Before August ends!

   I realize now that I am lucky if I get it together to blog once a month. And geez! What a month it has been! I started a blog about grad school a couple weeks ago but it was actually interrupted by grad school. HA!

   I have officially completed 6 units of grad school this past Sunday! I felt so stressed and so accomplished. I mean I had to start wearing a mouth guard at night in order to prevent the stress-induced clenching and TMJ pain. You know you are high strung when your body spends the nights clenching your teeth instead of resting. I mean, come on. While I wasn’t feeling particularly stressed out, I was. I am.

Grad school is maybe one of the hardest things I’ve ever taken on. And I have learned so much. I ‘ve written more cumulative pages in the last 8 weeks than in my entire undergrad.

   I also completed a theology of church planting class at my church, signed up for a half marathon and started running, fulfilling my duties as a bridesmaid and daughter and employee, started two new graduate classes, bought a plane ticket to Africa, started dating a real human boy, and have been making an extra effort to spend time with my friends. What? I know right. Hence the nighttime jaw-clenching.

   This morning, I re-read my last 6 blog posts from this last year and marveled at the work God has done in me. I am shocked how He has restored my soul and the joy of my salvation. I am in awe of the ways and people he has used to keep me HUMBLY depending on Him. I am overwhelmed by His goodness toward me. By how He sustains me and provides faithfully for me. I can’t believe how well God loves me and shows His grace in ways that make sense to me, and capture my heart. It’s so incredible how true this statement is: I am more wicked than I’ll ever know + more loved than I’ll ever deserve to be.

   On Sunday, I finished my classes, felt so relieved and accomplished. Celebrated with a burrito and great company and felt excited to start new material. On Monday, I woke up to emails about what the new semester holds..about how I need to complete 20 hours of field experience working with students with disabilities and how I need to have a plan in place in 5 days. I literally freaked out. I had no idea that was coming. I thought I had months before I had to do field work. I started reading options and then things that are still yet to come and had a mini melt down.

Then I went back into logical me and started texting/emailing anyone I felt like could be viable options for me. No joke, within 20 minutes I got responses from all three people that they really could help me and were excited to do so.

  I was flabbergasted. I spent a half hour freaking out and God already had it taken care of. It reminded me that in this moment, in my needs for the week- He’s got my back. He knows the beginning from the end and He wont ever fail me.

   My life is busy and my heart is full, very full. My full heart is sometimes filled with uncertainty more than it is filled with anything else. That is a shame because I do not do well with uncertainty. But that’s life, isn’t it? I realized in my freaking out on Monday that the next two years of my life where unknowably uncertain. As in, I can’t even calculate how uncertain they are because so many variables I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been in a place before where it felt like the floor fell from underneath me because of how uncertain life was. And this season does not feel like that at all. This season feels like I am changing planes on a layover before the greatest adventure yet. So scary and so exciting and so full of hope and soooo insanely uncertain and I am just hoping to not get stuck in Mexico City like that one time.

   I have had so much less time to process my life because it has required me to live every moment of it. I have seen God developing a passion and vision within me for education. I don’t know what that will look like but I know that He will faithfully develop it as I submit to Him.

I have seen the real need for community and fellowship and been challenged to overcome some of the biggest deterrent from that which is my own personality. It isn’t sufficient for me to keep people that far off for very long, especially at the pace that my life is moving. I wish everything could be slower, that I could savor it more, think it through more deeply and be more ready for each day.

   Alas, it is a very fast paced life. However, it really has forced me to reevaluate my priorities. My quiet time, my “free” time, my friend time, my study time, my work time, my workout time. Time is so important. It is the single biggest gift I could give or receive. And when I long for time spent in any single one of these areas, I am reminded of how desperately God wants to spend time with me. Isn’t that CRAZY? That the God of the entire universe wants to spend time with me?

It really has been so cool to see my appetite for time alone with God increased and sustained in one of the busiest seasons of my life.

   I am so blessed. Not without any confusion or heartache, but so deeply grateful for the opportunity to be here, experiencing life and seeing the gospel exalted in my heart and life.

And don’t even get me started on my friends. They aren’t all cake walks, but they like barney’s craft bag but of blessings. I am continually surprised by how richly they bless my life, how they encourage me, how God is at work in them and using them and how amazing it is that I get any time with them when I am not that very great of a friend.

   I took today off work to help my dad reorganize our crap because our garage flooded and our house is under construction in some highly inconvenient ways. But there was confusion and all our stuff isn’t returned by the insurance company until Saturday morning now. So I blog. I document my thankfulness for this day and this season and now I just want to put the rest of this day to good use.

    May your hearts and hands be full. May your days and friends and commitments lead you to a greater pursuit of Christ. And may we all press on!