The Lord's Will

If it's the Lord's will, then how can it be so hard to accept? Why does it hurt so much? I've been asked that question by a couple of friends, and each time I didn't know how to respond, mainly because I had never had those feelings before. But now, I know exactly how they were feeling and how hard it was for them because I'm going through the exact same thing. It's not an easy thing to go through, by any means.

It's been almost two weeks now since I first asked those questions, and it hasn't gotten any easier. I still don't know the answer to those questions. I was so happy with the way things were going, so sure that it was the right thing, then, suddenly, I was confronted with the fact that it wasn't God's will. I couldn't believe it. Not God's will? I had been so sure it had to be God's will; after all, I was happy and content with the way things were going. I didn't understand how it could possibly be any thing other than God's will.

I was devastated. I cried. I cried a lot. However, that didn't help. The only thing crying did was remind me even more of the pain I was going through and of what I had lost. I couldn't figure it out. If it was God's will, then why did it hurt so bad? Why was my heart so heavy? Why did my heart heart feel like it had shattered into a thousand pieces?

The one thing that did help was turning to God for answers. I sought comfort from the one place i knew I could find it, God's Word. I opened my Bible first of all to my life verse, Isaiah 40:31. "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." That verse brought me so much comfort, because i realized that if I looked to the Lord and trusted Him, then in due time, He would give me the strength to go on.

The next verse that I saw was right across the page. I had read it before, but never had it spoken to me like it did when my heart was so troubled. "Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."

And so it continues, with the Lord leading me to verse after verse after verse. Every verse that I read was exactly what I needed at that time. Even verses that I had read before and had memorized as a little girl held new meaning for me.

Although that period of time was, and still is hard, it helps to know that I have a wonderful God right there with me. He will always be by my side. It reminds me of a well-known poem, Footprints in the Sand, by Mary Stevenson. The last few stanzas of the poem are: "'Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me.' He whispered, 'My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.'"

That poem has never meant more to me than it has in these past couple of weeks, because I know that the Lord is carrying me through this trial. Even though I still don't understand why, or how it can hurt so much even thought it's His will, He knows. Although I still cry, and although it still hurts and it will hurt for awhile, I know that God is right beside me, ready to help me whenever I ask.

Poem

I found this poem today on http://www.ylcf.org when I really needed something to comfort me. I won't go into details, but I was recently hurt very deeply by someone who was a very dear friend of mine. When I read this poem, it seemed like the author knew exactly what I was going through, and God used this poem to comfort me.

Why This Road?
By Jaclynn Robinson

I lay it all down on the altar, Lord,
Every piece of this broken dream.
I can not understand Your plan for me.
I stumble to ask You, why this road?

When so much just seemed to fit perfectly,
My heart it dared to hope and to dream.
Now only to be filled with an aching
In the confusion of why this road.

Though I may fight and struggle through all this,
The answers to the questions do not come.
I know I must be content without them,
Enough to know You know why this road.

To accept Your will, to keep on trusting--
I must, but hard is the task at hand.
When tears blur my vision to what You’ve planned,
I choose to follow You down this road.

The strength for the season comes only from You.
From the same well, joy for the journey.
As You lead, I’m slowly but surely learning
To rejoice in spite of why this road.

The End is In Sight!!

Well, the semester's almost over. I have six finals left, and then I will be done with my freshman year at Ambassador Baptist College. It's kind of bittersweet. I'm excited to be going back home for the summer, but I am definitely going to miss all of my friends. Thank goodness for cell phones, email, facebook, and skype. All of my friends have at least one of those, so I will be able to keep in touch with them during the summer.

The school year has absolutely flown by! It's hard to believe that it was almost nine months ago when I first arrived. It seems like only yesterday. Out of the two semesters, I would definitely say that this semester has been the most difficult. I've been through a lot this semester, especially wiht my asthma. It has gotten way out of control, and no one can seem to figure out why. I have had so many doctor appointments in the past month that I've lost count. Thankfully, my last one is this Thursday, and my Mom and Dad will be here for it!! A week ago Monday, I went to the hospital to get some tests run and the doctor is going to let me know the results at my appointment on Thursday. The test results will hopefully tell the doctor why I'm having so many problems with my asthma. I'm hoping that it's something simple and easy to fix, because I'm tired of having all these asthma attacks.

Holly will be graduating this Friday! It's so hard for me to believe! I'm really going to miss her next year. She has been such a great help and encouragement to me this semester with everything that's gone on. I wish she sould come back, but she odesn't have the finances, and she wants to plan her wedding, which will hopefully be taking place next spring. NO, there's no ring on her finger yet, but hopefully she'll have one on there before the end of the year. The parents' permission has already been given, so now it's just a matter of time until Andrew asks her.

I don't really have any plans for the summer other than working. I'm going to be babysitting Chase and Cole four days a week to start, then hopefully five days a week. RIght now, Cahd, their dad, is only working four days a week. One nice thing about that is that I'll have my birthday off. That means i won't have to get up at the crack of dawn!!! That was one thing I wasn't looking forward to. I've always taken my birthday off before, but I wouldn't be able to do that babysitting. The Lord worked it all out.

One thing that i really want to do while I'm home is become active in my church, New Lexington Bible Church. I'd really like to get involved with the children and teenagers. I'm going to be teaching my mom's Sunday school class, which is grades 2-6. I'm very excited about that. One of the things I'll be teaching on is the book of Esther. This is one of my favorite books of the BIble, so I'm really going to enjoy studying it out and teaching it to the kids.

Well, that's about all for now. I'll try to post as often as I can during the summer, but I'm not sure how frequently i'll be updating. I'm always horrible about that!

Spring Bible Conference

Well, Spring break is over and I'm now back into the swing of things at school. The week after we got back from Spring break, the school had their annual Spring Bible Conference. This is usually a pretty big event for the school, but this year it was even bigger because the school is celebrating it's 20th anniversary. There were 21 different speakers during the week, and I think that just about every message spoke to my heart and convicted me about something. Although it was a busy week, I don't think I'd trade it for anything.
One of the highlight's of the week for me was seeing my pastor. He came down on Friday to visit the college, and it was such an encouragement to see him. The day before had been kind of rough, so that made it even more special. He took Holly, Andrew, and I out to eat at Chick-fil-a. It was delicious!! He was only down here for about half a day, but just to see him was a huge encouragement to me.
The same night that my pastor was down here, Mr. Beal, the future president of Ambassador, preached a message on what Ambassador is about. He told us that Ambassador will not change its stance as long as he is president. He encouraged all of us to pray for Ambassador, that it will be able to keep the strong standards that it has.
There's not enough room here to go into all that I learned at Bible Conference, so I'll just share one thing. During Dorm Devos one night, the speaker (I can't remember his name right now) spoke on humility. He said some things that really made me think. It wasn't your usual message on humility, but I think that's why it spoke to my heart so much.
Well, church is about ready to start, so I need to get off here. Hopefully, I'll be able to post mroe next SUnday, depending on how much schoolwork i have to do.

Spring Break!!

Well, Spring Break is finally here!! Actually, it's almost gone. It is Friday night and we leave on Sunday morning. This whole break has flown by!!

Spring Break started on Friday after chapel. I went over to my best friend, Laura Dillon's house for the beginning of break. On Friday night, after getting to her house, we went hiking on a nearby mountain. It had snowed the day before, so there was snow on the mountains. Unfortunately, we never got high enough on the mountain to see the ground totally covered in snow. WE did however, se patches of snow on the ground.

Saturday, Laura and I slept in until around 11:30am. After we got up, we worked on schoolwork some and started watching The Sound of Music.

On Sunday, we went to Immanuel Baptist Church, the church that Laura's dad pastors. After the evening service, the Dillons took me out to eat at Dairy Queen.

On Monday morning, Laura and I left her house around 11am and began the six hour drive to my house. We arrived at my house just in time for a delicious supper which Holly had made. I took her down to meet Chase and Cole after supper, then I took her to the library, which turned out to be a very profitable trip. She found several books for her research paper, which she's doing on Parkinson's Disease, and I found a few on the Columbine High School Massacre, which is the topic that I chose for my research paper.

On Tuesday, I took Laura over over to The Dawes Arboretum, an arboretum about ten minutes away from my house. I showed her around the arboretum for a few hours.

The next day, Wednesday, Mom, Holly, Laura, and I went to Dawes. While Mom and Holly walked, Laura and I went around Dawes, taking pictures. That evening, Laura got to visit my church, New Lexington Bible Church.

Thursday morning, Laura woke up with the stomach flu and spent most of the day in bed. As much as I regret that she was sick, it gave me some time to spend with my parents, which was something that i hadn't had a chance to do before that.

Today (Friday), we went in to Columbus and did some thrift store shopping. We found tons of good deals and I came back with plenty of new clothes for college.

Tomorrow Holly and I will be going into town to get our taxes done by Nicole, Chase & Cole's aunt (Maranda's sister). After that, she, Laura, and I will be going to Walmart to do some last minute shopping before we go back to school.

On Sunday morning, we will be leaving here around 8am, and, Lord willing, arrive in Lattimore around 4pm or so. We will get unpacked and settled in, then leave around 5:20 or so to go to church at Emmanuel. Andrew (Holly's boyfriend) will be coming with us.

As much as I love college, I am not ready to go back yet. This semester has been very busy and stressful for me as I am taking 21 credit hours, working 17 1/2 hours a week, and trying to fit in four hours of piano a week. I know, I'm crazy!! I regret taking so many credit hours, but there's no way I'd drop a class now, not so close to the end of the semester.

Well, I guess that's about it for this post. I will hopefully be posting more again soon.

My boys

I babysat my boys Friday night for the first time in about three months. Okay, okay, so there not really my boys, there my next door neighbor's, but I've known them since they were born and helped mom babysit them since the oldest was ten weeks, so it practically seems like they are. It brought back so many memories of babysitting them when they were little.

Chase, the oldest, is now six. He's in kindergarten and rides the bus to and from school everyday.

Cole, the youngest, is now three. He'll turn four in April. He's very independent and talks up a storm. He still has those big blue eyes and that adorable blonde hair. He is still going to preschool someplace in Pataskala.

We watched the movie Cars and then Chase played Tonka Search and Rescue 2 on the computer. Their parents came home as soon as we finished playing the game, so that was the end of our night.

Home Sweet Home

Well, I'm finally home for Christmas break. I've made it through my first semester of college!! There were a few times when I wondered whether or not i really would make it.

I love college life. I can't believe how fast this semester went! It seems like just yesterday I was arriving on campus, scared to death about starting my first year of college, and now I'm back home.

This semester has been very rough. Just a few weeks into the school year, the college experienced it's most serious car accident involving students. A church van carrying 13 students was on it's way back to school from visitation when it rolled over. It's only by God's grace that no one was killed or seriously injured as only three of the passengers were wearing seatbelt. Praise God for his protection!

On top of that, I've experienced some very serious asthma attacks this semester, a couple of them the worst I'd had up to that point. They had to call the squad for one of them. The paramedics came and gave me oxygen as well as administered a nebulizer treatment before it subsided. Needless to say, it was quite scary. A week or so after that one, I had another. Thankfully, we were able to get it under control without having to call the squad. I've had a few minor ones since then, but nothing real major.

I've had my share of sickness this semester. First, I got bronchitis. I had that for about two months. I got over it, then a week or so later, I got the stomach flu. Not fun! :( A few weeks after that, I got laryngitis, and just when I was starting to get over that I got a horrible cold. I'm still fighting that a little bit, but I'm almost over it.

The beginning of October, I got in a car accident on my way to work. Thankfully it was minor and my friends and I, as well as the people that I hit, were okay, but it took a few weeks to get the car repaired.

This seems to have been the year for car accidents. On top of the van accident at the beginning of the year and my car accident, there have been several other accidents as well, thankfully all minor ones. The school lost both of it's vans that the ensemble travels in due to car accidents, and a few students have wrecked their cars as well.

Enough about the bad stuuf. Let's move on to happier things. I'm in the Marjorie B. Jordan dorm this year, which, in my opinion, is the best girls' dorm on campus. I have one roommate, Christy Godfrey, who is engaged to be married. She can be crazy at times, but she's a lot of fun.

I have four best friends, two girls and two guys. The girls are Laura Dillon and Lindsey Castano, and the guys are Nathan Houck and Caleb Getty. Nathan and Lindsey are dating, as are Getty and Laura. I do feel a little left out at times, but most of the time I really don't mind being the only single person in our group. Pretty much whenever you see one of us, you'll se at least one of the others.

I enjoyed all of my classes this semester. I'm not sure I can really pick a favorite, but if I had to, it'd probably be Life of Christ. I've learned so much from this class. I thought that I knew pretty much everything about the life of Christ, but boy, was I wrong! There was a lot that I didn't know.

I think my faorite part of the semester was singing in the school's annual Messiah concerts. They were held on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. The best part of that weekend was Friday morning right before chapel, when my parents walked into the R. A. Torrey auditorium. I had no idea that they were coming, so, needles to say, I was pleasantly surprised!

The Saturday and Sunday before I left to come home, my church in North Carolina, Emmanuel Baptist Church, had their cantata, "When Jesus Came." It was so good!!

As wonderful as this semester has been, and as much as I love college, I'm so glad that Christmas break is here. It will give me a chance to rest up before starting next semester. I'm very anxious to see what God has in store for me!