I feel like screaming from this lack of clarity, but am stifled by the mud around me. Shadows of uncertainty spring up on all sides, clouding my vision, turning my mind to cotton. My thoughts turn to any shred of distraction, begging for a moment of peace. But those scraps are fleeting, the peace like sand grasped then falling from my clenched hand. What a way to live. This is the result of my control; how pitiful my actions, how nonexistent the benefits of such control. I cannot go on like this, life cannot be lived in a haze.
Father God, help me to let go of my worries and my attempt at control. I am inadequate in far lesser concerns, let alone these matters. Give me focus, Lord, and keep my mind sharp. I pray also for your lasting peace. I know how much I need you, God, and yet so many times I try to prove that truth wrong. Forgive me Lord, and fill me with a strength of will so that I may overcome my struggles.
Friday, January 20, 2012
A favorite place...
This year, I have been blessed with the awesome opportunity to come to Grace University, and I must say that it has and continues to answer a prayer sung from my heart. I may not have ever spoken my prayer, to myself or anyone else, but in my heart, I knew that I needed to change. Coming to college, then, has been that answer to prayer. Being at Grace is definitely changing me from the inside out, and definitely for the better.
At home and in high school, my spiritual growth was so severely stunted that I don't think I ever really grew much at all. I felt rather stifled in that environment, and knew I wanted more. But I wasn't sure how. What I needed was a good support system, and in my town, there wasn't really one that I could have used. In my church, I'm the only one of my age, I'm the only college student. So my choices for a support group for my spiritual growth would have been younger high-schoolers, who are all a couple of years behind me in age, or some of the young adults in my church, who are married and some have kids. So home life would do absolutely nothing for jump starting my spiritual growth again. But I also needed a new environment, where I could tear free of that life, and embrace a new one.
College life has made my walk and passion for Christ grow in leaps and bounds. I have so much support from friends here, and I thank God so much for this blessing He has given me. It has truly become one of my favorite places. I shudder to think how stagnant and shallow my relationship with God had been before moving to college. I love how that relationship is now deeper, and can only grow deeper still from here on out. At the time of high school, I never really thought about how much my faith was struggling, but now that I have changed and am changing, I see how deep my struggle really was.
But there is still nothing perfect. I am fearful for when I go back home. I'll be away from my loving and supporting group of Christian friends, and be surrounded by the old comforts and habits and friends of home. Just being away from college a month for Christmas break has shown me that I am still not free from the clutches of my old stagnant self. I am fearful for what a summer will do to me. I don't want to go back to how I was. I want the change that has happened in me. I pray that God will help keep me strong and growing, and that I will still have plenty of contact with my awesome friends that I have made.
I can't possibly imagine going to college anywhere but Grace University. I hope that that doesn't ever change. I know I need what Grace has to offer me. I still feel like I need this answer to my prayer for change. I also want to pray for encouragement and patience. I sometimes have a big struggle to entrust all things to God. I feel like I try and take too much control for my life, even though I know its not the best choice for me. But as they say, "old habits die hard." There is so much truth in that.
Almighty God, I thank you for the wonderful place and people you have put in my path that help me to grow in you and in our relationship. I am so amazed at what you do. But I pray that you would continue to help me. I need to let go of control, and let go of worries. I know you will always provide for me what I need, even when I don't feel your hand working directly. Please help me to remain and grow stronger in you wherever life takes me, and especially help me when I return home. I ask for focus, Lord, and for your guidance in all I do. Help me to seek your face more and more actively, help me to have a radical passion. Amen.
At home and in high school, my spiritual growth was so severely stunted that I don't think I ever really grew much at all. I felt rather stifled in that environment, and knew I wanted more. But I wasn't sure how. What I needed was a good support system, and in my town, there wasn't really one that I could have used. In my church, I'm the only one of my age, I'm the only college student. So my choices for a support group for my spiritual growth would have been younger high-schoolers, who are all a couple of years behind me in age, or some of the young adults in my church, who are married and some have kids. So home life would do absolutely nothing for jump starting my spiritual growth again. But I also needed a new environment, where I could tear free of that life, and embrace a new one.
College life has made my walk and passion for Christ grow in leaps and bounds. I have so much support from friends here, and I thank God so much for this blessing He has given me. It has truly become one of my favorite places. I shudder to think how stagnant and shallow my relationship with God had been before moving to college. I love how that relationship is now deeper, and can only grow deeper still from here on out. At the time of high school, I never really thought about how much my faith was struggling, but now that I have changed and am changing, I see how deep my struggle really was.
But there is still nothing perfect. I am fearful for when I go back home. I'll be away from my loving and supporting group of Christian friends, and be surrounded by the old comforts and habits and friends of home. Just being away from college a month for Christmas break has shown me that I am still not free from the clutches of my old stagnant self. I am fearful for what a summer will do to me. I don't want to go back to how I was. I want the change that has happened in me. I pray that God will help keep me strong and growing, and that I will still have plenty of contact with my awesome friends that I have made.
I can't possibly imagine going to college anywhere but Grace University. I hope that that doesn't ever change. I know I need what Grace has to offer me. I still feel like I need this answer to my prayer for change. I also want to pray for encouragement and patience. I sometimes have a big struggle to entrust all things to God. I feel like I try and take too much control for my life, even though I know its not the best choice for me. But as they say, "old habits die hard." There is so much truth in that.
Almighty God, I thank you for the wonderful place and people you have put in my path that help me to grow in you and in our relationship. I am so amazed at what you do. But I pray that you would continue to help me. I need to let go of control, and let go of worries. I know you will always provide for me what I need, even when I don't feel your hand working directly. Please help me to remain and grow stronger in you wherever life takes me, and especially help me when I return home. I ask for focus, Lord, and for your guidance in all I do. Help me to seek your face more and more actively, help me to have a radical passion. Amen.
Friday, December 9, 2011
I love the haunting power contained in this song. I feel like it has a power to delve deep within the soul and pull to light the raw feelings that harbor inside. With the verses falling against a sorrowful backdrop, the words seem to say that even in the midst of our grayest feelings, there is still hope. That hope then blossoms to surround us and encase us in God's love and compassion, expressed in the chorus falling against a lightening tune. Even in the midst of troubles, we can still find rest with our Lord and Savior. I pray that I will always remember that in the depths of my grayest days, God will still be there for me to find rest, and that I will rest with Him, not only in my gray days, but in the days of glorious sunshine as well.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Fathomless
O Lord, I love how I can't even begin to fathom You. Your depths will never cease to astound me, Your truths shall always take my breath away. Lord, as I read Your word, I am amazed at how deep Your love is, and how truly wonderful You are, in everything. No language can describe you, no song can every fully praise You for all that You are, all that You have been, and all that You forever will be. The way You show Your hand in history and in my life is astonishing. I feel like my heart could burst with all the love I have for You, Lord, and even that would not be enough to show the love and awe I feel. My heart cries out to people who do not know Your love, o Lord. How can they bear to live without Your joy? How can they go through a life so superficial? I love the meaning that You give to life, I adore the fact that there is no life outside or apart from You. I am so glad that I have life, and I pray that I will use this life that You have given me, both physical and spiritual, I pray that my life may be used to glorify You to the best of my abilities.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
A Prayer for my Siblings
My prayer for today is for my siblings. I was blessed with three wonderful siblings, a sister and two brothers. But I also had a chance at life as an only child, so there are eight years between me and my little sister, and ten years between me and my youngest brother. Having that age difference in there sometimes brings me happy memories, some sad ones, and some that just bring pain and fear. Two of my siblings are now at an age where some of my regrets in life come from.
When I was growing up in a small town school in the middle of the country, grades 5-8 were taken to another neighboring small town and to the school building there. (the two towns had consolidated their school systems when I was in second grade.) Those days when I was in 5-8 grade I collectively refer to as my Bradshaw Days. Well my Bradshaw days were definitely a distinctive time in my life, one that I would change if I could relive it. First of all, I grew up in a Christian home, and went to church (and still do) on a regular basis. I loved the town I lived in, and the friends I had, the church I was a part of, and my whole life situation in general. I was always the nice, innocent little Christian girl in elementary who never did anything wrong. But my Bradshaw days changed that.
My "education" began in 5th grade. It was then that I started learning cuss words, sarcasm, and how to be "gutter-minded." And as the years went on between 5th-8th grades, I lost more and more of the innocence I had had when starting that chapter of my life. Now my school also was part of a group home program, in which kids were taken away from bad homes, or they were sent to live in the middle of nowhere as a punishment for a crime that they had done, or some other various reasons. We would start to get these troubled kids in junior high, and they would come in with a boatload of cuss words in their mouths, and often times very gutter-minded, having learned no other way to live. By the time I started to be around those kinds of kids, I already knew what they talked about, and so all innocence was gone. I could no longer plead ignorance to the things they talked about. I also became friends with a few, which did nothing to help me stay out of that filth. My friends that I grew up with in school were by this time no better, because they talked the same way, and acted the same way as those group home kids, without the added past crimes, however. I also did not have a support group of friends in school with me who were from the same church as I was: I was, and still am, the only one from my home church my age. My biggest regret from my Bradshaw days was a wanting to know the things I learned. I wanted to be able to talk to all my friends without them looking at me differently. I wanted to know the things they knew, and I knew that none of it was pleasing to God. I knew, but still chose what was bad.
It went on like that, me living in my new stage of knowledge through high school, but high school did change a bit for me. I hung out with less and less of the group home kids, and the ones that I did hang out with went to my church, and acted like this life was changing them, and that they were becoming closer with God. I also lost a friend that I had grown up with. All through junior high, we had been growing apart, and things really fell through after she left the school to do her own online classes. I was starting to crawl out of the life that I had lived in my Bradshaw days. But, with it being a public high school, I was not out of it yet.
Moving to a Christian college has been such a blessing for me, and it has been here at college that I have had the most growth in my relationship with Christ. I am surrounded now by so many great Christian friends who help encourage me. But my Bradshaw days will continue to haunt me. Always echoing in the back of my mind are thoughts that were thoughts of high school, thoughts that display the lost innocence I had once had. It is a struggle that I think will follow me for the rest of my life, but with God's help, I'll be able to fully overcome it, and those echoes won't be so loud and clamoring.
My sister and brother are now in 5th grade, and my youngest brother is in 3rd. But I am so scared for them all. 5th grade was the beginnings of my biggest regrets, and I don't want my siblings to have to suffer the same pain I did. I pray that God will protect them, and let them hold on to their innocence. I think my sister will have a better time of it, however. Most of her friends in school are friends that she's grown up with in church. She will have the support system I never did. But I worry more for my brother. He doesn't have that support system that our sister does because he is the only boy in our church his age. Like me, he doesn't have that support system in place at school, and his friends are the kind of friends who I can see acting more like the non-christian kids that they will face in junior high. My brother is also a lot like me in his personality, so I fear for him and this new chapter in his life. I also fear for my youngest brother. My two brothers are like peas in a pod, so whatever influences my older brother will influence my youngest brother as well. If innocence is lost, it will be lost on all of them, at the same time.
So I pray that my regrets in life will not be regrets that my siblings face.
When I was growing up in a small town school in the middle of the country, grades 5-8 were taken to another neighboring small town and to the school building there. (the two towns had consolidated their school systems when I was in second grade.) Those days when I was in 5-8 grade I collectively refer to as my Bradshaw Days. Well my Bradshaw days were definitely a distinctive time in my life, one that I would change if I could relive it. First of all, I grew up in a Christian home, and went to church (and still do) on a regular basis. I loved the town I lived in, and the friends I had, the church I was a part of, and my whole life situation in general. I was always the nice, innocent little Christian girl in elementary who never did anything wrong. But my Bradshaw days changed that.
My "education" began in 5th grade. It was then that I started learning cuss words, sarcasm, and how to be "gutter-minded." And as the years went on between 5th-8th grades, I lost more and more of the innocence I had had when starting that chapter of my life. Now my school also was part of a group home program, in which kids were taken away from bad homes, or they were sent to live in the middle of nowhere as a punishment for a crime that they had done, or some other various reasons. We would start to get these troubled kids in junior high, and they would come in with a boatload of cuss words in their mouths, and often times very gutter-minded, having learned no other way to live. By the time I started to be around those kinds of kids, I already knew what they talked about, and so all innocence was gone. I could no longer plead ignorance to the things they talked about. I also became friends with a few, which did nothing to help me stay out of that filth. My friends that I grew up with in school were by this time no better, because they talked the same way, and acted the same way as those group home kids, without the added past crimes, however. I also did not have a support group of friends in school with me who were from the same church as I was: I was, and still am, the only one from my home church my age. My biggest regret from my Bradshaw days was a wanting to know the things I learned. I wanted to be able to talk to all my friends without them looking at me differently. I wanted to know the things they knew, and I knew that none of it was pleasing to God. I knew, but still chose what was bad.
It went on like that, me living in my new stage of knowledge through high school, but high school did change a bit for me. I hung out with less and less of the group home kids, and the ones that I did hang out with went to my church, and acted like this life was changing them, and that they were becoming closer with God. I also lost a friend that I had grown up with. All through junior high, we had been growing apart, and things really fell through after she left the school to do her own online classes. I was starting to crawl out of the life that I had lived in my Bradshaw days. But, with it being a public high school, I was not out of it yet.
Moving to a Christian college has been such a blessing for me, and it has been here at college that I have had the most growth in my relationship with Christ. I am surrounded now by so many great Christian friends who help encourage me. But my Bradshaw days will continue to haunt me. Always echoing in the back of my mind are thoughts that were thoughts of high school, thoughts that display the lost innocence I had once had. It is a struggle that I think will follow me for the rest of my life, but with God's help, I'll be able to fully overcome it, and those echoes won't be so loud and clamoring.
My sister and brother are now in 5th grade, and my youngest brother is in 3rd. But I am so scared for them all. 5th grade was the beginnings of my biggest regrets, and I don't want my siblings to have to suffer the same pain I did. I pray that God will protect them, and let them hold on to their innocence. I think my sister will have a better time of it, however. Most of her friends in school are friends that she's grown up with in church. She will have the support system I never did. But I worry more for my brother. He doesn't have that support system that our sister does because he is the only boy in our church his age. Like me, he doesn't have that support system in place at school, and his friends are the kind of friends who I can see acting more like the non-christian kids that they will face in junior high. My brother is also a lot like me in his personality, so I fear for him and this new chapter in his life. I also fear for my youngest brother. My two brothers are like peas in a pod, so whatever influences my older brother will influence my youngest brother as well. If innocence is lost, it will be lost on all of them, at the same time.
So I pray that my regrets in life will not be regrets that my siblings face.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)