His Plan, my heart and life :)

Hi everyone! This last week has been a semi big one for me. Mainly spent being sick which was a LOT of fun. Ha nooot. -_- Anyway, I’ve finally been able to get some things moving forward a little with my application process for the school that I’m hoping to go to this year! Got my passport photo already so now the next step with that is to get the actual passport which is going to cost boockoe bucks. Still waiting on some other things to come together but there are just some things that are no longer in my control so I’m going to work on doing better with just being more on top of things rather than just being like “I’ll just get it done whenevvs.” :P There was a Mission Conference at the church that I go to, this weekend actually…but with my cold I decided to just go the second night and it was totally worth it. I was a little intimidated by the idea of going alone since I’ve not really gone ANYWHERE alone since the shooting…and especially with all the fog and ice that were out, it was pretty dangerous but I’m so glad now that I finally went and did that. It was totally worth it…the worship group that was there was from a church that my sister loves to go to now and again, and was so great and powerful. There were a few things that I caught that I thought were inspiring: God has created each of us with unique gifts and passions which He wants us to give to Him so that he can use them to spread His love to the world through missions. It doesn’t mean that we have to go to a different country, but it should mean that we’re willing to step out of our comfort zones and take a chance and see how God wants to move THROUGH our lives. Another key thing I heard was that we need to live a life with no regrets, no retreats. We cant let things of this world get us convinced that God wouldn’t want to use us…whether it’s our fears, lack of money, lack of experience…whatever it may be…because God can and will make a way for the things that he wants to happen. No one is perfect so we don’t have to wait to have our lives all together before God will be willing to use us…he wants us just where we are. I mean when you think about it, it’s better that way if God uses us where we are instead of waiting for us to get together first…because what person would want to hear about God’s love when that person already seems to have it together? They wouldn’t really be able to relate to you too well…instead, they can relate with someone who is imperfect just like them. God doesn’t call the qualified, he calls the willing. Look at the people in the Bible…they’re only heroes because they were willing. If you read about the different characters and the way that their stories started out…they weren’t that amazing. It took God shaping their lives, and them being obedient to God’s call on their lives…for God to really transform them. And when God transformed them, it transformed so many other people as well. The main keynote speaker had a lot of good points too: God has asked us to carry our “cross” daily for Him. I don’t think we often really think about the implications of a statement like that. When you think about people who were carrying a cross…you realize that those people didn’t have any future plans. That potential life, was over and their lives were in the hands of the people who were over them. Their lives WERE about the cross they carried. There was nothing else. So, that was something that really got me to think cause we think “Oh carrying my cross means that I just sacrifice what I want yada yada.” When in reality it means that you surrender your life to God. You don’t have to live a life that you hate in order for it to honor God..you just have to make sure that the person you’re serving TRULY is God rather than yourself. When you decide to follow God, you’re going to have to really think it through first. There are going to be costs along the way;some greater than others…but still a cost just the same. You’re either following yourself or you’re following God. And when it comes to your priorities, God cant be on the top of the list in your life…he needs to BE the list. When you think about the way a wife loves her husband…she doesn’t want to just be a number one  option. Think about it…number one implies that there might be a number 2 option etc. She doesn’t want to be her husband’s number one…she wants to be HIS ONLY. And God feels the same way about us…he doesn’t want to be number one on the list,..he wants to BE the list so he can really show us how HE wants our lives to be. The other thing that relates to the statement above about carrying our cross---we cant be like “Oh I definitely am interested and I understand what God is saying…but let me finish (fill in the blank) first. After I live my dreams out THEN I’ll go serve God.” You have to give God your dreams and trust that He’ll replace them with better ones…ones that are going to fulfill the purpose he has for you in the first place. So many people say “I’m open to missions. I’m thinking and praying about missions. I’m really considering missions.” That’s basically like a spouse saying to you “Oh I’m open to being faithful to you. I’m thinking and praying about being faithful to you.” The fact is…you’re either doing it or you’re not. God isn’t the copilot of your life. He is either running it, or He’s not really in it. So in closing with the message, the speaker was asking us to think about whether or not we are really truly FOLLOWING Christ, or if we’re just following ourselves. It really got me thinking on so many different levels in my life and I’m happy to say that the school I’ve applied to…completely goes in these lines but I don’t want to just stop there. I’ve decided that if I don’t get accepted (and there’s a good chance that it could go either way especially since I wouldn’t have much time to get all the money together) I’m going to apply for other missions related opportunities. See, you have to really step out. Take that thing that makes you come alive and give it to God. Ask Him to change your dreams if they’re not what he has for you, and that if they ARE what he has…that he will show you how He wants you to use them for his kingdom. Don’t base it on the feelings like “Oh I just don’t FEEL like that’s what God wants…” base it on truth. Usually God will help you figure that out, and I honestly cant tell you how cause for different people God has different ways of getting his message out. For example, with me I really believe that God gives me what I call a ‘gut” feeling about something. Which means that its not my head (my thoughts) and its not my heart (my emotions). So I’m basing it (my gut) on something deeper than myself. Something that totally puts the emotions and thoughts aside and goes “K God, this doesn’t make much sense but I trust you.” And the crazy thing about it is, every single time I get one of those “gut” feelings…whatever the thing is that I believe will happen etc, always ALWAYS takes place. So anyway, my point is that only God knows what he has for you, but you might have to ask him before he’ll show you. You have to be open to him telling you things that you might on first thought just push aside. Don’t try to get 2^nd or 3^rd opinions…just go with it, and then if it’s not what God has, he will direct you somewhere else…but don’t just stay afraid and not move forward. You will find that when you’re available for God, he’s going to rock your world. I can tell you right now that whether or not I get accepted to this school, I’m just excited about the journey and what God is doing in my life. I’m excited about how I’m being stretched and it’s really honestly something that’s way better than I would’ve ever dreamed, and its ok if I don’t get accepted cause I know God has me in his hand. :) 

Freedom

I actually found another one, which I thought was really amazing:

Freedom

Do you fight for something you don’t believe in? do you dream of something you don’t care about? Do you give up on a dream that means so much to you even when things are hard? Not if you’re a true fighter. Not when you have so much to hope for and an amazing life to live.

You make the changes you want and need to change to try to make your dreams come true. You fight to the end all the while knowing that it could end bad. But if you really believe, you’ll trust God and you’ll take that risk. When people tell you to give up, you listen to the voice you hear in your heart and press onward even though you have no idea how it will end.

I think the times that people’s hearts are softened and changed, are when they hear a story that they can relate to. One where someone faced some of the same struggles they do, and yet no matter how hard things got, they never gave up. And it usually also includes a heart change. It brings tears to your eyes when you see a person who once had a hard heart and were going no where in their lives, and made a decision to turn things around for the better and their changes made not only things go better in their own personal life, but also in the lives of everyone who knew what was going on in the life of that person.

You can’t be free if you just sit there and take the things that come your way. If you want to truly be free, you’re really going to have to fight. You can’t earn your freedom if you never try. You don’t fail when you fall, you fail when you don’t try. This is a story of a girl who got tired of living her life the way she had always lived it. A girl who wanted so desperately to be free, and fought with all she had.

Little Dreamer

From Back in the day

This is the 2nd post... :D

Emotional Suicide (age 16)

Could it be that there is a form of emotional suicide? Like you know that you aren’t going to ever kill yourself but you do it emotionally. It seriously is just a random thought that came to mind just now, but I think that there might be such a thing. We don’t let ourselves cry over things that we should. We tell ourselves we’re fine and don’t let anyone help us. We push people and God away when we’re going through hard times. We refuse to go through hard times. I mean part of it might just be that we are living in a time where everything is easy and everything is given to us right away and we almost never have to work at anything so when it comes up that we do have to work for something, we go crazy and we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We don’t pray, we stay away from people unless we have to be around them, and then we just snap at them or are really distant with them so they will never know that anything is wrong. We get cut and instead of going and seeing a doctor, and instead of letting people call 911 for us, we just lay there in our mess, and don’t try to do anything about it. we refuse to see that things could work out, could get better, and something that starts out as a little problem gets larger till you really need all the help you can get to be able to survive again. Thing is when you finally go in and the doctors help you, you might need more help later on, maybe even therapy, but you recover and soon it becomes only a memory and it is something that helps you through the other bad times in your life because you know that there was a reason God didn’t let you die, so there must be a purpose for your life. Often times though, it seems like we refuse to believe that God can do that kind of thing, or that he would even care to. Yeah, I’m almost sure that not every time you get help, you notice that you’re getting better, but there will finally be a day when you’re not the same beaten up person you used to be. You realize that it’s time to look up before you run into something. You’re letting yourself die when you let things hold you down and keep you from living. Whether it be the past, fears, pain, it doesn’t matter. You might think that you can never change, but I’ve seen addicts get over their addictions. I’ve known people who were literally just about to kill themselves and now they are telling everyone they .know about how real God is and what he did for them. Don’t tell me there is no God, and don’t tell me you’re not good enough. If God thought that you weren’t good enough, Jesus would never have died, ok? You’ve just got to let go of the things that are holding you down, and holding you back from living. Living the now but my mind and heart are stuck in the past, I’ve been stuck for way too long wouldn’t you say.

An Old Gem

So I actually have 2 entries that I wanted to share with you all...they're both actually from when I was in high school and since I've been going through different documents that I've written over the years...I wanted to post 2 of my favorites. The first one I wrote in my senior year and then the 2nd one was from when I was 16. I've not edited these, so just keep that in mind...as I wasn't very grammatically correct and tended to have a lot of run-on sentences. :) It was the heart that I had at that age that I loved...and I wanted to share the rawness of it all so you could grasp a little more of how I came to be who I am now. I'll try to find more if I can cause I know I saved several "bulletins" (remember Myspace?)..so I hope you enjoy these and I'll post whatever other findings I come across. Blessings! :)

Failure--From the book The Search For Significance, by Robert S. McGee 

It’s crazy all the things that I have been learning in just a short amount of time. I knew that there were different things that were going wrong in my life but it took a while to pinpoint what they actually were so that I could work on them. One thing that is kind of a review for me, is that we are the way we are because of the way we think about ourselves. I know that I’m not the only one who feels the way I do, but I guess it was comforting to know that other people think in their minds “nobody will ever love me. If people really knew me they wouldn’t like me. I’ve been a failure all my life, and I guess I always will be. Not even God really cares about me”. Another thing I’ve heard before that I’ve had a hard time understanding, is that God really does want to be close to us. He actually WANTS to know when we’re mad at him, messed up by mistakes we made or people around us made, and he even wants to know when we just don’t care anymore. I guess when I think about it, I know that even if I don’t tell God that I don’t care, he already knows that. Statements like: all sins past, present, and future, are forgiven. You’re a child of God, you have eternal life, you’re NOT under Satan’s power, Christ is in you, you’re new, you’re made right with God, you have a relationship with him, and God completely accepts you were things I had heard about before but they didn’t really have a meaning to me till I thought about each statement and personalized the meanings. We ignore evidence and only believe what our human minds can actually understand.

It probably sounds crazy that I think I just discovered this, but I don’t think I really realized that when we base our worth on our ability to perform or on the opinions of others, we leave ourselves feeling full of fear, insecurity, and anger. With my small group, we’re going through the different fears that are common to tons of people. The way we act is based off of what we believe, so I guess the devil focuses mainly on our beliefs cause he knows that if he changes our beliefs, we’ll act differently and maybe eventually get messed up. One fear that he uses to get us off tract is the fear of failure. I actually laughed when I thought about how much better my life could be if I got over the fear of failure. You either think success will make you happy, or you just don’t want to be a loser. Fact is, some failure is going to be inevitable even for the greatest people on earth. Michael Jordan said “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that…is why I succeed”. When you base your self-worth on how perfectly you perform, you’re just setting yourself up for continual frustration. It guarantees that you will spend most of your time living in fear of being a failure, and the rest of your time feeling like a loser. There are several “symptoms” people will have if they have the fear of failure. The first one is Perfectionism- you freak out about failing, maybe even over the little things. Instead of looking at all the ways that you’ve succeeded before, you tend to look at the one thing that went wrong and beat yourself up for it. Second one, is Avoidance of Risks- risk-avoiders are unwilling to do anything they might not succeed at. They sometimes miss out on fun, activities, and close friendships and relationships because the risk of failure is too great. Third one, is Anger and Resentment- these are the people who regard that correction or people trying to help them with something is a personal attack instead of just help. Fourth one is Chemical addiction-some people try to ease the sting of failure by taking drugs or drinking. When you finally come out of it, you’re worse than before. The fifth one is Dishonesty-basically just happens with people who are bent on succeeding in school to an extreme degree, so they plagiarize for school papers, or they exaggerate truths to make themselves look better than they really are so people won’t know that they actually failed. Sixth one is Pride- which in this case with the fear of failure, is really a disguise of self-confidence, which is a mask to hide the fear of failure. Seventh, is Anxiety and Fear-you feel like so much revolves on how well you do, and you’re certain you’ll screw up. It normally occurs when there is the strong possibility of failure. The greater the risk, the stronger the anxiety and fear grip our hearts and control decisions. And the last one is Depression- repeated failure leads us to convince ourselves that we’re worthless, and you either become lethargic and passive, or angry at the world. With God’s death, our failures, mistakes- everything past, present, and future, were forgiven and forgotten. God doesn’t hold those things against you, and neither should you. Be and do the best you can, but don’t think less of yourself when you fail. Your actions have nothing to do with God’s love for you, he’ll never love you less, and he loves you so much that nothing you could do will make him love you more, cause it’s already the largest amount of love he has. So let your failures, fears, mistakes, everything go, don’t dwell on them. Don’t let yourself fear failure, cause that fear will only hold you back. Only when we let go of fear, do we really begin to live, and love.

A New Beginning, New Promises

Hi everyone! God has been doing some crazy amazing things in my life that I would like to share with you! As the year of 2012 was coming to an end, I had the gift of being able to reminisce over the things that God has taught me throughout the year. The start of the year was a really difficult one for me, because it was around the time that my youth pastor, and my cousin were moving as well as my mentor having to leave. That same month, someone very special to me also had to leave (for school) and since he and I hadn't seen each other in a year and had tried to get together...having all of our get togethers fall through...it was really difficult. I also was struggling with trying to figure out if I was supposed to get closure or find a beginning with someone from my past. My best friend was able to discuss things with me and I got some much needed answers. I decided I was going to play things by ear for about a week to about 3 months, and the funny thing was that as I was praying about it...I didnt even need to wait a day because the very next day I found my answer in something that took place. I took some really difficult steps after that in deciding it was time to move on. I had all the answers I needed, and God so graciously gave me the closure I needed with that one thing from the past that I needed so desperately to move forward from. In all honesty, it killed the first month but then again it wasn't near as hard as I was anticipating because God showed me that the things that he had in store were so much better than I had ever had in the past. I lost a nephew, a friend, and even our bunny around Easter but God helped me grow from those different losses as well. Summer was a time where I learned to face my fears. It was a time when I decided that even though I got closure from a past relationship, that being in contact was poisoning my life and keeping my life on pause. So I took a break for several months from being in contact with that person, and had one of the best summers of my life! It was interesting that with each time I decided to move on from that person in the past...no matter what that involved whether it was deleting all the photos and music I had that either were of us, or reminded me of us, or if it simply meant another day that I didnt talk to him...God always had something better for me to help me see I was doing the right thing. Even better, was that each time I moved further from that person of the past, I was able to move closer to someone that means more to me than my ex ever did. :) I had an amazing 21st...and even though it was a great month..I would have to say that maybe August was my favorite. The reason for that was getting to see my very special man. :) I had thought that he was coming home from being overseas (he actually got to go to the OLYMPICS..can you say JEALOUS! lol) in November and it was only going to be a month. That had me worried because I know how busy that month is for him and his family. But it turned out, that he was able to come home by surprise in August. It was actually a sad reason for him coming home so soon since he was losing a best friend due to a sickness...but I was thankful that he and I were able to see each other cause I was able to attempt to put a smile on his handsome face. I really feel like he and I came a lot closer through the time that he was home, and with each kiss and each cuddle we got to share...I felt like I was home. :) Fall was amazing, I got to see him then as well and was asked to be a bridesmaid for my cousins wedding!! Helping her come up with dance moves for a performance we ladies are going to do!! Also get to help with the music and some decorations! I loved getting to see her and my man! Winter was difficult...my mom and I nearly lost our lives at the Clackamas shooting and I've not set foot in a mall since..and to be honest its not completely because of that, but it does have a little to do with it since every hangout I've had since, I've tried to steer away from any mall. I've grown stronger from it though, and its taught me more the value of life as well as the importance on living a life dedicated to Christ since we dont know when the end will be when He will come back. I did get to see my best friend a few days after the shooting...and especially since it had been 2 years..it was a much needed gift to see her. :D Christmas and New Years were peaceful and yet busy all at once with my sister home from college. Now its a new year, and I know that a lot of you have seen either on facebook or other places that although I'm really scared, I also feel peace and excitement for what's in store! I think one reason that I feel a little scared is because I feel almost certain that there are going to be a lot of big things that take place this year. I'm hoping that the world will still be around (I dont say that because I'm worried about it ending, I'm saying that because I worry a little that God might come back and I know that so many with myself included aren't ready yet), and if it is...there will be a lot of big answers coming my way. I get to start this year with a fresh start...and that's something I forgot to mention, that at the end of the year another thing I was able to do was end things and make peace with a relationship from my past (the same one I mentioned earlier). I am the happiest I've ever been and I feel more myself than I remember feeling even in the beginning of that relationship. I'm learning to love again in a deeper way than the first time...and I honestly think that might be one reason why God lets us make relationship mistakes and go through such heart ache. Some times you cant love as deeply if you've never known what its been like to lose someone. I cant say those words for this man in my life just yet only because I know its not quite time yet...but I believe that those words are a reality for me with him. I care for him more deeply then even my most serious relationship. Truly, nothing compares.  This year has so many beautiful promises and for the first time I'm actually stepping out and going for some dreams that I have! I'm dreaming bigger, loving deeper, and living infinitely MORE than I ever have. This year so far, my man and I got to have a BIG talk that was much needed and although there are still so many obstacles that I'm really scared about, I know that I can trust God and that he has me. I really feel like this will all work out and its one of the best feelings in the world to watch this story unfold. Another thing is that I get to see God create me to be the woman that he wants me to be and I love nothing more than to finally start becoming more that girl that he already is crazy about. I become more my true self when I come closer to God and it's because he was the one that created my personality and my character. Hence, why the farther you are from God, the less your true self you will feel. I'm about to apply for a college that I've been praying about for the last year, I'm about to embark on the next phase of this journey with my special man...and I'm about to discover what God has for me right around the corner. Sometimes the best things, are the things that we cant foresee, because if we knew what was to come..we'd never grow along the way. Sometimes the things we have to wait for, are the best things in our life because God has to make everything about us..about our lives...just so, for it all to come together which makes it more of a miracle when it comes to a reality. You might've heard it said: When God answers YES, He gives you the things you want. When He answers NO, he gives you something better. But when He answers WAIT, He gives you the very best. I'm hoping that's the case here. I'm going to try to blog more often, but if you're a friend on Facebook...keep looking for my "thought of the day" posts that I put up, and every now and then on my Twitter an inspiration. Sometimes on my Google page, I post a "something to think about". Stay in touch, and be blessed! I love you all and hope that this encouraged you somehow! :)