God is an Onion.

Every night I read a chapter in my bible and try to learn from it as much as possible. Tonight, in one of the most short and unlikely of passages, God taught me an important lesson that I think we as Christians kind of adopted without necessarily backing it up with scripture. Tucked away in a segment of Mark 8 God taught me that he's actually an onion. 

I know what you're thinking: what lesson have we as Christians adopted that teaches us God is an onion? Well I'll obviously explain, but first thumb through your bible to Mark 8:22 and read to verse 26 (You all can do this, it's 5 verses). Basically Jesus spits in a blind dude's eyeballs (ew, Jesus) and asks him to describe what he sees. The blind man tells Jesus that he thinks he sees people, except they kinda look like giant trees to him. Now obviously the goal of Jesus' whole little miracle he's working on here is to get the blind man to not be blind. So Jesus rubs his hands around on this guy's eyes some more and all of the sudden the man can see "distinctly", as my bible reads. 

The first thing that came to my mind when I got through this section was times of season. In my own life this looks like my first semester of college last year. In others lives this could look like a loss of a job or financial trouble or any of the other thousands of seasons we can walk through in this life. God starts us on a journey and we get to a point where we think He should be done working his magic in our lives so we open up our eyes to look around and everything around us is all wrong.  How many people have given up on faith and God all together because of this premature peek at life and a hurried evaluation of God himself. We need only to have the faith of the blind man. To close our eyes yet again and allow the hand of God to touch us in our most vulnerable of places so that when God is ready for us to open our eyes we can see distinctly. 

So God is an onion. He's a process. There is no one-step acne treatment in God's eyes. You start at "Go" and you peel back layer after layer until God is done with his handiwork, not when we decide that we're done. Let's pray for the strength to be vulnerable to God and the faith to keep closing our eyes. 

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 :)

For Better or For Worse

In the past 6 months, my world has been spun out of control. Almost everything that could go wrong has, whether it be with me or my family. It has been tough and there have been numerous times when that little booger called doubt started creeping up on me. Dealing with hard times and still praising God the whole way through is easily one of a human's biggest weaknesses. We believe in a loving God who only wants the best for us and is guiding our every footstep at all times. However, it is SO hard to keep on believing this when you are personally walking through a living hell. What if I told you that even in the worst of times, when we are in the middle of one of our biggest storms, he's still that same God that I described above.

Society sucks. Human nature sucks. This world SUCKS. I mean it really is baaaad. Our society tells us to do what makes us happy, while our human nature tells us that sin is what makes us happy, while this world (which is controlled by Satan; 2 corin 4:4) tries to throw everything it has at us to make sure that we do give into this temptation. You wanna be gay? Be gay. It's okay, it makes you happy, anyone who says its not okay is a bigot and not truly a Christian. You wanna get drunk? Do it. You're having a fun time and anyone who says its not okay is judgmental.  You wanna have pre-marital sex? It feels good, so do it. Anyone who says its not okay doesnt understand what forgiveness is. You dont want to believe in Jesus? Okay, that's fine. You're a good person so you'll go to heaven anyway. Anyone who says differently has the wrong idea of God. These are all things that our society, our nature, our world tell us and they're all WRONG. These are just a few examples of the lies Satan tells us and the sad part about it is these days most people take these as the truth and they falsely use bible verses to justify them. I included this little section to make a point. What our nature tells us is love and is good and is right usually is not anywhere near correct. Just because you're going through hard times doesnt mean that God isn't on your side anymore. Just because it's gotten rough doesnt mean you can abandon ship and turn to one of the lies mentioned above for an escape. That is NOT who God is. 

So who is God? Lamentations 3: 22-24 say this:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

    for his compassions never fail.

23 

They are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

24 

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;

    therefore I will wait for him.”

This verse tells us that God loves us SO much that we are given second chances over and over again, every single day. It tells us his love and his kindness NEVER fail, meaning that he is always good no matter what the circumstance is. It tells us that these kindnesses and this love is new every morning and he will always provide for us every day. It tells us he is faithful to do this, meaning he will never fail to treat us to these kindnesses and this love. And it gives us as example of how to act at all times, saying no matter what happens in life, God is more than enough for me and his timing is worth waiting on. 

So your family/friends die. You lose your job. You flunk out of school. You are terminally ill. You are homeless. You are addicted to drugs or sex or a sin. You are in jail. You are in thousands of dollars worth of debt. You life is seriously screwed up. 

What now? Are you going to give up on God? Are you going to believe the lies that Satan will try and is trying right at this very second to feed you? Are you going to turn to one of those sins mentioned above to try and escape or to rebel and accept this new false idea of the "hippie God", the God who is okay with whatever you want to do as long as it makes you happy? Or are you going to take God's word for what it is and start believe that all things work together for your good. Are you willing to stand up in the middle of the turmoil and the mess and worship the creator? Are you willing to dig deep into the word of God and seek what is truthful and develop a relationship with him and accept jesus christ as your lord and savior?

Or are you going to sit on your butt, cry, complain, and feel sorry for yourself? 

God is good all the time. All the time God is good. Even in death, he is good. Even in loss, he is there. Are you willing to find him?