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We are Virginia Tech, and We Will Prevail.

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"

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

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.

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.

Relationship.

I've come to realize, that it's got to be really hard to have a relationship with anyone if a person does not know Jesus. Since God desires to be made the center of all our relationships, how can one truly have one without God in it?

This blows my mind.

It also makes me realize how fortunate I am, because the relationships I strive to build are ones that not only will last me a life time, but I will live them to outlast this life. My forever friends are truly forever friends. We will partayyyy in heaven forever, and it will be awesome.

Another reason I've been thinking on this lately is because I've been striving so so hard to build relationships with the people around me, and love everyone I come in contact with. The more I do this, the more I see that it's hard, and you get stuck sometimes, trying to become intimately close with people who don't know Christ. You want them to get there, so you keep loving them. I have to keep loving them. Which I am, but I'm understanding the magnitude of God's love now that I'm trying to show it. It's crazy how that works!

My final conclusion: The status and health and stability of all earthly relationships are in direct correlation with the status and health and stability of your relationship with God. When we are right with Him, He makes things right for us -- gives us the desires of our hearts (which is awesome, because when we seek God's heart, our desires become those that He has given us, so essentially we get everything we want because we want what God wants for us! Hollerrrrr!).

Man. God is awesome. Tonight is going to be a great night worshipping Him with the people I love. <3

Made to Praise. 

Praise the LORD.

   Praise God in his sanctuary; 

praise him in his mighty heavens. 

Praise him for his acts of power; 

praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, 

praise him with the harp and lyre, 

praise him with timbrel and dancing, 

praise him with the strings and pipe, 

praise him with the clash of cymbals, 

praise him with resounding cymbals.

 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

   Praise the LORD!

God's Strength

Tonight our Bible study went through the first half of Colossians 1. I like it. Verse 11 was my favorite. 

"strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy,"

I've been through times in my life where I've had to see past my sadness and the darkness that seemed to be holding me back and CHOOSE joy. CHOOSE the hope I have in Jesus Christ. It's my faith that gets me through, and the Joy that God promises us in Him if we follow Him. But most of it seems to have been pretty, well, easy. I mean, it hasn't been by any means, but I see other people go through things that just look so much worse than what I've had to endure, and I think to myself "there's no way I would be able to find joy in that!" Then I remember that God only allows us to be tempted with what we can bear. All with Him as our strength of course. 

Only now, it's as if I'm praying for God to test me in such a way that maybe my heart breaks, maybe I fall apart, but that strengthens my faith and relationship with Him. He promises us trials, and I want some so I can practice having joy in the midst of struggles! 

That's weird. I don't want to pray for bad things to happen. 

I am asking God for patience and long suffering because it will MAKE me stronger in Christ. 

So I guess it's kinda like this: I look at life from a positive point of view. Why not always have joy? I want more. I want to grow. I want to be pruned. I want to grow in the Word and learn as much as I can, so that I can be given great challenges and overcome them all - with the strength of God and by His mighty power. 

Blah, that was confusing. Basically, I don't personally believe that we should seek trials out - we should always be seeking to be patient and find joy in every bad aspect of life, but not create something bad out of something that's actually pretty darn good! 

My prayer for myself, and for all of you, and for the wonderful ladies in my Family Group, is that we seek God's face in our times of struggle and recognize and embrace the joy that exists in ALL OF IT! 

Yay! I have been so encouraged tonight; so inspired. I love it! I feel God doing wonderful things amidst my anxiety and hectic life. To God be the glory!