1. Laughter
2. Late night dinners with friends
3. Spending all day at church
4. Sing... and singing.
5. Making music
6. Learning new instruments
7. Learning
8. Smiling
9. Ministering to teenagers
10. Baylor!
11. Laying on a bench outside in perfect weather
12. Taking walks
13. Dancing
14. Writing in my journal or on here
15. Working out
16. Sleeping
17. Friday afternoons
18. Deep conversations
19. Talking about boys
20. Cooking
21. Planning things
22. Drinking tea
23. Reading my Bible
24. Spending too many hours on the computer
25. Spending time with those I love
26. Taking pictures
27. Creativity
28. My sorority
29. Performing in front of large audiences
30. Spending time with those I love
I am a religion major, and I absolutely love it! Last semester was my first semester in really getting to dive into it. I took Christian ethics and Intro to Church History, and it was great to see what God taught me through those. I became a lot more aware of the history of the church, different issues that the church has dealt with and is dealing with, and how Christianity impacts ways of looking at different issues.
This semester I am taking World Religions and Intro to New Testament. I feel like these two classes go well together, because for both of them it requires me to be a little more open minded. I also feel like questions that were arisen to me last semester that have been on my mind, are ones that are prevalent in these classes, and that is awesome! Some of these questions include: what are the similarities and differences between religions? Can one examine a different religion and grasp it without joining in it? Can someone be of two different religions? What does this mean to be a person of faith studying different religions?
Also questions of textual criticism regarding the New Testament: what is this? How are we supposed to judge this and several more issues that are very interesting to me, but I can't formulate into a question at this point.
I think one of the reasons that I love my major so much is truth. Everyone is searching for truth in life and wanting to know where it comes from. But the reality is that you can't know everything. You just have to have faith and trust in God that everything will one day make sense. I love this! I love learning about the Bible. I love learning about the different Popes, Luther and Jonathan Edwards. I love learning about different religions. I love that there is always more to learn and more to discover.
That is something about my minor too... music. I will never be the best, but I always want to learn and discover more about the instruments I am playing and the music I am reading. There is always more to know and ways to improve myself, and that is never ending.
I am a work in progress, and I am so excited to keep on learning (even if sometimes I don't like to...). :-)
I work at a Christian camp, which if you read this blog, you already know. Over the past few months I have really struggled as to whether or not I should return there this summer.
Throughout last summer I felt like God was telling me to return for half the summer, but I was still really unsure. A lot of my friends were saying that it was their last summer, and that made me feel a little uneasy, but secure in the fact that I knew it would be ok if it was my last as well. Campers kept asking me if I was coming back or not. This was a really hard question. I just really felt like God was telling me to go back for part of it. At the time I was thinking of studying abroad for half the summer, so working the other half would be really convenient.
This past fall semester however, the doubts really got to me. I really realized that none of my close friends were going back, including the guy I was dating at the time, who I had worked there with. Because I was unsure about the path God was going to take us on and the difficulties of the long distance, I was really unsure. A bunch of my camp friends came and visited me in September, and I remember the exact moment when sitting around my kitchen table someone posed the question, "Is anyone going back this summer?" Everyone said that they probably weren't or they weren't for sure, and that they felt like God was done working with them there. For me, this was confirmation that I shouldn't go back.
Fast forward a few months and I was still pretty sure that God didn't want me to go back, but I hadn't really given it much thought. The thing is, I had absolutely no idea what God wanted me to do with my summer, and that was unsettling.
Then the guy I was dating and I broke up. The next day I was spending some much needed time with God, and I started praying about what He wanted me to do this summer. I was looking up different ministry programs and volunteer opportunities in the Waco area, and then I just felt this nudging on my heart.
In high school I was really involved in this retreat called Celebration. If I hadn't gone to it, my life would be completely different. I am so thankful to God for blessing me with it. At one of my last weekends the spiritual advisor was talking about how we are to know when God calls us to something. She said that it is the gut feeling that one has that just does not go away no matter how hard you try. This message has stuck with me throughout college and really helped me to discern what is His will is for me.
So when I felt God nudging at me that day, I realized that he had been nudging me over the past several months. I knew he was likely calling me back. I made a pros and cons list and realized that all the reasons I didn't want to go back were petty ones, such as a lot of my friends not coming back. But then I realized that there was something much more important than that, and that is the girls I would be ministering to, and the lives I would be impacting for the Kingdom. I started filling out my application, but didn't submit it yet.
Over the next several days I was still trying to determine what God wanted me to do. I talked to one of my best friends at school and camp a lot about it, and he basically told me that if I felt like I needed to go back, I needed to apply. So in a moment when I was feeling sure that this was in God's plan, I submitted the application.
Fast forward a few weeks and I heard back that they want me to come back! Now I just had to make a decision... and I have decided that I am going to be working at camp Cho-Yeh weeks 1-5, and then doing summer school in Waco, either at MCC or Baylor. It's been a hard decision, but it's been really cool to see how God has been working through it.
I am so blessed!
I am so blessed to impact the lives of girls for 5 weeks this summer, to grow in who I am, and to make new friendships with the staff while God continues to bless me in new ways. I don't know what God has planned for me, but I know that this is where he wants me for this short period of my life. It's been a long road to come to that realization, but I'm glad I've finally arrived!
The other day a friend and I went to eat right before we went to a class that was 2 buildings away. When we were walking between the buildings, my Iphone slipped out of my pocket. I didn't notice. When we got to class the first thing I looked for was my phone because I wanted to put it on silent. But as soon as we got there I realized it was missing. I then quickly retraced all my steps back to the dining hall, but couldn't find it anywhere. All throughout class I was upset.
After class we tried calling my phone. No answer. Tried again. No answer. Then I realized that earlier in October my younger brother had made me get a tracking device for my Iphone. At the time I was annoyed (especially when I realized that him and my mom would stalk me going up or down I35), but when I remembered that I had a tracker on my IPhone, I wasn't annoyed anymore.
Long story short, my brother tracked my phone and we realized that it had been taken. The guy was all over Waco, and eventually settled down at the SLC (workout building), so we thought he may have dropped it off there. I started to head there after a Sing meeting when my mom texted me on another friend's phone. She said that the phone was now on the move and gave me a number to call the cops. My friend I was with suggested I try to call my phone one more time. I did and to my surprise someone answered. He said that he had found my phone and was waiting for someone to call it so he could return it. My friend came with me and we met the guy behind the religion and history building, and got my phone back!
But here's what I think really happened:
The guy was going to steal it, and so he didn't answer when it rang the first several times (remember when he said that he was waiting for someone to call it? there were 7 missed calls during that time). Then my mom and brother started tracking my phone. My brother set off an alarm through the tracking app that made a really loud noise and put a urgent message on the screen. I think that's the point when the guy realized he was being tracked and decided to give it back when it called again. When my mom told me to call the police, she was wanting me to give them my permission to track the guy down. They were going to get on the phone with my brother on the tracking app to figure out where this guy was.
This is where my brain starts to wonder what was going on in his head. The age old question of, "Are people inherently good?" comes to mind. Are they? This is something I'd like to believe.... but are people really this way? Or are people inherently bad? Are they born good and then corrupted? or born bad and then become good over time?
I really like the think that I think the first. The John Locke answer. I like to think that all people generally have a good moral basis and will do the right thing without there being a consequence. But I think my opinion on this has changed somewhat.
I'm not saying that I think we're bad, but the issue of good vs. evil is a lot more complicated that just what meets the eye. It's a complicated situation that has eaten away at people for centuries. When I look at a baby, I think of innocence and tranquility, but when I hear of serial killers, I think that they must have been a little messed up in the head to have the lack of emotion and care to do such a thing. This then brings up the nature vs. nurture argument that is probably more relevant than the good vs. evil thing in this sort of situation.
I'm starting to think that maybe most people are born "good", but then over time, as life, culture, love and heartbreak happen, people change. Some people are brain washed into believing something negative they'd die for. Some people may feel like they are predestined to an outcome, or a social stereotype, so they end up fitting into that roles without thinking. All situations differ, but I think that most people deep down know the right thing to do... at least at the most simple concepts: stealing is wrong, murder is wrong... common sense if you will.
So I feel fine about letting the guy go, because maybe he learned a lesson of some sort. Maybe he wasn't even intending on stealing it, I was wrong and he was indeed trying to give it back. I'll never know. It doesn't matter. All I know is that he is God's child and no matter what his intentions were, I am to love him and forgive him. After all, it is just a phone.
"Congratulations! You're not perfect! It's ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway. But then, everybody's ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people. You know what perfect is? Perfect is not eating or drinking or talking or moving a muscle or making even the teensiest mistake. Perfect is never doing anything wrong-which means never doing anything at all. Perfect is boring! So you're not perfect! Wonderful! Have fun! Eat things that give you bad breath! Trip over your own shoelaces! Laugh! Let somebody else laugh at you! Perfect people never do any of those things. All they do is sit around and sip weak tea and think about how perfect they are. But they're really not one-hundred-percent perfect anyway. You should see them when they get the hiccups! Phooey! Who needs 'em? You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person. Good people are hard to find nowadays. And they're a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week."
One time when I was a child, I read a book that had this analogy in it that I will never forget. It said that life is like a wheel: sometimes it is up and things are great, but sometimes it goes down and things get tough. The hope is that we know that it will always come up again.
During the summer I did a devo on this topic and I completely forgot about it until this past sunday. I am deaf in my left ear as of the last couple of years, and this summer one of my campers kept poking fun at me for it. It's one thing when it's one of your close friends who you know will be there for you if you need to break down about it as well, but it's different when it is a 12 year old who doesn't fully grasp the concept. But when she said this it just got me to thinking a lot about the difficulties I had been through and how God had shown himself to me through them. Around this time of the summer, God kept putting things into my life where I was learning about the meaning of difficulties and "why good things happen to Godly people". I felt compelled to share about it, and decided to give a devo on it basically the next day. I'm the kind of person where I won't get up and talk in front of a group unless I know exactly what I want to say, and this was no exception.
Around this time I was reading So Long Insecurity by Beth Moore on my own, and Out Live Your Life by Max Lucado for a Bible Study. These two books brought concepts to the table that I had not thought of before. I don't specifically remember which book said what, so I'm just going to generalize here:
Basically, in hard times God is teaching us. He is showing us and testing our faith. He is challenging us to become the people that he has set us out to be. Also with this, God uses these challenges in our lives to give us the skills and opportunities to minister to certain people. God teaches us languages of the hurting through our pain.
For instance, I was born physically disabled and then lost my hearing this past year, so I have a heart for the physically disabled. Then this summer God put a girl who also has feet problems in one of my cabins. I was able to talk to her and have empathy as she had just had foot surgery. Also, I have struggled a lot with my weight and self-image, and God led me to be more open about this and to have many conversations with staff and campers about this. It is also something that I have just been able to pull from in my everyday life. It is really cool to realize that I went through that to be able to minister to others.
Lately I have forgotten this. See, when I gave this devo I wasn't necessarily going through a difficulty at the time, but recently I have been having a hard time knowing what God is doing in my life. This goes with many things, including my future, school, friendships, etc. But this past Sunday as I was sitting in church, the pastor started talking about missions. He was talking about how his purpose in life to make sure that people know that they are redeemed by God. That no matter what, God is still with them and that God still wants to be glorified through whatever they are dealing with.
Then I realized that that was what I had given my devo on this summer and it struck me: no matter what I was going through, God is going to use it to his glorification. No matter how long it takes to get out of bed in the morning, or how much time I need to spend with God that day, he is going to ultimately be glorified in whatever I am going through.
And that just service just changed my mindset. I feel like I think way too much about myself and about petty things in my life. During this service I just examined my life and these past two summers, and how during them I was better able to compartmentalize everything (now, I'm not a boy, so it's still spaghetti, but it was a little better). Helped me to realize that no matter what is or was going on, God still wants to be glorified. Time to get my feet up and continue the work in me that he has been doing the past several months.
Looking back on this past year, I am a completely different person than I was 7 months ago when I left Baylor and went to Cho-Yeh for the second year. I will write a more detailed post on this later.
But basically, God works through our hardships for the better and I am so excited to see how he is going to bring glorification to himself through me and through these experiences.
"God seeks to redeem everything about us. God's great reversal. God takes the bad and changes it to his good," Dr. Albert Reyes (the pastor on sunday... I take sermon notes).
"The redeemed life is not without pain and suffering, but God wants us to take that redemption to others sometimes in our lives," Dr. Albert Reyes
"In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory." -- Ephesians 3:12-13
"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."-- 2 Corinthians 12: 8-10
"... but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."-- Romans 5: 3-5
