Authentic, Worship, Continual, Depend

Things I love: themes and sub-headings. 

Things I also love: sharing my thoughts with you without having to actually talk with people. Not that I don't love people, it's just easier to be more concise this way.

Conclusion: I'm going to combine those two wonderful things into one for you right now. :)

What I've got going on right now is two main themes for my life:

Stewardship & Intentionality

then to really apply those in my life, I've got four beautiful, beautiful categories which I've turned into sub-headings because organization is a beautiful, beautiful thing:

Be Real

God at the Center

Pray continually

Dependent

And for the sake of aesthetic appeal, I've organized those four sub-categories into these wonderful little note cards:

I've struggled with being authentic most of my life. Who hasn't, right? It involves me being constantly aware of myself, my intentions and motivations behind thoughts and actions and a constant questioning of what I'm doing - am I doing this for the sake of how others might perceive it? Or am I being completely real in this moment, with this person, with myself and God. A big part of that has involved me learning to be a good steward of my time and being intentional with my time to relate with other people. I am a highly-trained time-waster, and one of the most obnoxious and testing parts of the last year of my journey in life has been God getting me to look at my life and weed out things that honestly don't matter in the scheme of His kingdom. 

"A true person of prayer simply and sincerely bows before God and pours out the contents of his or her heart. While this is not always the most natural or easiest thing to do, it is exactly what God is looking for."

I'm not called to be a pretender.

God has had to do a lot of wall-breaking down for me to even be able to be honest in communication just between the two of us. For me to be honest about my thoughts and feelings out loud to the Lord is hard, even though I know he knows what I'm trying to say better than I do. It's part of being honest enough with myself to say - I need help, this sucks, I hurt, I'm happy, I like this person, I'm terrified about...whatever. And that openness definitely translates into my relationships with others - the more I'm honest with myself and understand that my inner thoughts and desires don't change how God loves and sees me, the easier it is to be open and share about those thoughts and such with others. 

This goes hand-in-hand with being authentic. While I'm being real and intentional with others, am I constantly aware of God's hand in that? Who am I giving the glory to? 

I like talking about the neat things I see God doing. Since I'm an undercover introvert, I spend a lot of time being introspective and I suppose you could use the term "worshipful" when I observe people, nature, anything I think is beautiful. I see beauty literally everywhere. And I love, love to carry on a constant stream of praise -

"Lord, you did awesome on that."

This one is a tricksy one. I love praying, but it is definitely not always my go-to in each moment I live. During REACH, I went to a little session about habits and I think prayer is very much a developed one. Me being intentional and constantly being a good steward of my time by being in constant prayer with the Lord is a big deal! It shapes my day, my life, my reactions to everything.

In my Bible study small group, we talked about circumstances and control. I'm an out-of-the-closet control freak and when I can't control things I can get a little frustrated and freaked out. The most recent example would be last night dancing - I like to lead and be in charge and do things myself and dancing requires me to follow which is so, so hard. So to all my dance partners who tried to lead and then I froze up or just turned your moves into complete, graceless chaos, you tried, I tried, try, try again next week. :) My apologies for being like a baby giraffe on ice. 

So what we talked about in small group was - Do we have control over anything,really?

"God provides us with several breaths per minute. Our hearts beat 55+ times per minute. Our brains work continually. We eat or sleep or study or work or play 24/7...if we are aware that every moment of every day God is the source of all we have, our whole existence will be a continual prayer of thanksgiving and praise."

What I have decided is that I have no control over circumstance and situation what. so. ever. Zero. The only thing I have control over (as long as I am in control of my faculties) is my reactions to those circumstances and situations. And those reactions have to be developed. That's why continual prayer is so important.

Part of me praying constantly with God is me having to be aware of myself trying to take control of things - If I'm focusing on God, it's easier to relinquish a little control (and by "relinquish," I mean He has to pry it from my cold, dead hands before I'll give it up..) But as soon as I quit focusing on God, off I go trying to manipulate situations in my life to maintain a facade of control.

Following right behind giving up control comes being dependent. Like dancing with a partner, I struggle to depend on others and God. I like to be 150% independent, I hate letting people pay for things for me, I can get the door myself, and I do not need anyone to 'take care of me,' thank you. 

Except, darn it all, that I do. It takes a lot to admit that, and God had to take me through absolutely sucky circumstances to begin to even open me up to the idea of dependence. I wasn't designed to be 150% independent - neither were you. I'm just telling you the way that it is. 

Out of these four little areas, this one is definitely the hardest one for me but God makes the neatest (and most drastic) changes in me through this.

"The wiser course of action -  the one Nehemiah chose - is to recognize how needy we are and how generous God is. Humility -- admitting that we need God's help - will drive us to prayer."

And if I try to run, God tackles me and wins. Pretty much all the time.

Blessed to be Stressed

Mind BLOWN

I recognize that it's 12:23 AM right now and I should be sleeping. Somehow I managed to procrastinate/forget that I have two exams this week (one tomorrow, one Tuesday) in addition to my project and class unit (both Tuesday) and a paper (Thursday) due, too. Oops! I've been studying and working for the last six hours straight and was fitting in a quick quiet time before I went to sleep and God completely restructured how I was looking at my situation.

Before: feeling a little bit stressed out, "woe is me," about all the homework and exams to get done between work and trying to fit in seeing people I made appointments with this week.

After: I was journaling (reflecting on "Help Me Find It" by Sidewalk Prophets) and all of a sudden I was like....God, I am so thankful that I'm here at UNL. Not everyone gets to go to college, not everyone gets the privilege to be stressing out about grades and school. Also, not everyone has a job to stress about going to! Not everyone has as many wonderful friends to visit with throughout their week! And also, I am so glad I didn't get homework done sooner this weekend because I had my little brother and sister and cousin in town, and I'm so thankful I have a family to see and love (even if it means a couple late nights this week!)

Suddenly, I'm thinking - I'm completely blessed to be stressed! I'm sorry if that sounds like a church-y cliche, but I don't know that I've ever looked at my schooling or circumstances like that before and it's completely blowing my mind a little bit (combined with it now being 12:28 and I've had a lot of coffee in the past few hours).

12:30. I'm ready to enjoy the blessing that is sweatpants and my bed, now. Good
night!

Christmas Lights and Date Nights :)

Your love is extravagant.

This concept has been all over my heart the last couple weeks and I want to share that with you. God's love is extravagant. What in the world does that even mean?

You know, I'm not exactly sure. It's so big and my concept of love and extravagance is so small that it's limiting my understanding. But I'll share what I've come up with in the last month. :)

This is a process of me being introspective, mostly about my past. Like you, I've made what you could consider to be a fair amount of mistakes (and by 'fair amount' I mean a lot). I get really hung up on those stupid things even though they are in the past and get into a cycle of - I can't believe I did that, if anyone finds out what I did they won't want me, I don't know why God still wants me knowing all that dirt in my past. Everything about our culture and my human nature says - because you did 'x,' you now have to suffer 'y' as the consequences. For me that 'y' is someone hearing my dirt and thinking it would be a much better idea to exclude me from their life.

My guess is that some of you have experienced that exact phenomenon (I certainly have) of being abandoned or phased out of someones life (a significant other, parent, friend, etc.) after you disclosed something about yourself. That hurts. And that's where I get hung up on - God loving me even knowing all those terrible things about me! He doesn't hold up to the norm, He doesn't abandon or reject me because he loves me, and that exceeds what is reasonable in my mind. Like, whaaaat? WHY.

And here's the part that really just blows my mind - is there's more outside of that whole forgiving me, overlooking my past and my shame and all that. I catch myself all the time looking at me as a project and start thinking God must see me like that too, like He's sitting around watching me, taking notes and thinking - "Hm, here's how we can improve this and then we can try and fix that." He doesn't sit around focusing on 'fixing' me, like I sometimes do. He just wants to relationship with me! WHAT? Why would you want to spend time just hanging out with me?!

So anyway, there's not really a huge point to this post except to say that relationship is neat. And awesome. I like to be all sneaky and have date nights with just me and God where I can silence my phone and be away and alone from the world and just be with God. I've created a little nest next to my bed and I've got these super cute Christmas lights I turn on so it's just me in a little Christmas light, blanket-nest world (and sometimes my house-slippers) and I turn on this song - Your Love is Extravagant - and just bask in it. It's actually sort of becoming a problem (not really, but almost) because I've passed out on my floor a couple times whilst basking, it was just so enjoyable in my little
blanket nest of lovely wonderfulness.

Anyway, I strongly encourage blanket nest worship (coffee adds an extra-special touch - especially pumpkin or cinnamon flavors) and spending time reveling in the extravagance of God's love. Don't sit in your nest and reflect on all the things you've done wrong and pray - "Oh, please fix this" - you can do that, but for 15 minutes just bask in being loved extravagantly and pray for God to speak to your heart more about what that  really means.

**This version is by The Almost (whom I love), but for those of you who like a little more spontaneous, even quieter worship music, I think this version is even more romantic-y feeling. Your Love is Extravagant - Darrell Evans.