You."

And to me... My story, my life, my background, my hurts, my scars, my family, my friends, my everything... That's all I've ever known. That's who I am... And when I share my testimony with people, some people really don't understand how I am the way I am with the everything that I have gone through.

Sometimes I am ever surprised... But then I get to tell them the best part. My miracle.


That God, my Redeemer, picked ME up out of the mucky, miry pit of self-pity I had dug myself into and placed my feet securely on the solid rock. How He dusted me off, patched me up, and put a whole new song into my life.

My God is just THAT good is what I tell people. =)

Lord, sometimes I question what I did to deserve

You and Your everlasting love and forgiveness.

You have always been so good to me.

And I am so thankful to have a Father like You.

Rain.

Have you ever had a moment where you wish you could just freeze time because it is just so beautiful? Sometimes don't you wish that you could stay in those moments forever? But then... when you least expect it, it starts to rain. It always rains. Doesn't it?

It's interesting, because the Scriptures say all sorts of things about rain and storms. When Jesus is teaching about what it means to live, like the fullness of life in His kingdom. When Jesus speaks of it, He speaks of two different people. He speaks of a person who builds their house on sand, someone who chooses to reject his teachings; and then someone who builds their life, their house, on rock; who chooses to build their life on Jesus' teachings.

The metaphor He uses is that of a storm that comes. The person who rejects His teachings and His truth, essentially the house built on sand, just gets destroyed, but the house that's bullet on rock stands. This idea that, when Jesus says when the rain comes-it's not like they might, they do. It rains in our lives.... a lot.

No matter whether it be the kind of rain that occasionally drips in our lives or the rain that plasters down and drenches us. Do you ever feel like you just want to cry out when it starts raining, "Why me?" I have felt like this several times throughout this year in college. It's like when it starts raining this hard, even the trees above us cannot protect us anymore. The people in whom we trust with our lives-they run out of things to say.

But when you look up the word "cry," look in the Scriptures, you find that this word comes up over and over again, like even in the book of Psalms, just the book of Psalms. If you just start reading through, it speaks over and over and over again of crying. Of crying out to God. And God says there amazing things, like, "When you cry out to me, I listen" He even says, "I cannot ignore the cries of someone who is afflicted." It's like if I'm hurting, lost, soaking wet, scared, confused, God says, "You cry out and I hear." God even says that when you cry He's close to the broken hearted, he's close to those who cry out and admit they're scared, sot, soaking wet, and confused.

See, there is this false, twisted idea out there among religious people that somehow you gotta have it all together to have a relationship with God. That like somehow God's only looking for people who have no problems, and have it all nailed down, and can put on the happy face all the time. And yet the Scriptures speak directly against this kind of thinking.

Jesus is even just straight ahead when he says, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden." The essence of salvation is crying out to God and admitting I don't have it all together. It's admitting I am lost, I am hurting, and this sinful nature I carry around with me has really screwed things up for me and God if you don't show me the way home, if you don't fix things, if you don't step in, I am dying here.

And this kind of thinking is all throughout the Scriptures. It's over and over again, God says to us,   "When you come to me you come to me with all your junk, you come to me with your problems, come to me all screwed up, all messed up. Let me take care of it." Jesus even sets out looking for people and he even says this, he says, "I'm not looking for the healthy, I came for the sick."

It's weird to think about the perspective we see rain from. For us, the storm is our reality. We see nothing else. We have trouble seeing the reality beyond the storm. And what we sometimes forget, is that our Heavenly Father would do anything to get us home. When we are crying out to God, we need to allow Him to pull us close to His chest, and wrap His arms around us and He holds us tightly up again His heart.

We need to imagine Him walking us through the storm, carrying us every step of the way, as he whispers in our ear over and over again, "I love you. We're gonna make it. I know the way home. We're gonna make it. I love you."

Now imagine after we get out of this storm and we are looking back at this storm we experienced. Isn't the reaction most people give, "God, what did you let me go through that for? I've got all this junk inside me. What did you--I thought you loved me. How could you have exposed me to something that horrible? That storm, I mean, why didn't you protect me?" Think about how our Heavenly Father feels when this happens. He is crushed because for Him, this walk, this storm is one of the deepest, most intimate memories with His children.

Maybe we're bitter or we've got all of this anger inside because there are some things we have been through, some storms in our lives. And we're wondering if He really loved us, if God really was there, He wouldn't have let us go through those things. And maybe God is saying, "No, don;t you understand? I got to hold you tight and remind you over and over again, "I love you."

And as it says in the Scriptures, the book of Deuteronomy chapter one, God's reminding his people of how good he's been to them, and He says, "Remember, I carried you like a father carries a son."

And now, when we are soaking wet, lost, hurting, and confused, may we cry out, and may the Creator of the universe take us out of the pack. May he hold us tight up against His chest. May He wrap His eternal loving arms around us, and may we hear Him whisper, "I love you. We're gonna make it. I know the way home. We're gonna make it. I love you"

*NOOMA. Rain.


Lord,  thank you so much for being You.
You have carried me through many storms 
and I don't think I give you the credit you deserve. 
You diligently seek for my heart to be Yours.
I want to give it to You. You deserve it.
I am giving You all of my heart even in the storms of this life.