Category: Faith

Life in Transition

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I don’t do well with transition. Not for a lack of trying or praying. It was actually my transition to college when Jesus captured my heart because I couldn’t make sense of my own life anymore. Anyways, I started praying for my transition out of college last summer, and throughout the semester I haven’t stopped. The prayers have looked different – help me finish well, prepare community for me wherever I end up, not my will, but Yours, God. This transition has already been particularly difficult, and I’ve confessed to friends feeling lost, broken and confused. I feel like a sheep wandering aimlessly. I’m just struggling with how to move on post-college, which leaves me paralyzed and unsure if I want to get out of bed in the morning. I toss and turn all night and then it takes all my strength to put one foot in front of another and walk to class.

In the midst of feeling so broken, or as I keep referring to myself, “a hot mess”, I’m trying to say good-byes, finish up discipleship for the year and celebrate a great time living with my roommates. While my brain is running a million miles a minute, the Lord spoke a sweet truth to me this afternoon. I was confessing and crying and upset that I have nothing let to give, nothing left to offer. God so kindly reminded me that I have never had anything to bring to the table. It has never been about what I have to offer. God declares that His power is made perfect in my weakness. I have never felt so weak in my life.

My sister encouraged me to make a list of all the times I’ve felt overwhelmed, inadequate and paralyzed by the future and claim truth over it. It was beautiful to process through God’s goodness in seasons when I felt overcome by my emotions. My ability to acknowledge that God is good is not conditional on how I feel. I walked to campus yesterday and told the Lord that because my feelings are fleeting, I will cling to what I know. I know that God is good. I know that God is faithful. I know that God is working all things for my good. I know that despite that I bring nothing to the table except my tears, God will use my weakness for His good.

Easter Sunday

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In a season of uncertainty, I feel like I am waiting for things to fall into place. Just this weekend, I’ve watched several things fall into their said places, the “big” stuff is still coming. Easter has hit me very hard this year. I’ve been on the verge of tears as I contemplate Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. Because my life feels like it’s stuck on Saturday. Good Friday has already happened, but Sunday is tomorrow. And when it’s Saturday, Sunday feels so far away. I’m waiting and hoping that death is not the end and that Jesus’ words will be right and He will be rised from the dead, but there’s a small seed of doubt. What if Jesus doesn’t show up on Sunday? What if I’m right to be a skeptic? With my back up against a wall, will Jesus show up?

Today is Easter Sunday. Today I celebrate that Jesus was and is who He said He was. Today the tomb is empty and Christ is victorious. Today the skeptics are made believers and doubts are put to death. Today I’m reminded that Saturday’s waiting and hoping is not in vain.

I might still be stuck on Saturday in my heart, but instead of doubting in my waiting, I can hope. I can trust. God will do as God has done. God comes into hopeless situations and inserts Himself into the story, saying, “Don’t worry, I’m coming back, and the best is yet to come.” Sunday is better than Saturday. This next season will be great, but only a shadow of the season after life in heaven. So here’s to hoping with the full knowledge that Sunday will come; resurrection is the ultimate victory, and I get to live in it. Lord Jesus- come reminding me of the victory you’ve won and that I get to live in it. I get to live in the reality of a King who died and rose again, defeating death and reminding me that the best is yet to come.

Rest

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February has exhausted me. I spent four weekends in four different places, leaving me irritable, tired and burnt out. About a week ago, before I left for the weekend, I had a conversation with a friend, in which I confessed feeling a lot of pressure – pressure to be a good friend, a good girlfriend, a good roommate, a good discipler and a good student. There are a number of things out of my control that have been heavy on my heart, so as a response, I’ve grabbed anything I could control and controlled the crap out of it. In the midst of a schedule that was not sustainable, I had fallen into performance mode, and no one was feeling the pressure of performing more than I was. And the silly thing was, besides some joking comments from friends, no one was telling me I wasn’t doing a good job at any of these roles; it was all me. I was the one putting pressure on myself and holding myself to impossible standards.

There’s a reason why we’re called to die to ourselves as Christians; we are our own worst enemies. I’m my own worst critic. If it isn’t how I’m eating, or working out, it’s how I’m caring for my friends or serving my roommates. I have ideas in my head of how I’m supposed to perform, and then I judge myself based on these standards. Absent from my scale is the fact that I’m freed from these standards. Jesus died on the cross so I don’t have to live up to anyone’s standards, not even my own. I’m free. Free from standards, or in biblical terms, free from the law. If I’m trying to achieve righteousness based on the law, I must follow the law in it’s entirety, which is impossible; hence Jesus. He fulfilled the law and set me free from it.

I’ve spent a lot of time resting this weekend. Rest is not easy for me; I start to feel lazy and laziness in my sinful brain translates to failure or punishment. Reality is, after two full days of rest, I’m starting to feel like myself again. I’m remembering why God’s commandment for a Sabbath is imperative. When I don’t rest each week, I end up having emotional breakdowns, feeling burnt out, and falling into sin patterns. I stop seeing God’s goodness because I’m just trying to survive and make it until bedtime. Rest is reminding me how much of my thoughts are based on worldly perspective – success does not begin with me. Victory has already been attained; will I live in light of it? Will I fight against my fleshly desires to measure my performance and place pressure on myself, and live in true freedom? I sure hope so.

Dead to Sin

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I started this semester flat on my face in sin. I was crying out to God and desperate for His grace. Well, I’m always desperate for His grace, but the first week of the semester reminded me of it. I had talked big game about wanting to truly enjoy my last semester at IU, but every fiber of my being felt like I was starting it off on the wrong foot. I started to realize that some of the decisions I was making were not good for me, or pointing people to Christ, but instead leading them into sin. The more I sat in my sin, the farther God seemed to be from me.

So what’s a girl supposed to do when God feels distant? Well, first I cried. Then I prayed, some sad pathetic, wallow in self-pity prayers. Finally, I talked to a couple close friends and confessed my sin. And then I prayed some more. Here’s what I began to understand: God doesn’t call me to flee from sin for His sake, but for my own sake. Sin clouds my judgment. Sin makes me question my identity. Sin isolates me from community. Sadly, there was some sin behavior that I had become very comfortable with in my life. In my daily quiet times, I would ask God that He reveal Himself to me, but I wasn’t actually looking for Him; I had become content with the way I was living.

Thankfully, God is good. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is once and for all. He died a brutal death so I can live in freedom from condemnation. When my flesh and Satan tell me that sin is okay and can be compromised with, God’s Word can fight the lies. Sin is serious. Sin affects my view of God and my view of myself. God calls me (and all believers) to purify myself from all ungodliness. Why? So I can see and experience Him. I’ve spent some good time in Romans 6 the past couple weeks, asking God to speak to me. Paul writes to the Romans, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin” (6:6-7). My old self was crucified on the cross with Christ. Why? So the body of sin might be done away with. Sin has lost it’s power on me, until I give power back to it. The more power I give sin in my life, the less I will see Jesus because Jesus is the opposite of sin. There is only so much time in my day, if I fill it with sinful things, and things not for the Lord, the less I give Him.

My identity is not that of a sinner. I am a daughter of the highest King. I have been chosen and not rejected. But, I forget that. I choose to sin and put myself and my desires above God. I give sin power in my life again. When you give Satan an inch, he’ll take a mile… he’s sneaky and manipulative like that. I want to see Jesus and walk closely with Him, which right now looks like taking drastic measures to flee from sin. I pray that I can live out what Paul writes to the Philippians, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). Here’s to choosing Jesus over sin, even when sin seems like not a big deal, because sin will leave me wanting more; only Christ can truly satisfy.

Amidst the Darkness

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I’m at a crossroads in my life. As a second semester senior, I don’t feel like I have a plan, which is killing the planner in me. My prayer each day begins with something along the lines of, “God, show me what You have for me starting in May.” Thankfully halfway through the prayer, it turns into, “Lord, I want the ability to trust you in whatever you have in store for next year, and I want to trust your timing. Strengthen me in the waiting.” The Lord has decided to be silent on His plan for me next year. So I’m waiting, not very patiently. I wish I could say that I’m okay with this, but to be honest, it’s an incredibly difficult season. I want to start to prepare for what comes next, but God is good in the waiting; in fact, in scripture it says, “Blessed are those who wait for Him” (Isaiah 30:18). I want to wait on Him, at least I want to want to wait on Him.

Today, I went on a run. It was 40 degrees and sunny on January 9th… this is such a rarity that I sat on my porch swing when I got home for a little bit. The sun was hitting the swing perfectly and instead of being cold, which would be normal for the 2nd week in January, I was a perfect temperature. The sun rarely shines in Indiana during January or February, which gets depressing for a sun-goddess such as myself. But as I’m walking through a dark season in my life right now, dealing with some hurt, some lies, the Lord’s silence and a lot of lasts, it seemed fitting to soak in the sun. It hit me at that moment that the Lord was reminding me that even during the dark seasons in life and during the year, we can see and experience the sun when sit in the right places at the right times. Had I sat outside much longer, the sun would have started to set behind the house in front of me and I would start to shiver, but at that moment, I got to sit and enjoy the sun’s light and warmth during a January day. It’s afternoons like today that make the winter a little more bearable; they’re like moments of hope amidst darkness of confusion and uncertainty.

Here’s to believing that God will continue to remind me how to hope during a time filled with fear, hurt, uncertainty and confusion.

Lasts

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Like most seniors graduating from college in May, I lay in bed as I fall asleep wondering where the time went. The past 3.5 years have flown by… not surprisingly since I attend such an amazing university and have had an exceptional college experiences. I long for freshman year when I carelessly spent hours upon hours in the afternoon and in the wee hours of the morning with friends. I miss living in the sorority house, when I felt so close to so many girls and knew I was never alone. I want to relive last spring, when so many of my best friends were seniors and were up for literally anything. Mixed with this nostalgia is fear. Fear that I wouldn’t make the most of this next semester. Fear that I’ll leave with regrets. Fears that I’ll worry too much about next year that I wouldn’t enjoy the present.

Let me just tell you, nostalgia and fear are an unbearable combination. They are numbing. I’m walking around feeling like I just want to lay in bed and press snooze on my alarm because I just can’t handle the day yet. I keep thinking that if I’m not ready, my semester just wouldn’t start. The worst part is that this numbness allows for no joy. And I feel hopeless. The future seems just so daunting that I want to surrender without even trying. It’s like in sports when you’re over-matched and you wonder why you even have to play the game, you think it might be better to surrender and maintain your dignity. And when you do decide to play, it’s with the attitude of, “let’s just get it over with.” The past two days I’ve sat in this feeling. Except, I don’t even know what it looks like to surrender with my dignity in tact in this situation… which is probably a good thing, or else I would do it in a heartbeat. I’ve been willing to settle for surviving instead of believing I can and will thrive.

The next 16 weeks bring a lot of lasts into my life. Tomorrow kicks off my last sorority recruitment and then my last bid week. Monday starts my last semester at Indiana University as an undergrad and my last semester of college for the foreseeable future. Mixed with these lasts is uncertainty. Where will I be in 17 weeks? What will I be doing? Will I find a job? Amidst this whirlwind of emotions, I have several choices, which have several clear consequences. Reality is, I have no idea what the future brings, and much to my dismay, I have very little control over it, but I do have control over my attitude. If I continue to settle for surviving, I wouldn’t enjoy these next 16 weeks, nor will I be excited about what comes after. So I’m praying for a grateful heart for all the wonderful experiences I’ve had in college, the ability to trust God in the next season of my life and to be fully present for the next 16 weeks that I have left of college, no regrets, just happy memories. When I’m walking with God and focusing on Him, I believe I will thrive, not simply survive my last 16 weeks of college.

Brutally Beautiful

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It’s been a rough semester. It’s been a wonderful semester. As I look back on the past 14 weeks, both of these statements are equally true. I cannot separate them from one another.

I’ve experienced disappointment, confusion and frustration. I didn’t get accepted to Teach for America, my one concrete option for next year, and I don’t have much direction for life post-college. Leadership positions have drained me. I’m frustrated by some sin in my life and I’m realizing, yet again, just how broken I am. I find myself on a daily basis saying, “Come Lord Jesus, come.” My present struggles seem so daunting some days that I pray that Jesus would come back to earth and save me from myself.

I’ve had the privilege of discipling 3 amazing women and watching them take huge steps of faith including emceeing our weekly Cru meeting, leading a bible study and leading two sorority girls to accept Christ. I’ve prayed God’s will over a couple areas of my life and watched as He provided in some pretty cool ways. I’ve been blessed by some long-time friendships and also by some new ones. God has proved Himself faithful in me being a senior and starting to transition out of leadership positions. The newness of being a Christian has worn off, but the familiarity of walking with the Lord and knowing that despite my emotional ups and downs, He will be consistent has brought peace into a chaotic season of life. Even in the midst of weariness and exhaustion from finals, I know God wouldn’t forsake me; in fact He will give me strength in my weakness.

As my favorite mom-blogger says, life is both brutal and beautiful. While she has coined the term “brutiful,” this concept is not new. The balance of the brutal and the beautiful has its roots in the Gospel. Jesus Christ, the most beautiful of human beings, God in human form, took on flesh and died a brutal death so we, as the worst of sinners, the most brutal of human beings, could experience the beauty of life on earth and the promise of perfection in heaven. The brutal reality of my humanity, sin & indiscretions has been turned into beauty by trusting in Christ’s sacrifice. The contrast of these two truths is also significant. I can appreciate the grace of God better the more I see my sin. Just as I can see the beauty of life the more I understand how brutal it can be.

When I was trained to share the Gospel on Summer Project, a staff member emphasized the importance of making sure others knew the “bad news,” or in other words, the consequences of their depravity, before I could share the “good news,” that Jesus had already paid for their sin. The reasoning behind this is because the good news becomes better as we start to comprehend the bad news. On the flip side, the good news isn’t as poignant without the contrary being bad. If I’m not that bad of a sinner, Christ’s death on the cross loses its significance. I have to grasp the bad news, the brutality of life, in order to understand the good news, and see its beauty.

The same can be said about my semester. Without the bad stuff, the good wouldn’t seem so great. If I choose to ignore the brutal, the tough, the frustrating, confusing and disappointing, I also choose to ignore the beauty. So I choose both. I take the brutal so I can experience the beauty, knowing that God can and will redeem the brutal and make it beautiful.

Directionally Challenged

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I’m a senior. Which means I get asked the question daily of, where are you going to be next year. It’s a funny one. I don’t even know what I’m going to eat tomorrow. The planner in me has disappeared, I don’t know where she went, or if she’ll come back, but I’m focused on the here and now. When people ask me questions about the future, I get a very confused look in my eyes and get tempted to ask them, I don’t know what I want to do in ten years, what’s your ten year plan? The problem about senior year, and transition years in people’s lives, is we expect them to have answers and plans. There’s an expectation that they should know where they want to go and how they are going to get there. Newsflash: this is unrealistic.

Yes, having direction is good, but having God is greater. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m going to be doing, but I have faith in a God who is working all things for my good. I have faith in a God who has made everything beautiful in its time. I have faith in a God who will not leave me or forsake me. I have a wonderful friend who told me, “Your lack of direction and ideas for your future mean that God’s got a pretty big plan for you.” Or something to that effect. And I’m hoping he’s right. God doesn’t ask me to bring my five-year plan to the table so he can approve it, He asks me for the rest of my life and promises to make it beautiful for me. God isn’t going to give His stamp of approval to my plans; He’s going to give me His plans for me. I may not have it all figured out, but I’m trying to trust the God who does (key word in that sentence: trying!).

So what can I do? I can stress out over something that isn’t even in my control, or I can listen and wait on God, ready to move whenever He calls me to. When I try to make my own plans, I trick myself into believing it’s about me, when in reality, it’s about a good God who is going to do GREAT things with my life. I’ll choose to be directionally challenged if it means I’m surrendered to God and not trying to figure out things myself.

Running a Long Distance

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I’m very lucky to lead a house bible study with a sweet friend of mine. Wednesday nights are one of my favorite times of the week getting to go over to Phi Mu and teach others about Jesus and watch Him show up and teach me each week without fail. This semester we’ve been walking through the book of 1 John, line by line. Each week we’ve been asked tough questions, but I just pray that truth gets spoken. Last night, we were in chapter 4, which talks about God’s love and how God loved us first. My co-leader said something very insightful, “God didn’t wait for us to get our act together.” Wow. I’ve been letting than sink in for the last 12 hours. He didn’t wait for me to get my act together. Why? Because if He did, He’d still be waiting. Christianity isn’t the try-harder faith; it isn’t the check-list faith of things you have to accomplish, I am given victory because I admit I can’t achieve it on my own. Crazy backwards in this world that tells me that the harder I work, the more I will achieve. Jesus achieve it all and handed it over to be as a gift that I have to receive in faith.

I so easily fall into trying to get my act together. I watch others do it every day, but the reality is, we don’t have to. Hear that, we don’t have to get our acts together for God. Even when we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He ran a long distance into our sin, greeted us with a kiss and walked us home (Luke 15). For me, that sin I’m constantly reminded of is performing. I try to act that I’ve got it all together. The story of the prodigal son has hit me very hard this semester. I’ve heard it lots of times, and I can usually identity with the older brother, but lately the imagery of the younger son, the prodigal, has brought me to tear. The younger brother, as we know in the story that is told in Luke, takes his inheritance, wastes it, has a turning point when he realizes he wants to go home, to be his father’s servant, because he’s no longer worthy of being his son. Here’s the image that I can’t let go of: “But while he (the son) was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The father, God, ran a long distance to meet his son. God runs a long distance to meet each of us. He doesn’t wait until we’ve got our acts together, He runs into the mess. Then, He is filled with compassion, throws his arms around us and kisses us. Whatever sin I’m struggling through, I can be sure that God is going to meet me in it, have compassion on me and bring back home. I don’t have to get my act together first. I don’t have to even get my act half-together. He travels the distance.

Calm Through the Storm

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There’s a lot going on around me this semester, and a lot going on in me; I’m pretty sure I’m going to look back on this semester years from know and be so confused about how I survived. In many ways I feel like the disciples as the storm approaches and they’re out at sea in Mark 4:35-41. The waves are really strong, they’ve actually started to come up into the boat and the wind is starting to pick up, and Jesus is asleep. Asleep. Well until the disciples wake Him up, saying “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Jesus was, and is, the Son of God. He could have stopped the waves; He could have chosen not to sleep, but He didn’t. He was sleep because despite the roughness of the seas, there was nothing for the disciples to be afraid of. Jesus wasn’t pacing wondering if they were going to make it, he was fast asleep on a rocking boat. In fact, once the disciples wake Jesus up, He calms the sea, ends the storm and says to the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

I’ve seen God move mountains in my life, and the lives of the people around me. I have no doubt that Jesus is alive and on the move, so why do I focus on the storm instead of my Savior? My God is working all things for my good, my God is mighty to save, my God can calm storms; the second I start to forget how powerful and good my God is, I become just like the disciples who felt the need to wake Jesus just to be reminded that He wasn’t going to let them die. He isn’t going to leave or forsake me; He’s committed, in it for the long haul.  This doesn’t mean that life is a walk through a field of daisies or a cheesy romantic comedy where the girl and the guy always end up together; life is life, it will be hard, in fact Jesus tells us that. But, I live in the reality of a Jesus who is already victorious and a God who good, so good in fact that I can’t even comprehend His goodness. In this season of constant change, uncertainty and busyness, I pray that I remember how good and powerful God is, that He is in control, even when scary things are happening. I pray that I can find His peace and not try to create my own.