New Year, Resolutions, and Life Stuff
So yesterday I was on Facebook and looking at my friend Meghan’s profile and I saw that she has a blog and it reminded me that I have one too 
. I came to visit mine and saw that it’s been awhile since I last posted, so decided I should probably update things and let people know what is going on in my life. Firstly, I finished my first semester of college (with a 3.27 gpa) and it was amazing. I love college and everything about it, I am looking forward to my classes starting up for my spring semester. Along with my spring semester, comes a trip to Mexico City for my Restoration Week trip. Every spring, LCU students all leave campus and go on missions trips to go and serve all over the world. This year I’ll be going to Mexico, which I am SUPER pumped about. Prayers and financial support for that trip would be greatly appreciated also. Going along with school updates, I am going to be transferring in the fall to Ozark Christian College in Joplin, MO. My boyfriend, Dalton, got an internship at a church there that will lead into a prospective full time job as a youth minister. We are both pretty excited about this, and we look forward to moving to a new place with new people and to work with the people in Joplin. This is a decision that we have been prayerfully considering for the last couple of months. As I move schools, I am also changing my major. I originally was an Intercultural Studies major, but I am switching to children’s ministry. Most people who know me and read this aren’t too surprised, and I don’t think it’s much of a shock to others. I just realized that as much as I love other cultures and languages, I am passionate about kids and showing them the Lord’s love and teaching them about who He is. Several weeks after I had told my mom that I was changing schools, my family made the decision to move back to our home town of Wichita, KS at the end of my siblings school year. This works out rather nicely, because now I will only be 3 hours away from them, instead of the 6 hours I would have been living in Joplin with them still in Illinois. With all these changes, things just continue to fall into place which makes me feel even more confident that the decisions being made are within God’s plan for me and my family also. There have been many changes with my family as well, I won’t go into detail here, but feel free to message me if you have questions. Prayer for my family and God’s provision right now would be appreciated though. I think I covered most of the big changes and updates there, there’s not much else I can think of.
So, moving on to the new year. This year started out bumpy and with lots of emotions, but this has shown me who the people are that I can depend on and who really care about me. I have seen the support of our church and the people in it, I have been wrapped in the love of some incredible friends and I have seen God’s hand in the events of my life and others. I am so blessed and have seen God’s grace and love in abundance, and we are only nine days into the year. With this new year, I have made some resolutions. Now, I am not the type to make these, in fact I am pretty sure this is the first year I have EVER done them, but I figured I’d give it a shot .
Resolutions for 2012
1. Spend time daily with my Lord.
People talk about how you can go to bible college and lose your faith because the bible becomes a text book, and I do NOT want that happening. When I think about how desperately God desires to know me, I feel like I’ve failed Him. So, this year I want to work on my relationship with Him, and to remember that it’s a two way street, and I have to be pursuing Him in order to grow closer to my Savior. I plan on spending the first of my day with Him, because when God says He wants the first of our crop, He doesn’t just mean our money, He wants the first of our time too. He doesn’t just want what’s left over at the end of the day. So even though that means getting up earlier, I am going to do that.
2. Exercise every week day, in the morning before class.
Okay, so I know that sounds like a super stereotypical new years resolution, but it is one of mine. I am not trying to lose weight or anything, just get in shape and take better care of my body. I can’t give my best to God if I’m not taking care of myself, and the temple of the Lord should be taken care of in the best way it can. Therefore, even though I probably won’t want to, I am going to get up every morning and after I spend time with God, I’m going to exercise for at least 30 minutes.
3. Foster better relationships with my girl friends.
Over break, I realized that I have done a sucky job of nurturing the relationships I have with people from home and at school, especially my female friends. These girls are my sisters in Christ and I honestly have been selfish with my time and don’t seek out to spend time with people, which is a lot more important than sitting in my room on pinterest. So I am going to make an effort to spend more time with those girls and getting to know them better.
4. Be more productive.
I was reading through my bible and through Proverbs 31, reading the Noble Wife part and I paused on verse 27 where it says, “She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” Basically, it’s saying that she doesn’t spend time doing nothing and so she isn’t wasting time and being unproductive. I waste a LOT of time in the day, watching tv or on facebook or whatever else, and I know that my time could be spent a lot better. So, I am going to try to be more productive with my time because it isn’t really my time, it’s God’s time and I’m throwing it away.
5. Give my best to everything I do.
This kind of incorporates everything, but I realized that God wants the best we have to offer, He doesn’t want us just doing decent on something or giving the bare minimum, so this year I am going to give my all in everything I do. With school work, with my relationships, in keeping my room clean, in taking care of my body, in reading my bible; everything. I don’t want to just do what needs to be done to get by, I want to go above and beyond, not to impress other people, but to glorify God through my actions and words by giving all of myself to Him.
I challenge you guys to make some of your own resolutions, or even doing some of the things I mentioned. It’s going to be hard and take work and effort, but I know I’ll be a better person because of it. I pray that through those things, God will use me to affect other people and show His glory to the people I come into contact with. I also am going to try and blog at least once a week, even the weeks that are busy or when I don’t have anything interesting to talk about, I am going to try. I apologize for the length of this post, but I hope y’all enjoyed it!
Well, until next time,
Emily
Through God’s eyes
Over the last couple of years, I’ve begun praying that God let me see His world the way He see’s it. To see all the hurting and broken people, and that at that same time, He break my heart for those people. This is something that has definitely been happening, sometimes even more so than I expected or was prepared for. If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s that when you pray for God to do something in your life or teach you something, He goes does. Oh how He does.
Today, I went onto the NPR website, as a part of my intro to the purpose of the church class, we were instructed to become more globally minded. To make ourselves aware of the happenings in the world, so I decided to start listening to NPR. Sure, it makes me feel like I’m my grandparents (I only say this because they are the only people I’ve known to actually listen to NPR), but it’s been good. When I first went to their website today, I saw an article with a few words that popped out. Sex trafficking and California.
Well, this drew my attention immediately. I’ve heard about sex trafficking, and it is something that my heart breaks for. In fact, I first felt the call to missions while watching a video about sex trafficking in Cambodia. That’s the thing though, it was something that happened in Cambodia. Or Laos. Or India. But the United States? I couldn’t believe it, and I felt myself become sick as I realized that this is not something that happens in other places. It happens in our own country.
Being someone who is going into missions, I sometimes look too much to the world around us, and forget that there are broken people in my own backyard. So while I pray that God give me His eyes, I need to remember that He doesn’t stand in the US and look to every other country. He stands above it all and see’s everything. This means that I can’t sit here in my nice little dorm typing on my nice little computer and thinking about my nice meal I’m going to go have, and just sing la-ti-da, when I have this big fancy degree THEN I can help people. Or when I grow up, THEN I will share the love of Christ to people. No. I need to do that now. You need to do that now, whether you are in high school, college, or seventy years old. Age doesn’t matter, social status doesn’t matter, economic status doesn’t matter. And don’t say that because you don’t know another language or can’t go to a different country, that means you can’t help people and minister to them. It’s a load of crap. I say this all, including myself right along with it. Because I know I get this attitude sometimes and it is so dumb.
Now that I’m done ranting, I will say that I pray for myself and the church (by this I mean the body of believers who claim to follow Christ), to become more aware and that we DO something. No more sitting around and twiddling our thumbs. I pray God awakens a fire within each of us, a passion for His lost and hurting people. I pray also that we are able to see through God’s eyes, to see others the way our Lord does.
For anyone interested in the article I talked about, here is the link:
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140291208/calif-community-takes-action-against-sex-trafficking
Transparency
Well, I don’t really know how to start this aside from saying that I am someone who has a hard time releasing emotions in a healthy way, if at all, so I’m using this post to do that.
Last week I began the process of trying out for cheerleading at LCU. To be honest, when I was looking for a college to go to, the fact that LCU had cheerleading was a deciding factor. There were others, like that it was close to home and have one of the best missions programs, but that was there also. So I went to the cheer clinics, I learned the cheers. I stretched until everything hurt, and then some more. I worked on jumps, practiced my round off. Then try outs came, and I was nervous, but after I performed, I felt good about it. I felt that things had gone well, and all my nerves had been calmed. A half hour or so after try outs ended, I received the phone call that told me if I made the squad or not. And I didn’t. Even now I still don’t know what to say, except that it sucks. I’m upset and a little mad. I feel like it’s a stupid thing to be upset about, but I am. I’m trying really hard to be happy for my friends who made the team, because it’s an exciting thing for them, but I am a person who struggles with jealousy, in this situation is no different. I’ve cried, a lot. To several people. Even in my chemistry class while trying to take a test. I was so stressed and upset that I forgot half of what I was being tested on, even though this is my third year of taking chemistry (I didn’t fail, I just enjoy it). I completely blanked on the answers and started crying. It was dumb and made me mad at myself. I know there are people out there who don’t have food or clean water, who’s parents are dying or are being persecuted. And here I am, upset because I didn’t make a cheerleading team. Dumb right? Yet I still feel like crap.
And then there’s this other thing, that is being brought on by my upsetedness and also makes me more upset. Now, I haven’t seen a doctor or professional or anything about this, it’s just based off of readings and conclusions my mom and I have come to. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t release my emotions. From the time I was a little kid, I would bottle everything up inside. I didn’t know how to talk about it or I felt like other people didn’t care to hear about my problems. Or I felt that I had to be the strong one, because other people depended on me, so I couldn’t break down. This isn’t a good thing, I’ve found out. In fact, it can be a very bad thing. For years I thought I had depression because there would be times when I just got sad. Life could be great, and I would feel miserable. My body would ache and my heart would physically hurt. Sometimes I’d just want to sleep or bake (something I do when sad). It could last anywhere from a couple hours to a few days, though crying usually made it go away.
A year ago, I talked to my mom about it, and she then talked to her mom about it, because there’s history of that in my family. My grandma said that it sounded to her like the effects of anger repression, which she had dealt with herself. Now, apparently this whole not sharing your feelings thing can be seriously detrimental to your physical health. It can lead to headaches, insomnia, stomach pains, ulcers, increased anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. Now, obviously I don’t have all of those, not even most of them. But it does provide an explanation for the times that I feel depressed, and why crying helps. It’s a sucky thing, and I really hate it. Since realizing that, I have gotten better at sharing with people when I’m upset or sad, but I still sometimes keep it in. What really sucks is that all of the pent up emotions from when I was a kid and throughout my life, are pushed so far down that even sharing the stuff that upsets me now, isn’t going to make it go away. I can’t remember all the things I’ve pushed aside, so I can’t release the buried emotions from them.
Now, this is something that a select few people know about (well, now anyone can know about it since it’s been posted on the internet), but I just really felt that I needed to share this. I don’t want this to be an oh everyone let’s feel bad for Emily and give her our sympathy thing, because it’s not that way at all. I partly am posting this to just get some things off my chest, but also to be transparent. One of the biggest problems in the church community is how closed off we are from each other. If we have something going on, we either just tell a couple close friends or no one at all. And not only is this harmful to the person, but also to other people. Sometimes, there will be someone else going through the same thing (or very similar) and they just don’t know how to talk about it. They feel alone and like no one will understand, so they bury it. But, if even one or two people decided to open themselves up a little, to be real with people, then others will begin to feel comfortable doing the same. Then we can be a real community, rejoicing with each other in the happy moments of life, and mourning together when things aren’t going as hoped. We will truly be one body of believers. So, if any of you reading this has something going on that you just want to get off your chest, please leave a comment. You don’t have to, but you can.
As for me, I am focusing on the Lord. I am pushing myself into prayer, trying to find what it is that he has planned for me instead of being a Red Lion cheerleader. I don’t know what it is right now, and that sucks. But I know there is something, I just need to keep myself open to it. I also am finding myself incredibly grateful for the people God has placed into my life, because they have helped more than I’m sure they know. I am thankful for my wonderful mother, who is always supportive and loving and encouraging. She’s my best friend, which is not something most daughters can say, and I thank the Lord that I can.
Now that I’ve rambled on for more than you care to have read, I’ll end this post with this:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Broken hearted
As I sat today in my intro to the purpose of the church class, I started feeling nauseated and short of breath, my chest felt compressed and no matter how hard I tried to take a breath, it didn’t feel like I was breathing. My professor was telling us of his trip this summer to the Congo, where he stopped in Rwanda first. While there he and his daughter went to these buildings filled with the bones and mummified bodies from the 1994 genocide in this country. He then continued telling us a little about what happened there, and how evil in this world really exists. We watched a video where a speaker and author, Gary Haugen, asked what is the significance of the number 20,000?
a) The number of participants at the conference where he was speaking.
b) The number of children taken into forced prostitution each week around the world.
c) 1/500th of the children held illegally in bonded slavery in India.
d) The number of people murdered each day during the worst weeks of the Rwandan genocide.
e) All of the above.
My heart breaks when faced with these hard facts. I felt physically ill to think of these people. I sat in my chair and cried out to God, asking him why. Why are these children being broken and beaten down? Why do thousands of children live parentless? Why are people starving to death daily? Why is no one doing anything about it? And mostly, why am I doing nothing about this? My God cares for these people, His heart breaks even more so than mine, when He sees what is happening. I think His heart is also angered to see that those of us who call ourselves believers, followers of Him, do nothing about His broken and lost children.
I left class and returned to my dorm, where I broke down into tears. I thank God for breaking my heart for the things that break His, and I praise Him for giving me His eyes to see His hurting people. Then I asked Him to show me what I can do, because I simply can not do nothing. I still don’t know what it is that I will do, but I do know that prayer is where I will start. I challenge you all to do the same, become prayer warriors for the broken, the desolate, the hungry, the mourning, the unbelievers, the parentless, the jobless. I believe in the power of prayer. God’s people are our people, and by being Christians, they become our responsibility. Peter Wagner wrote, “Once you decide to ask Jesus Christ to take control of your life, involvement in world missions is no longer optional.” You can’t claim to follow God and then stay in your bubble. If you are claiming to follow God, then you are modeling your life after Jesus. And do you know what Jesus did? He hung out with the prostitutes and the lepers, he played with children and ate with tax collectors. He cared for the people that no one else would talk to, He loved them.
So today I am praying that the hearts of Christians be broken in a way that moves them to action. I pray that you see the needs of this world, and do something about it. I pray that we may pray without cease for the people of this world.
If you are looking for specific ways to pray, here are a couple of websites that have daily or weekly prayer needs that can be emailed to you.
Somethings else you could do, is find a specific group to pray for daily. Perhaps your heart breaks for the babies that are being aborted, for children who are being sexually trafficked, for the poor, for orphans or widows. Find something that God has made heavy on your heart, and keep them in your prayers daily. Another thing that I think every American especially should do, is to become more globally aware. Watch the news, read the newspaper. Get to know what is going on in the world, because there is a heck of a lot more to this earth than just the United States, and as Christians, we should be aware of the things happening to God’s people.
I leave you with that today, be open hearted and may God bless your day.
Emily
The Dandelion Effect
This past week I was on vacation visiting relatives, so away from my friends back home. I sat and watched facebook, feeling my heart get heavier with every post of someone moving. It’s hard to watch people who I’ve grown so close to, posting about their new dorms or whatever it may be. I know they are all excited about this, and I am too. For the most part. The part of me that isn’t excited is the part that knows my friendships with these people will never be the same. I won’t see them every week at church, or go to a movie with them. For a couple of those friends, I won’t see them at school every day like I did this past year. We are all moving in different directions, which is what brings me comfort. I’m calling it the dandelion effect, though that probably is some other scientific thing.
Over the past several years, most of the friends whom I’m referring to have been growing in our church and town. We are soaking in the teachings of God through our roots, and pushing upwards as we grow closer to Him. However, as much as we’ve flourished and shared our joy and happiness in Champaign-Urbana, we are only covering a small portion of the world. So now, we have reached the point when it’s time for us to spread. In a way, college is the wind that blows the dandelions seeds in hundreds of directions. And just like those seeds, we are being pushed all over, being separated from each other and sent on our own paths. Over the next week or two, we will all land in our own, new location. Our seeds will start to take root and we will begin the process all over again, building new communities and friendships. And with the nourishment that we all received from each other and the different mentors in our lives, we will be able to spread God’s love and grace to every corner of the world.
So, even though it saddens me to part from some of my closest and dearest friends, I know it is for the best. If we all stayed in one location, we wouldn’t be spreading the good news as we’ve been instructed. I pray that we have strength and courage, to follow the Lord’s callings, in the little things and the big things. I pray that we find peace in the midst of all this change. And I pray most of all, that we cling to God and His word through everything, never losing sight of what it is that we are here for.