December 4, 2012

I want to be around people who want me around.

If you continue to act like you don’t want me around, and act like we aren’t friends, we won’t be. Simple as that. I feel like I am complaining a lot, but the same people who have been judgemental towards my actions last year are the same people pushing me away. 

I am naturally one of the most kind hearted people you will ever meet. I wear my heart on my sleeve and will do just about anything for someone I love. But once you treat me badly, that changes. I have seriously wanted to hit people more than once but just never say anything. I am so tired of just letting things happen without standing up for myself. 

December 2, 2012

We experience our lives in what I would call seasons, or as some say chapters. In the past couple years I’ve had a few different seasons, some I hate to see go, others are a relief to see gone. 

At this point, I’m at a season where I am absolutely bored with life. I don’t want to be where I am and I don’t feel like I have community. I need change. I WANT change badly. However, I feel stuck. 

Pray that the change I so desperately want God will grant.

November 11, 2012

I so seriously struggle with feeling left out. Sometimes it’s my imagination, sometimes its not. This weekend, it wasn’t. 

Sharptop was a great time to hang out with my high school friends, and I had so much fun watching them learn and have a blast in such a beautiful place. I heard more than once that they didn’t wanna leave. SO great. 

While I am fully aware camp is all about their experience, not mine, I can’t be with them every second. Nor is any leader expected to be with their kids constantly, that’s just impossible. You need a few minutes each day to yourself, and your friends.

During “leader” times when we had a few minutes with out kids, those were probably my least favorite part of the weekend. The people who I am supposed to be best friends with make me feel the worst. I always end up feeling like there is someone better they would rather be talking to.

I’ve had this feeling more than once in groups of Young Life leaders. From Quest, to last year, and still now. I’ve gotten closer with a couple people, but I still feel like my friend wouldn’t care if I were there or not. 

How can we love kids when we don’t love each other well? 

If that’s how it should be, maybe I’m not called for this. 

Part of why I partied so much last year was because those were the people who wanted to hang out with me. They included me and were my friends. When you act like I’m not even in the room, and don’t want me to hang out with you and make it obvious, why would I? Just a thought. 

October 18, 2012 • 1 note

God is seriously forcing me to rely on Him. I asked Him to make it impossible for me to rely on myself and He did. Without God’s provision, there is no way I will be able to go to school for more than a semester or two more. 

A part of me wants to sit down and cry. The worldly part of me wants to wallow in self-pity and then worry and work to fix things myself. But I won’t. I can’t. 

I am giving this to God. God can and will provide for me as He has planned for my life. I made my bad choices this past year with school and now I have to accept them. 

Fortunately, I don’t have to bear them myself. 

God is good. 

October 17, 2012

The Lord really let me rest in content today. I turned to Him more than once during my day, and I had the best day I’ve had in a while. 

October 17, 2012 • 690 notes • cswell
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

David Foster Wallace (via cswell)

Wowza this is good.

(via dannyholbert)

Words to live each day with. 

(via dannyholbert)

October 11, 2012 • 2 notes

Last night in Chattanooga was exactly what I needed. I am constantly amazed how well God knows my heart. Being with people I love so dearly remind me how great those friendships rooted in Christ really are. I had no second thought about jumping in the car to drive to Chattanooga to see friends I just met in June. But when it comes to going to visit my “best friend” for over a year, I make excuses. Why? Because my heart knows it isn’t fulfilling. A friendship not rooted in anything excepting partying and drinking is basically rooted in sin. Which is completely not what my God wants for me. And I yearn to follow Him. 

Having God fill me through those things was so good for me. It has made me realize a lot of things. I am the happiest I have been in weeks, right now. I am so thankful for the little things God does in my life. 

September 30, 2012

Being Honest With Myself.

I am the absolute worst at this. I can convince myself of just about anything if I try hard enough. 

I can convince myself that I am fine on my own; that I don’t need Jesus’ help. 

I can convince myself that something can be salvaged from the train wreck of a misguided relationship I spent so much time obsessing over. 

I can convince myself that I am happy living my life of myself.

I can convince myself of all these things and so many more. But, no matter how many times I convince myself, God always brings it full circle.

No matter what I seem to be going through, there is another day. I wake up each day and take forgranted God has given me another day to correct my mistakes. Continually making the same mistakes isn’t repentance, it’s ignorance. 

Mer. I have so many thoughts I can’t even pick my own brain right now. 

September 24, 2012

God created us with free will. He could have made us as puppets, doing whatever he wanted us to. In other terms, we could have been his prisoners, for lack of better term. BUT, God (knowing not all of us would choose to follow him) gave us free will anyway. Why?

Why would a God who is perfect, all-knowing, and so loving give his children free will? 

Because he wanted to romance us.

For example, would a young man pursuing a relationship with a girl want to force her love? Or would he want to be there for her, show her compassion and love, and earn her REAL, natural love? (Not to sound cliche, but really.) 

Let’s be honest, he would want the latter. He would WANT her to WANT him. Not be with him from force. 

Just like your future husband wants you to be his by choice, so does God.

God doesn’t force himself upon, he gives you a choice. The route you choose is completely up to you.

Nonetheless, God loves you amazingly, unconditionally, and unfailingly. Nothing you do can make him love you any less.

September 21, 2012

I have a lot of random thoughts in my head. Warning, they may not make sense. 

It’s so hard watching life pass on by. I remember coming to tech a little over two years ago, being so excited to begin a life of my own in Cookeville, TN. As I moved all my new things into my dorm room, I had literally NO IDEA what the next two years would hold for me. I remember moving in, meeting all the girls who lived on my hall, going through recruitment, going to Quest, and basically just getting really involved. I made so many sweet friends. Seeing people leave and transfer colleges makes my heart so sad. Life is changing, we are all growing up, and some times hard changes have to be made. Entertaining the idea myself of transferring, I can see why people do it, completely. Sometimes you have to. I guess it’s just the idea that the innocence and fun learning time of freshman year is over. 

Sophomore year was a whole new time as well. I still had so many friends I had met from different things on campus. I moved into my first apartment, thinking I was ready for that kind of independence. If I could do it over, I would literally RUN home to where I’m always taken care of and I have no bills to worry about, no groceries to buy, a clean room and a yard. Just for one last summer. But I chose to stay in Cookeville from the day I moved down here, I knew I wouldn’t go back home to live. And I didn’t. So here I was, not even 19 years old at the time, living in my first apartment, meeting new friends, older friends. I met a guy who I thought was absolutely perfect. Looking back at my tumblr posts from this time last year, it is ridiculous how fast that relationship went and how basically obsessed I was with him. He was a whole new world I had never experienced and that was so intriguing to me. My whole sophomore year revolved around him and I changed so many things to fit in with him. I was then encouraged to apply for a program called Discipleship Focus, which I was later accepted to. I left Cookeville this summer SO scared. I was afraid of what would happen this summer and what I would come back to in Cookeville. After having the best summer of my life in Pigeon Forge, I came back to Cookeville to realize I wasn’t in love with Cookeville. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place. But I didn’t love Cookeville like I had. So here I am, in what I guess is the beginning of my junior year at Tech. Continually making mistakes, hating to watch life pass by, but also knowing Jesus has got me, I’m loved and taken care of.