Reflecting...

I feel like I have changed so much this past year in college, yet I also feel as if this was the person I was all along. I guess by that I mean that it is not as if I'm a different person now, but that I have been tried, tested, and refined this past year as God continues to teach me and pull me always back to Him.

Having said that, I truly believe that this past school year, moving to Nashville, has been the hardest experience of my life thus far. Looking back to this time a year ago, I would never have found myself in this place. And the person I am now can hardly picture her former self. As I've reflected on the ups and downs of college, and shared a little bit of it with others, I can just see how God has worked through all of it. Since it has been a while since my last serious post on here, I figured I would just kinda use this blog to recap and reflect on this past year... what I've been through, what I've learned, how I've grown, and what I've discovered within myself that God must still change.

Sorry in advance...this will probibly be long.

I guess I should just start from the beginning of the semester. The experience of leaving the only place I have ever lived to come to a city where the longest anyone had known me was less than 3 years was the start of this humbling experience. I would call myself a pretty independent and confident person for the most part. This year has shown me that this is actually a relative quality. It's pretty easy to be confident and independent when you have grown up around the same people your whole life, and have been super involved and comfortable with those around you. Belmont has such an amazing assortment of people. Everyone is talented and driven. There is not one dull person! Suddenly I was thrown out of my comfort zone. Call it the little fish syndrome if you will, suddenly my confidence was at zero. Who was I compared to these incredible people? In comparison I was untalented, unintelligent, and irrelevant. What did I have to contribute to conversations? I missed having people around who had watched me grown up. People who new my life story and valued it.

I remember the first couple of weeks at school being an identity crisis for me. My independence was basically nonexistent. Unfortunately, most of this got dumped into my relationships. I came to school in a serious relationship that finally unraveled under the pressure. It was heartache that I'd never experienced. Not just because I loved this person, but because I believed in a plan for my life that just was not the Lord's plan.

I have had a very easy and blessed life. I am thankful for that, yet it has allowed me to make a lot of assumptions about my relationship with God. It is one thing to say that you want to follow His plan for your life when that plan is just what your hoping for. In reality, I've found God's plan to be nothing of what I can think up. Well after things feel apart, I still thought that I should be in this relationship. It wasn't until I finally acknowledged my confusion and frustration and just honest anger at God that I saw how wrong I was. One Sunday morning I sat at my desk just weeping to God. I just vented and ranted, accusing Him of so many things. As I sat there my screen saver kept flashing beautiful pictures with some of my favorite Bible verses written on them. Words such as Jeremiah 29:11 (For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope), or Proverbs 19:21 (Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand). Finally I just blurted out "No! I don't want it! I want my plan! I want this person, this future, this path..." And there it was. I wasn't pretending that I was committed to whatever God called me. If I was honest with myself, I saw that I didn't truly believe that God's plan was better.

From that point I learned some of the true costs of following Christ. Sometimes He asks a lot more than "being a good person". Sometimes he asks you to die. To take something that you learn to rely on, to take someone you think you can't live without and let it go. I learned just how badly that can hurt. I learned just how stubborn I can be. How blind. It honestly took days, weeks, maybe even months of despair for my eyes to be opened. Even in the midst of my pain and doubt, I had to preach to myself the promises of God until I could finally trust them again. In the midst of so much guilt, fear, feelings of betrayal and self-conscienceness, I poured through the Psalms telling them to myself day in and out.

Healing began with those words. Knowing that my mood swings and negative emotions were ok to feel. Having an example of the Psalmist's sorrows and cries helped me express my questions and struggles. God also blessed me with amazing girl friends who listened, entertained, and supported me. Even on the day that everything seemed to fall apart, I could see how God had been placing these girls in my life since summer orientation to help me through everything.

He also gave me such great healing and guidance through RUF. From the very first time I went to an event, I felt valued. My need for meaningful friendships was instantly met. When I talked with people it was obvious that they legitimately wanted to listen and know me. I felt instantly valued. Since then, I've had a chance to discover so much of who I am and what God has done. Here is a little bit of what it has taught me about myself:

I am quite a controlling person. I have often heard the phrase "if you want something done right do it yourself" and honestly it is a struggle for me to keep this phrase from running my life. My tendency is to think I can do things myself and spiritually this means that I forget that I really do need God. I've heard Kevin say that students are a lot worse then they think they are, but also that God's grace is a lot bigger then they think it is. This is me in a nut shell. Everything about this year has forced me to stop trying to keep things together on my own and acknowledge the reality of God's sovereignty and power. It helps me acknowledge that I really am broken and IT'S OK. I am a mess who is nothing without Jesus and that's the way it is supposed to be.

I've seen so much of the sin in my life. I feel like I've realized a lot of my selfishness. So many times I think that I have not taken the time to be there for the people around me. Every time I come home I see that I barely talk to people I went to high school with. There are a lot of reasons on both ends of why but I think a lot of it was that I just didn't make the effort to keep in touch. I think a lot of times I just do the convenience friend thing. While I would rather have just a few close friends that are like family, I know that I'm probibly a very hard person to deal with in that way. But it is what I really hope I can be to my friends. Somebody they know is there for them and cares. In reality I know I'm a really long way from that. Yet this realization has not condemned me to wallow, but rather inspired me to better love those around me. What once would have been a chore, is now something I find joy in.

Honestly, any ounce of humility that I have was forced upon me this past year. The things I went through senior year and at Belmont have showed me so many of my flaws. I have been really put in my place. It took a lot of pain to force me to see a lot of those things. I can be so stubborn sometimes that nothing can really get through except something that drastic and straight forward. I have a tendency to take something a just run with it. I am opinionated and arrogant. A lot of times the only method that works for snapping me out of it is just really blunt honesty. Somebody who is not afraid to stand up to me and say "hey! your wrong and I don't mind if you hate me for the day because you need to hear it".

Ok so that all was very scattered probibly. I'll just end by saying that through it all I have seen God's hand. From the place of despair came a confidence, thankfulness, and appreciation for joy that I have never felt before. I can truly say that all of it, the good and bad, was from God and I am thankful for both. The following hymn just for me embodies my freshman year:

I Asked The Lord
1. I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace
Might more of His salvation know
And seek more earnestly His face

2. Twas He who taught me thus to pray
And He I trust has answered prayer
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair

3. I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He'd answer my request
And by His love's constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest

4. Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part

5. Yea more with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Cast out my feelings, laid me low

6. Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
"Tis in this way" The Lord replied
"I answer prayer for grace and faith"

7. "These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me."


©2004 double v music (ASCAP).
Used by permission. All rights reserved.