Prayers, Contentment, and 180's

I want to be transparent for a few minutes tonight, to show God's amazing power, His unfailing and never-ending love for His children. Last week I (all misgivings aside) openly shared what I've been struggling with. I want to show a "then to now" picture of what God's done in this last week! Dang, He's been busy! Check out the indescribable Savior I love and serve!

I met with my amazing mentor, Tiffany, on Tuesday for lunch, and discussed all of my life and growing pains- she and Mason are GREAT listeners, by the way! (and yes, I believe this is the 4th h2o child that knows all about my life now... and will never remember it!) So, taking Sunday's spilling, and this, I left armed with needing prayer for:

-contentment with where God wants me, whether that's giving my life to serving in the college church, or teaching music to college and high school kids

-boundaries! in a relationship, in friendships with h2o people vs. students I teach (this is probably the biggest one I struggle with in this area)

-continual understanding of my freedom in Christ, freedom from my past

This week, after much praying and weighing it out, I made a tough decision not to go to Core Retreat and to, instead, go to the OMEA Conference. This was super-tough because it was a huge H2O event that I was missing in favor of "my career" which I've been struggling to be content in as of late. This turned out to be an amazing and blessed decision! It's so ridiculous and mind-blowing for me to just sit back and say, "God did a work in me through the OMEA Conference." Seriously? A "professional development" music teachers' conference? YES! It's true! God spoke and taught me things through it! What did He say?

He showed me that I am right where He wants me to be, that the people, relationships, and positions I have right now are exactly as He placed them. That He loves me, and that He has begun and is doing a work in me that is beyond anything I can see, imagine, comprehend, or understand- because He loves His children, and He understands my desires better than I do, and wants to bless His children with good gifts. He is giving, has given, and will give me good gifts- that are beyond what I understand of my desires! Whoa.... whoa. With that, I really feel lead to share some of my prayers from last night and today:

"How can You be so good to me? To love me as much as You do? To save me from Hell, only to watch me run right back to the dirt and mud, trying to drag You with me. Yet You love me enough to provide me with supportive family, amazing friends, a loving church family, four wonderful summers in Colorado, the gift of music and a personality and love/passion to teach it, Renewal - Truth - Love - Mercy - Grace, and now a bunch of new beginnings that I feel completely undeserving of. God, I still can't understand - can't even begin to fathom, how I've gone from someone who only allowed themselves to be used, who sabotaged every relationship they had, who was so afraid of a relationship, to being someone who has complete freedom in You, who has found love and life in YOU, and someone You've blessed with so much. Exactly how I deserve this I may never understand - but I know that You love Your children and desire great things for them. And so I'll never stop thanking You for all these things. It's only through Your Almighty Power and Heavenly Love that any of this could even be possible for my life. You are so good to me, You heal my broken heart, You are my Father in Heaven."

 "God, I feel like I have learned so much this weekend and week - and yet I'm still learning! Like You've spoken to me, and I know, but I haven't been able to comprehend it all, to fathom it all, to process and understand it all. But I do know that in all, I do truly pray that Your will would be done and You would be glorified in all. Where do we even begin? I fell, but need confirmation, that You are asking me to be content with where You have placed me right now. I may not be in formal leadership, I may be doing more with music, but I feel You've asked me to be content with this. I don't completely like it, and need help being content, but trust that in the end You will work it for Your good and that it will surpass anything I can imagine. I pray You would use me in the music realm to bring glory to Your name and to share Your light and love.

 "I also hear You asking me to be content with and to embrace the tension placed in my life. This is so hard and frustrating at times, having friends that are the same age as student I give grades for, but I pray You'd help me to embrace and live in the middle of the tension - and that it would even bring me joy. 

 "Take me deeper in Your love and grace. I don't have to be a leader in the church to have a deep-rooted faith and beautiful relationship with You. My faith comes from my belief in You and Your Word and our relationship. I pray You'd teach me the deep things of You, of Your mysteries, of Your Word, of Your TRUTH, of Your unfailing love. Because in the end You alone are my stability - You and no one or nothing else, You are the one unchanging thing in my life. You are always the same. And so I want to be deeper in our relationship, so that I would always remember that my stability in life comes from You alone."

I have no idea why God is asking me to be transparent here and now, but I do know that my prayer is that He uses it and gets the glory. Because let's be honest, people don't just randomly come to these decisions on their own. People don't just pull some 180's out of nowhere. It's totally Jesus. He's totally sweet and faithful to stick with us even when we are confused, angry, upset, frustrated, rebelling... you name it, He's still right there next to us, even when we're a broken mess. In fact, that's His favorite place to be. Because then He can take the broken mess, like me, and start to rearrange the pieces into this beautiful mosaic.

I'm NOT an External Processor

[Disclaimer: Contrary to popular belief, I do not process externally by talking through things. I'm definitely a visual person, therefore, I usually need to see my thoughts. Unfortunately, I've had more thoughts than one person likes to have as of late, and do need a little processing.]

I realize it's about time to write about "the life of." I've been going back and forth, trying to decide if it's time for a "practical application" about what I've been learning or a "feelings-based" writing. While I have been learning a thing or two, I've been finding that lately I've been inundated and experiencing more emotions and thoughts than I'd like. I don't know if it's from an obnoxious and overwhelming amount of country music from Friday night (and no, I'm not quite sure how that induces thinking about life, but somehow it does for me; it's more the actual music than the lyrics - that much I do know for sure!), or the fact that I've experienced a lot of change (for my life, at least) in the last month... but I do know I've had too many thoughts and emotions swimming around my brain. If there's one thing you should know about me, if I'm quiet in a group of people, my brain is probably going about 10x faster than the conversation between everyone else. 

Lately, I've been having some growing pains, in the not-physical sense. I'm torn between "I'm still a college student, and want to be somewhat irresponsible" and "I'm an adult now, who teaches and grades college students' work, and I need more adult interactions to help me feel like an adult." I've been debating a number of different things to help with this, because as much as I'd like to be the person of the former statement, I find that I identify much more with the latter statement. I feel like there could be a balance in there somewhere, but figuring out what that is, and how to get there I don't know. This is something that seems to consume a lot of my spare thoughts. Because I find that it does affect a majority of my relationships with both college students and adults. At times, I have a definite disconnect with the college students because I am teaching and grading work for students who are the exact same age as people I'm friends with, but around the professors and older adults I work with I have a disconnect of sometimes being too informal and not professional enough. It's definitely a struggle in which I think everyone suffers at times, because I'm either too distant with friends, or say or do something informal (of a typical undergraduate college student) that puts me on the "bad list" of the professors.

I've also been having some difficulty in remembering the victory God has had in my life, and of the beautiful and wonderful truth He has revealed to me about who I am in Him, and what I mean to Him. This is especially true in the area of relationships, of which most of us know I have a poor track record. This has caused me to believe a lot of lies about myself and relationships with people in general, and about God's goodness in providing for my heart's desires. In the last year, especially in the last 7 months, God has been so good in taking my painful experiences, and the lies I have believed, and replacing them with the beautiful Truth of what He has to say about my life. It has been so healthy for me, for God to heal me and show me His love and Truth. However, I find that at times, I'm overcome with the occasional lie, which causes me to retreat. I can't even tell you how much I desire God's Truth to be completely present in my life always, so that when I'm with the people I care about the most in my life, I can completely and wholly enjoy my time with them, instead of battling with lies about what they might (but don't) think about me, about who I am in general, etc.

I've also been having some major battles about my role in the church. A lot of times, at least in the last few months, I've battled feeling like I'm overlooked as a leader in the church. This doesn't exactly have to do with title roles, because I generally don't like to be teaching or out in front of a large group of people, unless I can put an instrument in front of me (and then I'm okay). For awhile, I ignored it or just pushed it off as the fact that I was in a "new" church and it would take time. I've been starting to realize what the real reasons are, but after church this morning, and taking some time after that, I think I'm really starting to see that I am, in fact, still a spiritual leader. God uses me, in my humanness, to meet with women and speak through me and use my screw-ups and life experiences in ways that I still and probably never will understand. God has been showing me that I'm struggling in this area because I'm not at everything our church does. If you remember, when I was at BGSU, I was highly involved in the church. I didn't necessarily go to EVERYTHING because at some point school had to take a priority, however, I was able to be involved in a significant number of meetings, hang-outs, and ministries. Here at Kent, there really isn't as much going on, so I feel that I should be able to be at everything. I'm a "plan person," meaning I like to plan ahead, therefore, I usually make plans in advance. I'm discovering the number one reason I am not at nearly as many church events as I'd like to be is that we are never told about things very much in advance. Therefore, when I make plans for other events, trips to home or BGSU, or with other people, it's usually in a space I think is free, but also happens to be when a H2O event is occurring. All that to say, I really need to stop trying to find my identity as a spiritual leader in the amount of events I attend, but instead in the work God is doing in and through my life. I never thought I'd actually struggle with something like that, because over the years at BGSU I got much better about saying "no" to being involved in everything so that I could focus on schoolwork, however, it seems to be something I'm struggling with now. I think the biggest event was deciding to go to Core Retreat or the OMEA Conference. I had decided months ago that I was going to the OMEA Conference next weekend (Jan. 27-29). Then, I found out about Core Retreat last weekend, and, after Matt McClure gave a talk at Worship about stepping out for Christ, I felt like I should drop everything and go to Core Retreat next weekend. I was just sure that's what God wanted me to do. Funny how that works sometimes. In the last 2 days I started making a Pro and Con list, because I wasn't convinced that I needed to drop everything for Core Retreat (if you know me, you know my mother taught me at a young age that you don't just "drop" the plans you made in advance for something that you think is better; it's very hard for me to drop what I already planned for this reason). In the end I found that my BIGGEST reasons for going to Core Retreat were: to see friends from LT, and surprisingly, so that the staff of H2O would see that I'm a leader (since I haven't gone to as many H2O things lately). Well, that's just silly! The biggest reasons for going to the OMEA Conference (in case you're wondering): to bring back new knowledge and answers to questions that will help my undergrad students, to learn something new that will help me teach at the college/university level, to network and meet other teachers from Northeast Ohio, to visit with my family and my sick grandmother. In the end, after prayer and thought, I feel that there's more sound reasoning and it's definitely going to be more beneficial for me to go to Cincinnati. 

I know this seems a lot (oh, and there's probably more) to be swimming around such a small brain, but I think it's important to see some of this stuff. Because I have a BIG GOD, and I believe He's going to do some BIG things through all of this craziness. The road may be tough at times, but I'm always excited to see what God's going to do, how He's going to surprise me, and the blessings He richly and lavishly gives to His children.

And Now For Something a Little Different

Well hey there 2011! It didn't exactly catch me that it was really a "New Year"/2011 until I was on my computer on January 1st, and the computer said "2011." Sure we stayed up until midnight causin' a "ruckus" in the house and having Harry Potter sparkler battles (I WAS hanging out with my sister and some high schoolers, after all), but nothing really felt any different. However, seeing it on my computer made me realize, it's 2011... which means, a NEW year, and a NEW semester (well hello there Spring semester!). With that comes a chance to CHANGE. I believe you can start something new anytime you want, you don't really need a "new year" as an excuse. You can also change anytime you want. However, with a new year and a new semester here, it's a good time to evaluate the last year of life, and the last semester as well. So over the past 2 days, I've taken some time to evaluate where I was, the progression of the last year and semester, where I am, and where I actually want to be/where God wants me to be. Like I said, I believe new things and changes can occur whenever, they don't have to start AS SOON as January 1 hits. So I may start some things right away, and others may be a progression over the next several months or the year.
I also don't believe in "New Year's Resolutions." Most of the time, it's just another broken promise. I generally tend to believe that's because people make their "resolutions" on a whim, without thinking through the pros and cons, and what has to happen in order to achieve that "resolution." They see something on TV, or overhear a friend talking and POOF! I have to do that, too. If you seriously think about it, the majority of the "resolutions" people make are BIG picture goals, i.e. lose # of pounds, not eat ____ food, fix the roof of the house, buy a new car, spend more time with the family, read more books, etc. I think the biggest reason why people never achieve these resolutions or BIG picture goals, is because when making these "resolutions" they don't take into account the small pictures, or steps, it takes in order to achieve the overall goal. Let's take "spend more time with family" as an example. If you just say that, you're left wondering how to do that, so maybe you decide, I'll put off my homework. Without any idea of how to achieve the big, we take the wrong small steps, and eventually give up when it doesn't work. With the right planning, such as, a weekly family game night, eating 3 evening meals together each week, not using the computer between 6-8pm, etc. the big goal has more of a chance of being achieved.
All that being said, I thought about my "resolutions," new things and changes to life that I wanted to see happen. But, I didn't exactly take this lightly. I spent some time praying and reading. After reading through some journals, the Bible, and praying this was the first thing I wrote down:


What do I need to do - what needs to change - for me to follow Christ with more faith, more discipline, more love, more devotion?


Here are some big picture ideas:

1. "Back to the Basics" - read the simple stuff again (Has anyone seen the newest version of The Karate Kid with Jayden Smith and Jackie Chan? That's where I got the following ideas.)
• It's about attitude! do not skip over what you think you already know! 
• The basic message of the Gospel is in everything we do, everything we are.
2. "Spring Clean Continually"
• Block and erase anything questionable from the computer and daily activities
• Always re-evaluate your time management and how time is spent
• Learn to say "no" to unnecessary time commitments that overstep priorities and boundaries
• Assess what's really in your heart and mind - and allow God to touch the deep and clean out the junk
3. "Let it Rain" - healing of the soul
• Open your heart, mind, spirit, soul, and emotions to Christ
• Allow God to bring up the deep and painful things of the past - and be willing to go there with Him for healing that lasts
• Allow God to refresh the soul from its journey in the valleys by taking extended breaks with Him
4. "Pray without Ceasing"
• Be in constant communication with God NO MATTER WHAT! - the good, the bad, temptations, struggles, victories and defeats
• Be in constant prayer for others - God works miracles through prayer.
• "Give thanks, with a grateful heart." 
5. "What Are Others Saying"
• Listen to sermons online
• Take time to read more books
• Be mentored consistently by someone in the church
6. "Sharing is Caring"

                **Why do we tell others about Christ? Why is evangelism important to me?

• Because NO ONE else can love you THIS much with THIS much consistency
• because NOTHING - NOTHING ELSE - can fill what we're searching for - NOTHING ELSE WORKS - nothing else cures, nothing else fills, satisfies, completes - NOTHING ELSE  is ever enough - Christ is the ONLY thing that works!
• For this reason, I need to be more intentional in friendships and relationships. In a dying world, on a campus with tens of THOUSANDS of searching college students - they NEED to know. They long for what fills, satisfies, completes - what cures, what WORKS - what makes them right and whole.

Those are some big pictures goals, followed by either some small steps, or some big goals to go with it. Here are some other small steps, or other goals I have to help improve my quality of life. I believe that NOTHING in life will improve without the above. However, as we all saw last semester, my graduate assistant job became my life by the end of the semester. I was so focused on not failing, that by mid-November I lost focus of everything else in life. The following is a list of goals to help all of me stay healthy: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

• Read AT LEAST one chapter in the Bible each day (started in Romans today, see #1)
• Write in this blog at least once each week
• Starting January 5, 2011 - 1 picture each day for a WHOLE YEAR in my other blog 390:Pictures of Life
• no computer after 10:30PM unless I'm doing schoolwork
• if for schoolwork after 10:30PM ONLY the applications that apply to the homework are going to be used (that means no Facebook and no Skype)
• no university/assistantship work after 8:00PM
• make time - at least 30 minutes each day - to read a book that is NOT a schoolbook or the Bible
• re-read Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia
• Find opportunities to continue K-12 teaching, i.e. private lessons (This is huge right now since I have been, and still am in some ways, very seriously considering dropping grad school for awhile. Finding opportunities to teach kids while working at the university may be a way to stay in school another year and a half without going crazy.)
• Go to the Rec Center AT LEAST 3 times each week (more as a stress reliever than a weight loss plan)
• Have a REAL, TANGIBLE, PHYSICAL budget (I need to get on this NOW!)
• Make use of the Kent Free Library as a study/work space
• Have people over to the apt. at least once each month for a game or movie night
• Become more conscious of what I eat to be a better steward of the body God has given me (Note: this has VERY little to do with weight, and more to do with a firm belief that when Paul states in 1 Corinthians that our bodies are temples of the Most Holy God, and a recognition that this does not just apply to the defilement of our bodies with sexual acts, but also by being gluttonous with how much we eat, and what we eat)

I recognize that in my humanness I will probably fall short at some point in more than one area listed somewhere, and it may happen a lot sooner than I'd like it to. That being said, I also recognize that I belong to Jesus Christ, who has already forgiven me for coming short, and that through Him and His Power alone, I can succeed and come closer to Him.

Here we go, 2011!