It's been awhile...

4.01.2010

Looking back over the past year, I can see how God has taught me and brought me through so much. It's crazy and insane to even consider how much I (or rather God) has done, what I've experienced, the joy and pain I've gone through, but I know that it has happened, and that by God's grace, I've come through, and I am a stronger Christian and a better follower of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The past year has been a roller coaster, in more ways than just one or two.
Just a few more days than a year ago,  I went through a pretty bad breakup. I spent a few months bouncing around, getting into some stuff that I shouldn't have, creating a lot of emotional ties that would come back to bite me later. After a few months, I though I was over it. I wasn't, but I spent the rest of the summer and early fall proving to myself and everyone else that I was okay - pretty much by hanging out and having a blast with my friends all the time.

God used the Singles WIT Conference in September to begin the process of breaking the walls and facades of who I was pretending to be, and stripping away the habits and attitudes that I had taken on. I'd become a very emotionally driven, dependent, proud, selfish, rebellious, love-hungry person. I was trying to fulfill these things through other people - mainly girls - and God was using different things to teach me what I was, first, truly looking for, and second, how to find it.

At the WIT Conference, God started to break me. There was a lot of bitterness that I had stored up, and He took it away during those four days. I finally finished and submitted my application for Verity, and just 3 weeks later, I started orientation. I was intending to be a distance student - now, I have a hard time imagining what it would be like at home. God told me that I needed to be on campus, so my parents decided that I would be on campus. We are just trusting God for the money as it comes, and it's awesome. We have nothing for next year, but He has provided for this year and I am confident that He will continue to do so for wherever he wants me.

During the past two semesters at school, I have learned more from God than I have actual school or "head knowledge" - I really don't think that is a bad thing. I've had some big lessons to learn, and I've been grateful for the people that God has put in my life right now to teach me those things. On a little bit of a side note, I think that God is giving me a small break, to study some things in Scripture that I've wanted to study for awhile, but that I haven't had time to do.

An overarching theme of the whole last year is God's grace and justice. It has been really cool to see how God doesn't let me get away with anything, but He also gives me the grace to learn from my mistakes and to change my heart.

God is awesome.