If You Ain't Talkin' Money, I Don't Wanna Talk

Excuse the silly title. It has next to nothing to do with this blog post, but it got your attention :)

It really bugs me when someone asks me a question or when I'm telling someone a story and they do not give me their undivided attention. I pay everyone I talk to with that respect and not receiving it in return is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves. If you don't feel like I'm important enough for you to stop talking for a whole minute while I get a chance to speak, we most likely will never be friends. Letting someone talk while you just focus on their words is one of the greatest kindnesses you can pay a person.

I have a friend that will make you feel like 100 bucks just simply because he listens to what you're saying, looks you in the eye when you're talking, and asks you questions. We aren't really close at all, but I feel like he has invested in my life after talking about the simplest of things simply because he pays everyone he talks to with the kindness of listening to their words. It's really important to me. Nothing ruins a moment like when you're telling someone a story and they turn to someone else and start talking or interrupt you to tell their own story or with just a random thought. I'm telling you, nothing in this world makes me feel more worth it than when people listen to me, even if it's a 30 second conversation. It's important.

It's also important for us Christians. We can't expect someone to allow us to invest in their lives if we don't hear them out. There is no other way to make someone feel worthy for the love of Christ than just looking at them when they're talking and not interrupting. If we as Christians paid this simple decency to someone we are trying to witness to, how much more likely are they to come to church with us? How much more willing will they be to listen to us tell the Gospel if we have already taken the liberty to listen to them first?

There is a very loving bible-thumper that frequently visits my college campus to bring the great news of hell to all the open-minded college students walking to class. (Please tell me you picked up on all my sarcasm- He's a crazy, mean man and college students are, contrary to popular belief, some of the least open-minded people out there). This man stands on a concrete pillar, screams at students, and then allows students to come talk to him. Basically what this means is he allows them to bicker with him. He lets them ask him a question, cuts them off before they're done to put in his lengthy response, and when it's their turn to respond again,  he does the exact same thing. You can imagine how effective his visits are. Students don't feel heard or wanted, and all this man accomplishes doing is turning people who may have been won over for Christ away because now they associate all Christians with this crazy man who does not give two flips about what they have to say.

This is not who we are. Jesus was a teacher, but he also was very much a listener. He promises to be a shoulder to cry on, a shelter. You can't cry on someone's shoulder who isn't willing to listen to your sob story. Jesus listens. God listens. We were made to listen twice as much as we are talking. There is nothing that will make a person feel more worthy, loved, important. It's an easy thing to do to show the love of Christ. And it's just a human decency.

So try to have an intentional conversation with someone today. Look them in the eye, ask questions. This conversation needs not to last over 2 minutes unless you want it to, but I promise it will be the highlight of someone's day.

Though the Earth Trembles, God

Tonight, as I prepare for bed, I picked up a journal that I worked on all summer before college. The wonderful Mrs. Leslie Hudson, also known as my former Sunday School teacher, had challenged us to read the book of Psalms in 30 days, make categories in a notebook that would relate to our lives (happy, sad, fear, ect.), and then categorize the Psalms. I like to think of it as my emergency God book. Tonight I needed some emergency God. I have been suffering from awful sleep insomnia ever since I've started college. You all know this if you paid any attention to my long rant that I posted at 2 am (not the best of ideas I've had, I admit). It's the end of the semester, I have an exam at 8 in the morning, and I just want rest. So I flipped to my little category labeled "fear". Honestly, I don't know why I chose fear because fear has absolutely no correlation with sleep but I did, I turned to fear. And here are the first 2 passages that I read.

Psalm 46: "Therefore we will not be afraid. Though the earth trembles and the mountains topple into the depths of the sea...."

Psalm 62: "Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from Him."

I didn't need to open my bible and flip to Psalm 46 to see what the rest of that sentence was. I had written it exactly like it is shown above in my journal because I knew that on nights like this that would be all I needed. I don't need to know the ending. I need to know that I will not be afraid no matter what comes my way. No matter if the mountains in my life are toppling over or even if in real life the actual earth began to shake and the mountains literally did fall over, I will not fear. My God is bigger than that. He's bigger than my insomnia. He's bigger than my exams. He's bigger than the degree I will earn, all the success I will ever have in my life, any burden I will ever bear or pain I will ever feel. He's bigger than anything in my life. He always will be. That's comforting.

Psalm 62 was the cherry on top. Rest easy because I'm exhausted? Rest easy because I've studied until I've driven myself crazy? No. Rest easy simply because my hope comes from Him. I don't need another explanation or another reason. I just need God, who is always true and is always right and always comes out on top. My soul is in the hands of the maker of the stars. I will rest easy.

Though the mountains fall into the seas and the earth shakes. Though the skies turn into fire, and the waters rise to our necks. Though my body is exhausted physically and my brain even more far-gone than that, I will rest easy. My God wins.

It's the Fries Talking

Today served as a fairly large milestone in my life to me on a personal/spiritual level. It was the last day of classes of my first semester of college. Big deal, I got 7 more heading my way before I can throw a real party. But really, big deal. I know this is fairly a common thing these days, but to me its extraordinary. As many of you know, the path I am on right now is not one that I chose but one that God chose. I wouldn't be at the school I'm at or pursuing what I'm majoring in if God hadn't intervened. Sometimes, while I'm sitting in my room studying for hours, I regret this decision. Not because I don't absolutely love what I'm studying, but because I see people with the major I intended to pursue hanging out with friends and attending lots of school events. They "cram all night" (they don't) for a test in one of their classes and the test barely compares in difficulty to a normal quiz I might take or a homework assignment I have. It's pretty crappy sometimes. But I remind myself that I'm not just here for me, I'm here for the Lord's work, which is a super weird thing to hear coming from someone not majoring in anything directly theological at a school that is about as secular as they come, but I am. I love studying what I am studying and pushing myself, and today I reached a milestone. A semester of saying yes to God's plan and to pushing through the adversity that I face literally every day (no one takes me seriously in my major because I'm a girl and I wear makeup) and totally trusting him when NOTHING has gone the way I thought it would. So, with that huge introduction, here's the actual meat of the blogpost. The REAL college. This is the list of lies about college I grew up hearing and the reality of these lies. So sit back, relax, and laugh at my life. It's totally cool, I'll be laughing with you.

***Disclaimer: None of these terrible awful things may actually happen to you. My dumb roommate actually lost weight and eats lots of pizza and has beautiful skin and sleeps 12 hours a day (Hate you Bailee). ***

1) You're Going to be SO Fit: This was the thought running through my head when I first toured the college I currently attend. LIE. This might be an easy task for certain majors (let's be real here), but engineering is not one of those. If you want good grades, you find time to work out in an empty study room once or twice a week, something I do quite often these days. If you don't really care about your grades, go to the gym daily. I know many people who do this and their grades are mediocre at best, but hey, that's their choice. I went through my last two years of high school working out daily and my whole life playing sports so this fact is still pretty hard for me to deal with, but we're getting there.

2) Our Food Accommodates EVERYONE: FALSE. College food is the definition of suck. Our cafeteria comes complete with tasteless food and a staff that is so comfortable with our students that they feel free to take on our mom's job of yelling at us. You then find yourself eating at the restaurants around campus a lot, which gets old quickly. Yes, I'm saying it, Chick-Fil-A ain't cutting it anymore. I actually had a breakdown in my dorm about 20 minutes ago because I don't remember the last meal I had where fries weren't served. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a mom who cooked really healthy, amazing food every night. So this one's for you mom, get to cooking.

3) You will Get the Best Sleep of Your Life: Oh yeah I've bought into this one for a while. However, I underestimated just how fried my brain would get. I now find myself so wound up with stress that insomnia and I have become best friends. The other night I actually found myself solving calculus problems in my head while trying to sleep. Many nights have I woken up dozens of times because my dreams were filled with the homework I had just worked on or how I could have solved that problem on my Chemistry quiz. I went through high school getting 8+ hours of sleep no problem. I could fall asleep just about anywhere. Now I can't even escape from school in my own sleep people. There should be a scholarship for that.

4) Acne is a Thing of the Past: Perhaps the most cruel lie of all. I've had a mild problem with acne since middle school, however over the course of my senior year my acne had almost completely disappeared. Now my face could be mistaken for a pepperoni pizza. I think the culmination of lack of exercise, shoving greasy food into my face, and the restless nights all piled onto of the crazy amount of stress that I have is the main cause here (I'm working on all the above, bear with me). Oh, and incase you're interested, this reason what why I had today's mental breakdown. It's all good though, I swore off french fries.

5) And all the rest: You will be so much poorer than you ever thought you would be, you will miss your friends from high school more and more every day, anytime you see an animal will be a big deal because colleges have issues with animals, (if you go to a state school) your professors won't give 2 craps about you and the parking will suck, you will pay out the whazoo for your education, everyone around you will suddenly start turning into liberals, your chances of becoming a stripper skyrocket.

Yeah, I think that about covers it all. Now, there are very many wonderful, great things about college. However, no one ever wants to complain about good things. I'm hoping I will discover more and more good things as time moves on, but you never know how God works. I could hate my life for 7 more semesters, but I'm here for Him. Bottom line is, I don't care how crappy college is, if that's where God wants me then that's where God wants me. I will work as hard as I possibly can to make it, but only for Him. That's where I draw strength from because I can NOT do this on my own. I'm not smart enough, I don't have enough determination, I would go insane. God is the ONLY reason I'm doing as well as I'm doing (contrary to the impression you may have just gotten). I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for him making it possible. He's piled on blessing after blessing for me to be here right now, complaining about these things. I'm not about to give up on Him. Truth is, I kinda love being an engineer. Can this college thing just happen in the comfort of my own home?

Thank you for reading my rant. I promise my life isn't the joke I just made it seem. I'm extremely happy and blessed :)