This is a post I’ve been putting off writing for a while now. Honestly, I’ve been avoiding it because I’m slightly overwhelmed by the alarming amount of things I want to express. It seems like these past couple of weeks (and months for that matter) have been a roller coaster of tests, papers, reading assignments, work, building new relationships and fixing old ones, and coming to terms (yet again) with my inability to do all of that stuff and have it all turn out as perfectly as I had planned. However, now that it’s Spring Break and I’ve had a few days to drink iced tea and read novels and sleep with the windows open at my parents’ house, I remember what it’s like to relax and not care about whether or not I’m late for class. Here, there are no papers to write or songs to learn and it’s nice. So here I am, with all this time...now it’s time to process. Even though I’ve been waiting for this chance to just sit and think and be alone, it’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to to this extent, and I’m rather out of practice. So get ready for a lot of random rambling and jabbering.
This past weekend I chaperoned my first youth event. Granted, I was only a nominal chaperone, seeing as I was practically the same age as the girls I was in charge of. It’s a good thing they were well behaved, because I made absolutely no attempt at pretending to be an adult around them.
The strange thing about this retreat was that I didn’t feel connected to it. I had spent the whole week expecting to get some huge revelation from GOD there, and the only thing I left with was a severe lack of sleep and a head cold. The whole time I was in youth, retreats, and camps and Disciple Nows were the places and times that I heard from GOD. They were my connection to Him. They were where I felt the LORD’s conviction. They were my source of spiritual survival. So I went into this weekend expecting just that. I thought that it would be just like in high school when I would sit in a pew and pray and then all of a sudden all of my current problems and questions would be answered and lifted off my shoulders. That didn’t happen. Not even in a minimal sense. In fact, I think I actually left with more questions.
The first night of the retreat, when I realized that what I wanted from GOD was not happening, I was more than a little resentful about it. I sat there asking GOD “Why?” just “Why?” over and over again. The next morning I woke up with my answer.
I’m not a child anymore. I can’t just expect GOD to solve everything for me like He used to (even though He could if He chose to). The LORD puts trials and problems in my life to make me grow up. And even though they suck at the time, they ultimately draw me closer to Him and grow me into the woman He wants me to be. It doesn’t matter how many retreats or seminars or camps I go to. Those things are good, but they are no longer as crucial to my spiritual well being as they were when I was in youth. Instead, GOD speaks to me in quiet, unexpected moments of my life now. The moments when I feel like I have utterly and completely failed and I need grace; the moments when I look up at the stars and stand in awe before my Creator; the moments when I feel like I can’t get out of bed, let alone walk to class and He provides strength and sustenance for me.
You’d think that I could have left it at that, that that one realization would have been enough and I wouldn’t feel the need to overanalyze the way the LORD works. Of course, that’s how it should have been, but it’s not how it was. My next question for GOD was, “Why did you let me waste four years thinking that one way was right, only to let me discover at the end of them that that way was wrong?” Ironically enough, His answer was something that I had said to a friend a few months ago: “Sometimes there are things and places and people in our lives and at that time, those are right for us. And maybe the LORD will choose to take away those things and people and places later on, but that doesn’t mean that those things were ever wrong, it just means that we don’t need to have those things in our lives anymore.”
I don’t understand GOD. I want to, but I don’t. And the closer I think I’m about to get, the more I realize that I’m even farther away from comprehending Him than I originally thought. I question Him so, so much and when I get answers they always just make me have more questions. I have more to say, but I don’t feel like it right now. So instead, I’m off to the library!
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