In 10 days, I will be going home and leaving behind my first year of college. That isn't to say that I'm forgetting it, but that it will be over; I survived and made lots of friends and lots more memories.
This year I learned a lot about what it means to have an eternal perspective. Truth be told, I think I've had one for a while, but I didn't let it affect my whole life, and it wasn't really translating into the way I acted or the way I talked to people or the way I lived my life. Now it's like, I just wanna go to Heaven, to praise God and do nothing else except party with Jesus and bask in their awesomeness.
I had a really interesting discussion last night about the word "awesome". It's one I've had before, but still interesting. Dissecting words is really fun for me!
But anyway, I'm currently having this realization. And I have a lot of pent up anxiety in my chest right now, so I figured I'd go with it and try to write before I pass out.
I'm all about new stages of life, gaining knowledge and wisdom, growing, maturing, loving people and making the most of the time we're allotted on earth. But right now I'm being scared of change. I mean, I've always hated change, but this time it's slightly different, maybe.
I graduated from high school last year. Now, a freshman in college, I'm watching seniors graduate from here, seemingly with many of the same feelings I had about this time last year. I am so looking forward to this summer and getting to hang out with amazing friends, and I'll also be excited to start a new semester as a sophomore in the fall! But the thing is, is that really important people (graduating seniors) in my life are going to cease to exist in my realm of correspondence when school rolls around next fall. This is a change I'm uneasy about. For whatever reason, I am not coping with it well, and I need to ask God to heal me of that and curb the anxiety I feel toward losing a dear friend. Jesus is the only friend I truly need, and since He will never leave or change, I should be content in that.
I suppose that is my prayer and my hope. For myself, and for the graduating seniors who are closing a really long, detailed chapter of their lives with God being, potentially, the only constant. Holding steadfastly to Him will never fail us, and I pray that I can live out that kind of mentality. Do everything for the glory of God.
There's a song called "Where I Belong" by Switchfoot, and one of the lines says, "I'm not sentimental; this skin and bones is a rental and no one makes it out alive." I agree with this. But tonight, I've felt heavily sentimental. I want to cherish the time, but I need to learn to also let go and be content in my wonderful memories and many valuable life lessons and spiritual growing.
Man, God is awesome. He's been blessing me with some incredible people, role models, friends, mentors, everything! I'm so excited for His Kingdom. (:
Where I Belong by: Switchfoot
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
BUT GOD
This, I have learned, is the epitome of the Gospel.
Basically it's like this:
We (humankind) have sinned. BUT GOD is perfect and does no wrong.
We fall short. BUT GOD compensates; more than compensates, actually.
We were dead. BUT GOD brought us back to life through Jesus.
We mess up. We fail. BUT GOD forgives us.
We are angry. BUT GOD extends grace.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD is merciful.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD punished His Son instead.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD takes all that we deserve upon Himself. For us.
This world is really terrible and evil. BUT GOD makes a way for us, through Him.
We suffer. BUT GOD brings us joy in the midst of it all.
We are stressed. BUT GOD reassures us that we don't need to worry, because He's got it under control.
We try to sustain ourselves with things of this world. BUT GOD fulfills us with His love.
We will be judged for everything we did wrong. BUT GOD sent Jesus to vouch for us in Heaven.
We forget about God. BUT GOD never forgets about us.
This has seriously been blowing my mind for the past week. My prayer for the human race is that God continues to lavish His love upon all of us and that we be willing to receive it and act upon it; go make disciples of all nations and tell the world that Jesus loves them!
God is good all the time, and my relationship with Him is more important than anything I can ever claim to obtain on this earth. I wish I were better at expressing how AWESOMELY AWESOME GOD IS! But I can't. Everyone just needs to taste and see that the Lord is GOOD.
Oh yeahhhh! :D
Basically it's like this:
We (humankind) have sinned. BUT GOD is perfect and does no wrong.
We fall short. BUT GOD compensates; more than compensates, actually.
We were dead. BUT GOD brought us back to life through Jesus.
We mess up. We fail. BUT GOD forgives us.
We are angry. BUT GOD extends grace.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD is merciful.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD punished His Son instead.
We deserve to be punished. BUT GOD takes all that we deserve upon Himself. For us.
This world is really terrible and evil. BUT GOD makes a way for us, through Him.
We suffer. BUT GOD brings us joy in the midst of it all.
We are stressed. BUT GOD reassures us that we don't need to worry, because He's got it under control.
We try to sustain ourselves with things of this world. BUT GOD fulfills us with His love.
We will be judged for everything we did wrong. BUT GOD sent Jesus to vouch for us in Heaven.
We forget about God. BUT GOD never forgets about us.
This has seriously been blowing my mind for the past week. My prayer for the human race is that God continues to lavish His love upon all of us and that we be willing to receive it and act upon it; go make disciples of all nations and tell the world that Jesus loves them!
God is good all the time, and my relationship with Him is more important than anything I can ever claim to obtain on this earth. I wish I were better at expressing how AWESOMELY AWESOME GOD IS! But I can't. Everyone just needs to taste and see that the Lord is GOOD.
Oh yeahhhh! :D
Monday, April 16, 2012
neVer forgeT
We are Virginia Tech, and We Will Prevail.
April 20, 2007:
"Dear Fellow Members of the University Community:
April 20, 2007:
"Dear Fellow Members of the University Community:
I am very proud of the manner in which our faculty, staff, and students have united this week as a family. We have demonstrated that we are not going to allow the tragic events of this last week to divide or define us.
In this time of healing, it is important that we take care of one another, and together we can move forward to “Invent the Future.” Let us take a moment now to reflect on our Principles of Community—and reaffirm our commitment to strive to reject all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our community.
Together, we pledge our collective commitment to these principles in the spirit of our motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve).
We will prevail. . . we are Hokies!
Sincerely,
Charles W. Steger
President"
President"
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Oh Dear...
Sigh. It's almost 2 a.m. It seems that my long lost friend, caffeine, is up to his old tricks again. I want to sleep. I want caffeine. I don't want to sleep because I know that 6 hours will not be sufficient. If I try to sleep until 9 it won't work because my roommate will wake me up with her morning routine shenanigans.
I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. What is it about Mondays that make me want to do zero homework? Yet they're always busy...until about 3:30...ish.
Maybe I'll skip convo tomorrow and do homework... But I need punches. I'll go... for the second half. Maybe. At this point I'm just rambling.
As happy as I am to have coffee, etc. back in my life, I can tell that this time around our relationship is going to need to undergo some major changes, some of which may be painful to endure, but oh so worth it.
God is great. God is good. God is always always always stronger, bigger, better, MORE WONDERFUL! than any earthly thing. Man. I just can't thank Him enough for that. I mean really. When's the last time you knew someone who'd give everything for you? That's right: no one. OH WAIT I MEAN JESUS! He's the Man. Seriously. THE MAN.
I'm going to bed now.
Psalm 34
I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. What is it about Mondays that make me want to do zero homework? Yet they're always busy...until about 3:30...ish.
Maybe I'll skip convo tomorrow and do homework... But I need punches. I'll go... for the second half. Maybe. At this point I'm just rambling.
As happy as I am to have coffee, etc. back in my life, I can tell that this time around our relationship is going to need to undergo some major changes, some of which may be painful to endure, but oh so worth it.
God is great. God is good. God is always always always stronger, bigger, better, MORE WONDERFUL! than any earthly thing. Man. I just can't thank Him enough for that. I mean really. When's the last time you knew someone who'd give everything for you? That's right: no one. OH WAIT I MEAN JESUS! He's the Man. Seriously. THE MAN.
I'm going to bed now.
Psalm 34
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Recent Life
I have so many things to write about. Bear with me.
Yesterday:
I have my piano lesson on Fridays at 1:00 ever week, and they're actually really fun. I mean, I love the piano and I love studying it at Tech and I absolutely adore my teacher, so it's always a good time. Well this past week on Tuesday I had my very first solo convocation performance and it was pretty scary. I mean, it wasn't really that scary, but I had been practicing really hard but when I went out to play I messed up a lot, though I kept going. It was a fine first performance, and although I know that it wasn't the best I've ever played it, I am overall pleased with it
So I emailed my teacher on Wednesday, asking her about performance anxiety and things like that because I just wanted to know how to "cure" myself of it (for lack of a better word). Then she said that we would talk about it more in my lesson. Well on Thursday she handed me 2 articles to read if I would have time and said if not we would just discuss them on Friday. Well Friday comes, and I hadn't read the articles because I had no time (shocker!) and she started to ask me different things about why I thought I got nervous.
I have no idea why I get nervous. I tried to talk through it though. One thing I came up with that seemed the most insightful into my own self was that when I play for myself, there's obviously no pressure because I know what I can do and how well I can do it and what to fix and correct. When I play for just one person, I get their feedback right away and if they have corrections I can apply those, but ultimately they know how well I can play too. Well when I get in front of a large group of people and am in a real performance situation I get tense and nervous and somehow my mind freaks out because there are so many people watching me. I can't know what all of them thought of the performance, but when I know that I've messed up I think to myself, 'I can play this so much better than that! And none of these people know...' So yeah. DTC's (my teacher) is trying to help me get over that.
BUT the coolest thing that happened in my lesson, which I was not expecting at all, was that she said to me, "You know Katie, as Christians, we have it a little easier when it comes to things like this." I was thinking, what is she getting at here? I was kind of confused, but she went on to tell me/ask me why I did this? She said, "I assume you do it for fun, because you enjoy it and find joy in doing it. I know you have a lot of opposition and a lot of hurdles in front of you so that should make performing all the more fun for you!" She was right. So then I agreed, and she asked me about my motivation. It was weird because just the night before I had been wondering to myself what my own motivation was and why I liked playing piano. This is where the "it's easier for Christians" thing came in. She told me that our motivation is always to do everything for the glory of God. She told me that she always has to think that way because Jesus doesn't care if you miss a note - He just cares that you're playing for Him and He takes pleasure in listening to you play the piano in His name, even if to other people it sounds like you might have messed up.
Something else that she told me that I thought was REALLY cool was Psalm 34: "I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall be continually in my mouth." DTC told me that she changes 'mouth' to 'fingers' and I thought that was absolutely the greatest thing ever!
I am so grateful for my piano teacher. Mostly because she's more than just my Individual Applied Piano teacher. She's my mentor, my sister in Christ, and she disciples me. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to have a teacher who you can talk to about your inner-most self and the most personal things because you know that you share a kindred spirit in Christ. I just can't get over this! I praise God for her because of her heart and the example of her life lived in Jesus that she continuously shows me.
Today:
This morning/afternoon I went to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Blacksburg with my dear friend Ashlee and my friend Colin. We just poked around for a while, got some ice cream, dyed Easter eggs, had a good ol' time. Well we went to walk to go get lunch and there are a couple of girls and one of their moms having a bake sale on the corner of the street in front of Moe's (a very popular place for college life in Blacksburg) to raise money in support of the people in Africa suffering from drought and famine.
There were a bunch of goodies, a lot of them Easter-themed, and some really cool mugs and pottery type things that had been home made and donated to them to sell. The girl told me that we could have whatever we wanted for any donation. So I handed them 5 dollars and took a mug (which I'm really excited about). I started asking her if she'd been to Africa (she said no) and kind of about herself and we didn't really get to talk much. She said that she'd never had the opportunity to go, but she guessed it'd be cool to go. The older woman (whom I'm assuming was her mother) said that whenever she hears of something going on in the world she tried to have a bake sale to raise money for them.
I just thought this was really cool. This girl couldn't have been older than 13 or 14 and she's already changing the world. Just seeing hearts like this in people younger than me makes me realize that the Gospel of Jesus is alive in so many people and does not restrict itself to people of a certain age. I was very encouraged, and I'm praying for this girl and that her heart always stays on fire for God and keeps breaking for the people around her for the drive to help them and witness to people through service.
It's been a good weekend so far. Though now I'm afraid I must submit myself to Calculus and English.
Tonight I'm going to a bonfire. Tomorrow is Easter. I will be drinking coffee. I'm really excited. I'm so in love with Jesus and cannot even begin to comprehend the magnitude of what He did for me. I'm clean and I'm saved because of His BLOOD. How crazy is that? I can't get over it. Praise God for THE greatest sacrifice in all of history. I'm so grateful that He allows me to be a friend of Jesus.
It's just so sweet.
Yesterday:
I have my piano lesson on Fridays at 1:00 ever week, and they're actually really fun. I mean, I love the piano and I love studying it at Tech and I absolutely adore my teacher, so it's always a good time. Well this past week on Tuesday I had my very first solo convocation performance and it was pretty scary. I mean, it wasn't really that scary, but I had been practicing really hard but when I went out to play I messed up a lot, though I kept going. It was a fine first performance, and although I know that it wasn't the best I've ever played it, I am overall pleased with it
So I emailed my teacher on Wednesday, asking her about performance anxiety and things like that because I just wanted to know how to "cure" myself of it (for lack of a better word). Then she said that we would talk about it more in my lesson. Well on Thursday she handed me 2 articles to read if I would have time and said if not we would just discuss them on Friday. Well Friday comes, and I hadn't read the articles because I had no time (shocker!) and she started to ask me different things about why I thought I got nervous.
I have no idea why I get nervous. I tried to talk through it though. One thing I came up with that seemed the most insightful into my own self was that when I play for myself, there's obviously no pressure because I know what I can do and how well I can do it and what to fix and correct. When I play for just one person, I get their feedback right away and if they have corrections I can apply those, but ultimately they know how well I can play too. Well when I get in front of a large group of people and am in a real performance situation I get tense and nervous and somehow my mind freaks out because there are so many people watching me. I can't know what all of them thought of the performance, but when I know that I've messed up I think to myself, 'I can play this so much better than that! And none of these people know...' So yeah. DTC's (my teacher) is trying to help me get over that.
BUT the coolest thing that happened in my lesson, which I was not expecting at all, was that she said to me, "You know Katie, as Christians, we have it a little easier when it comes to things like this." I was thinking, what is she getting at here? I was kind of confused, but she went on to tell me/ask me why I did this? She said, "I assume you do it for fun, because you enjoy it and find joy in doing it. I know you have a lot of opposition and a lot of hurdles in front of you so that should make performing all the more fun for you!" She was right. So then I agreed, and she asked me about my motivation. It was weird because just the night before I had been wondering to myself what my own motivation was and why I liked playing piano. This is where the "it's easier for Christians" thing came in. She told me that our motivation is always to do everything for the glory of God. She told me that she always has to think that way because Jesus doesn't care if you miss a note - He just cares that you're playing for Him and He takes pleasure in listening to you play the piano in His name, even if to other people it sounds like you might have messed up.
Something else that she told me that I thought was REALLY cool was Psalm 34: "I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall be continually in my mouth." DTC told me that she changes 'mouth' to 'fingers' and I thought that was absolutely the greatest thing ever!
I am so grateful for my piano teacher. Mostly because she's more than just my Individual Applied Piano teacher. She's my mentor, my sister in Christ, and she disciples me. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to have a teacher who you can talk to about your inner-most self and the most personal things because you know that you share a kindred spirit in Christ. I just can't get over this! I praise God for her because of her heart and the example of her life lived in Jesus that she continuously shows me.
Today:
This morning/afternoon I went to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Blacksburg with my dear friend Ashlee and my friend Colin. We just poked around for a while, got some ice cream, dyed Easter eggs, had a good ol' time. Well we went to walk to go get lunch and there are a couple of girls and one of their moms having a bake sale on the corner of the street in front of Moe's (a very popular place for college life in Blacksburg) to raise money in support of the people in Africa suffering from drought and famine.
There were a bunch of goodies, a lot of them Easter-themed, and some really cool mugs and pottery type things that had been home made and donated to them to sell. The girl told me that we could have whatever we wanted for any donation. So I handed them 5 dollars and took a mug (which I'm really excited about). I started asking her if she'd been to Africa (she said no) and kind of about herself and we didn't really get to talk much. She said that she'd never had the opportunity to go, but she guessed it'd be cool to go. The older woman (whom I'm assuming was her mother) said that whenever she hears of something going on in the world she tried to have a bake sale to raise money for them.
I just thought this was really cool. This girl couldn't have been older than 13 or 14 and she's already changing the world. Just seeing hearts like this in people younger than me makes me realize that the Gospel of Jesus is alive in so many people and does not restrict itself to people of a certain age. I was very encouraged, and I'm praying for this girl and that her heart always stays on fire for God and keeps breaking for the people around her for the drive to help them and witness to people through service.
It's been a good weekend so far. Though now I'm afraid I must submit myself to Calculus and English.
Tonight I'm going to a bonfire. Tomorrow is Easter. I will be drinking coffee. I'm really excited. I'm so in love with Jesus and cannot even begin to comprehend the magnitude of what He did for me. I'm clean and I'm saved because of His BLOOD. How crazy is that? I can't get over it. Praise God for THE greatest sacrifice in all of history. I'm so grateful that He allows me to be a friend of Jesus.
It's just so sweet.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Sabbath
Have you ever thought about how it could affect your spiritual life to NOT be productive for a day? And by this I mean taking a Sabbath day to rest, to drench yourself in Jesus and God's love for us, and get nothing of worldly importance done? It's totally a completely mind-blowing. Crazy, pretty much.
However, it's what we're called to do as Christians. Far too often we let ourselves or our school work or our jobs or our lives get in the way of full on, hard core, all-or-nothing worshipping Jesus. I admit, I sometimes even find that when I made reading my Bible or spending time with God just another part of my to-do list, THAT gets in the way of me worshipping Him! Because I'm so focused on my schedule, my plans, and my "busy" life that I can't take the time out to worship God without it being a burden.
So I'm proposing that we each use this to put things in perspective - to take a day off, basking in the richness and fullness that is Jesus Christ. Seriously. Get all your work done in 6 days (or some equivalent) and spend the 7th day resting. What would our lives look like if we gave our all to Jesus? Sacrificed one day of "productivity" to spend with Him that he may bless everything we do for His glory?
Man, I feel like that would be THE coolest thing ever. Jesus is so awesome. I'm just really excited for His abundant awesomeness. I don't know about you, but the strength and the wisdom that I get from Him 1.) blows my mind, and 2.) makes me want to know our Savior more!
I'm looking forward to resting in Jesus. Bahhhh. He's so wonderfully extravagantly excellent. I adore Him.
However, it's what we're called to do as Christians. Far too often we let ourselves or our school work or our jobs or our lives get in the way of full on, hard core, all-or-nothing worshipping Jesus. I admit, I sometimes even find that when I made reading my Bible or spending time with God just another part of my to-do list, THAT gets in the way of me worshipping Him! Because I'm so focused on my schedule, my plans, and my "busy" life that I can't take the time out to worship God without it being a burden.
So I'm proposing that we each use this to put things in perspective - to take a day off, basking in the richness and fullness that is Jesus Christ. Seriously. Get all your work done in 6 days (or some equivalent) and spend the 7th day resting. What would our lives look like if we gave our all to Jesus? Sacrificed one day of "productivity" to spend with Him that he may bless everything we do for His glory?
Man, I feel like that would be THE coolest thing ever. Jesus is so awesome. I'm just really excited for His abundant awesomeness. I don't know about you, but the strength and the wisdom that I get from Him 1.) blows my mind, and 2.) makes me want to know our Savior more!
I'm looking forward to resting in Jesus. Bahhhh. He's so wonderfully extravagantly excellent. I adore Him.
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