Deciding.

This blog could not have a more perfect title.
Deciding.

First of all, I am deciding that I am no longer going to make excuses for my intermittent blogging. It just is and will be that way for the time being. I decide to no longer make excuses or false resolutions. The blogs will come in their own time.

I am deciding what college I'm going to attend next year, or I guess more like trying to decide/see where I get in/wait on the Lord/thinking about the whole thing way too much. I have the choice; I can decide to worry - where, how much, how will I pay for it, where does God want me - or I can rest. And just be still.

I am deciding to obey God's voice and re-apply to Tapawingo for the upcoming summer. This decision has resulted in peace and a great sense of contentment.

I am deciding to live my life the way I live it. Every day is a choice; who will I follow? Who will I converse with? Who will I love? Who will I live for? What is my purpose? How do I react to those around me? What are my priorities?

I have made so many decisions in my life - and unfortunately I know a lot of them were the wrong ones. I have decided time and again to give into sin; bitterness, anger, selfishness. I have failed to tame my tongue, decided to speak foolishly. I have chosen to hurt, to anger, and to provoke. I have chosen to run rather than confront. I have chosen foolishly on countless occasions.

I have chosen grace - fled from sin and into the arms of Christ - after turning my back to Him. I have chosen to uplift, to encourage, to support, and to love unconditionally. This is the life I want to live.

I am deciding to follow Jesus with my life, even though there are so many unknowns in that decision.
I choose to find peace. To be patient. To wait. To find solace in. To surrender. To rest.

Spending.

I apologize, not only to my readers but to myself, that it has been ages since I have blogged. It is a discipline that, although difficult, is worth cultivating, and I feel I have struggled to achieve a daily discipline for blogging.

So today is quite a day for me. I have been forbidden to eat all day as I go to the gastroenterologist tomorrow for an upper and lower endoscopy. In layman's terms, I am going to the stomach doctor so they can put me out with anesthesia and then look up my butt and down my throat. Super fun, right? The best part is that as I type this I am in the midst of drinking 64 ounces of Berry Rain Gatorade filled with an entire bottle of Miralax. Woot woot! I get to spend my Monday night pooping out just about everything I've ever eaten. P.S. sorry to be graphic and/or offensive, there's just no other way to put it. I will literally be spending my night with my new bffl, the porcelain god himself.

So now that you have been informed of this loveliness, I digress onto my "contemplations" of the week...

I feel as if in my life, I've been going through the motions of each day, and maybe this sounds off, but I don't want my life to ever be reduced to merely living. I want my life to be purposeful. To possess great meaning. To encourage. To challenge. To transform.

I just finished reading through Hebrews and James, and was challenged a boatload. Hebrews 4:14-16 was a particular verse that stuck out to me..."Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. " These verses have been challenging to me in that my relationship with God should be so intimate that I may approach Him firsthand, at His very throne. He is a high priest so far above me, but He has lowered Himself to my level - OUR level - so that we may CONFIDENTLY come before Him with our requests and desires. And He just gives us more grace (James 4:6a).

Also, James 4:4-10 has both challenged and convicted me of areas of weakness in my life.
⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
   “God opposes the proud
   but shows favor to the humble.”
 ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

So many times I have chosen and will choose myself and the world over God. I love gratifying my own desires. I am a friend to the world, A close friend of mine was just sharing with me how torn she feels at times between her own earthly wants and her desire to please God simultaneously. I'm sure all of us who know Jesus have been there a thousand times, at that exact state of ambivalence. But we need to submit to God, and we also need to have the DESIRE to submit to Him. A pastor once shared with me that "we worship what we desire." If my live, my daily living, is ascribing worth to money, then it is because I desire money. I want it. I crave it.
If my life, my daily living, is ascribing worth to Jesus - to honoring His name and making Him known, to emulating His beauty and His actions here on this earth - then it is because I desire Him. I want Him. I crave Him. HE is the one I want.

I challenge you, any reader out there, to think truly about what it is you worship. What or who it is that you are truly desiring. I know for me, I am selfish; my desire is to please my flesh with empty foolishness that will never satisfy. The Lord has been challenging me with the question, "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?" (Isaiah 55:2). And it makes sense...

Why would I ever spend money on what is not bread, and labor on what does not satisfy?
I do every single day.

Loosening.

So I am in the midst of reading a hideous novella called Heart of Darkness for the English class I am taking (and am enthralled with, btdubs); however, this novella...well, to put it bluntly, it's incredibly dull and it basically sucks. Not that Joseph Conrad isn't a brilliant writer; his use of language is absolutely incredible. But the plot...the narration...the endless stream of words on every page...is driving me insane. Having to read 50 straight pages of it doesn't help much either, for that matter. P.S. the novella centers on the corruptibility of humanity...personally, to add to the desperation of the situation, I'm just not really feeling that depressing theme.

That being said, I find myself escaping the misery that is Heart of Darkness and entering into a world of rest; aka blogging. Ah. Deep breath. Hence the title of this blog...loosening. Technically, I suppose it would be loosening UP, but of course I could never forsake the way I've been titling each post. Heaven forbid I stray from my own archetype.

This is one of those moments I wish I was hysterically funny, and could write a super witty blog that my massive fan club would relish and enjoy. But as that is clearly not going to be the case, I still want to keep this blog lighthearted. And I shall, to the best of my ability.

I am enthralled by some of the simplest things in life. I feel like we (note including myself here), in the business of our everyday lives, become so overwhelmed by the task at hand that we cease to notice the beautiful, intricate details. Like a physics teacher going off on a (hilarious) bitter harangue about American gas mileage. Or the blessing of being able to give a struggling family a special gift. Or a beautiful smile from a friend that we so often take for granted.

In our stress, we fail to notice this brilliance that God has blessed us with undeservedly. We do not enjoy the immeasurable beauty we see every day. It could be as simple as a pianist's melody we've heard or a stellar quote we've read. I know I get so caught up in the ugliness of life - illness, schedules, studying - that I overlook all the blessings God has given me just because He wanted to.


He loves us, and out of that love comes the desire for us to thrive - to be lifted up on the heights (Habakkuk 3:19) and given more than we could ever hope for.

So inhale. Relish. Delight. Enjoy. Rest. Make the most of this life, and cherish each intricate detail that the Grand Weaver has to beautifully knit together.

Back to Heart of Darkness I return...with a new prospective of hope for all the details that it holds.

Failing.

I feel that I have titled this post so strongly that I may as well just publish it as simply as that - failing. Thanks for reading, folks, I have failed and that's it :)
Of course I'm far too wordy to leave it at that, so I will elaborate. The first reason for this title is that I have failed at blogging, due to the fact that I've been failing at a lot of things as of late. I know it's probably been crushing to my massive fan club of maybe 7 people that even know this blog exists, and for that I apologize. I adore blogging but have been in such a dark place that blogging has seemed like a lot more of a burden to me than it should have. However I certainly regret not making it a priority, as writing on here seems to put me at ease. It is such a beautiful way to exhale and express what is in my heart.

So yes, once again, I have failed. I have allowed the stress of life to overwhelm me. I have put too much stock in perfectionism, in pouring myself into school work, that I have taken no time for myself to just be in the presence of God. I have spent all my free time either applying to colleges or sleeping because I have successfully worn myself out. My weekends seem to be the only brief moments of oxygen in an otherwise carbon dioxide-filled ocean. I do not fault anyone or anything for this...yes, my schedule is busy, but there are many with busier schedules, higher stress levels, and more pressure placed upon them. But I put so much pressure on myself. I am the problem. I am the one who pushes myself to feeling inadequate so that I must perform with more excellence and more hard work. This only exhausts me and leaves me feeling completely drained. Just today I laid down for a quick rest and slept for 3 hours straight, afterwards still needing to drag myself out of bed.

I'm a mess, and I know exactly why...
My priorities are not in order.
My first priority has been schoolwork; working hard at studying, reading, etc. - and it is sickening to me, as senioritis has completely overtaken me. Other "duties" such as work, exercise, and practice have also been my priorities. Farther down on the list have been my family, myself, and my Jesus. When the One who is most important to me is appearing low on the list, we know we have a problem.

So tonight, I heard a song that literally brought me to tears. I was feeling overwhelmed - exhausted and sick, with plenty of homework left and an exercise class to teach - but as I left the house, this song on the radio was perfect as I drove through the pouring down rain. It is an older song, called "Better than a Hallelujah" by Amy Grant and these lyrics particularly stood out to me.

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

I have felt miserable, I have been a mess, and my heart has been broken. I have felt empty, and as I poured that out to the Lord tonight, He thought it was beautiful. More beautiful than a hallelujah. Because my tears were not a show; I wasn't merely singing words on a screen or reading through my Bible mechanically. I was giving Him my heart, my pain, my selfishness and sin, and asking Him to be my everything. For the umpteenth time I asked Christ to take the wheel, because whenever I start steering, I end up exhausted and feeling like my time has been wasted on this world rather than storing up treasures for eternity.

So there's where I'm at. And I can honestly say I know I'll be back here sooner than before, because I'm ready to be. I'm ready to make this a priority because I know it is healthy.
I apologize for the lack of inspiration or insight in this post; tonight you just get to hear my heart.
So here's to honesty, to being authentic, and to constant brokenness. May we only grow ever closer to Christ in our inability to do it by ourselves.

Pour out your miseries to Him. He thinks that's more beautiful than a melody.
Make Him your first priority.

Convicting.

I think I should just get right out there and say this:
I hate it when God convicts us of something.

The ways in which He does this can range from subtleties that could easily be overlooked to billboards shouting out what God is really trying to say to you. Be warned, friends - when you hear a particular verse repeatedly, you are in danger of being convicted, or taught a lesson by the Lord. As beautiful as these times are, they are often some of the most challenging.
Why is this, might you ask? Why are these times so trying to us?

The answer is simple: God is showing us that we are far from perfect in the state we are in, and that we must be continually transformed in order to be made complete in Him.

What does that look like?

Pain. Because transformation IS pain.
We love being in our little boxes of comfort and calm, all snuggled up in our weaknesses and failures. We hate being torn out of those spots where we feel right at home.
But news flash - this earth, these bodies - this is not our home.

We were not made for here. That is why we are always longing for something more, but we can't put our finger on what that "more" is - because we haven't experienced it yet.
Because we were made for something more, something greater, something deeper, God convicts us. He allows us to go through the flames so that we might be refined. He wants us to be polished and pure so that we may fully reflect His beauty.

So I hate being refined. And although I ask the Lord to make me more like Him, in all honesty I don't really like the pain it takes to get there. But you know what?
God is teaching me to rejoice in my weaknesses, delight in my hardships, just like Paul did (see 2 Corinthians 12).

Of course, I say all this because God has been convicting me of something recently, and also of course, I'm loathing it.
Because conviction means there is a need for change. It means I have not been glorifying God as I should be, that I have been failing to give Him the worship He deserves.

I've been convicted of this simple truth: I have made myself my first priority.
I spend so much time worrying about me, my needs, my thoughts, my desires, my problems, that my focus on God has been minimized, as has my focus on giving myself to ministries and relationships.

The verse I've been hearing endlessly (which is basically a blowhorn declaring that God has been convicting me) is James 1:17. "Every good and perfect thing is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

EVERY good and perfect thing is from ABOVE...NOT of myself...I am nothing and can produce nothing that is good in and of myself. I am not worth glorifying.
My Father is UNCHANGING. I change all the time - my mood, my desires, my passions - and so does everyone around me. The only constant in this life is Jesus Christ, and everything He is.
But still, I make myself my first priority. I somehow still think there is something good in me that deserves my utmost attention and focus.
Epic fail, right?
Welcome to the human race, Sydney. We will never be perfect this side of heaven.

So this is my challenge to you: As difficult as it is, ask God to convict you. Ask Him, the great Potter, to mold you like clay into His image. Ask Him to show you how you can better glorify Him, how you can better devote each action to His work.
Is it dangerous? You bet. Will it hurt to be transformed? Absolutely. Because I guarantee you He will answer your prayer in ways so high above your own (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Transformation by the Creator means that God loves us too much to leave us where we are in our imperfections. He wants to sharpen us so that we can be used by Him and beautify us so that we can reflect Him.

So look for those verses that keep re-appearing.
Because God is on the move, and something radical is coming your way.
Will you invite Him to transform you today?

Living.

I am currently in the midst of a great book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It is one of those books I've been told for ages that I absolutely must read, so after pretending to have read it for quite a while, I decided I would actually read it. Turns out, I am just like all my friends who recommended it to me - I love it.

I'm not trying to advertise the book by summarizing it or talking it up - if you're interested you can just go out and buy it. But I am here because this simple book has taught me a whole lot about God, and what a relationship with Him looks like on its purest, most genuine level.

There is a quote in the book that really stands out to me. In its context, Don is writing about a great friend of his named Andrew who is actually a flaming liberal. But the man is living for the one and only Jesus Christ, and is doing this by literally feeding the hungry. This man is genuinely living like Jesus did by putting His very words into practice in the world around us.
"Andrew would say dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something, Andrew would say, is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, or recognition. We live for what we believe, Andrew would say."

These words are true. And because these words are true, my life is not testifying to much. If I am living what I believe in the inmost depths of my soul then what I believe is that my life revolves around me, and that God is often much less important than my own "needs." He frequently ends up on the back burner of my stove of a life, on which my own needs are constantly in a boiling pot on high.
If my life is a testament to what I believe, my life is not saying much about what I believe in most passionately at all.

I once heard a speaker talk about how we should "ooze Jesus." Ooze is kind of a gross word when you think about it, but when something is oozing it is absolutely evident because is it OVERFLOWING. If my life is a testament to my belief in Jesus Christ then you bet I want to ooze Jesus - out of every single pore in my body. I want my life to proclaim the freedom I have as a result of my relationship with my Creator.

I think Andrew is right. I think dying for something is easy when compared to living for something. Because in both senses, you are giving up your life.
But in the former, most people may not even take the time to notice what you are living for.
Dying, on the other hand...well, everyone will know you; you will doubtlessly be recognized and glorified for your sacrifice.

This brings me to a deeper question...why do we do the things we do?
If I am living for Jesus, is it for the glory, the recognition, the praise?
Is it for the fruit I am priveleged to see as a result of my labor but in no way deserve to see, nor is it promised to me?

I want to be living for Jesus for one reason:
Because I love Him.

I want my sole motive for giving my life into His hands to be because I want Him, all of Him, every day, moment by moment.


So think about it. What are you living for?

Beginning.

So I decided today that since I am absolutely enthralled by writing - it's all in the experience, not the product - I should make a blog. Of course, I have journals, but I wanted a way to express my emotions and thoughts publicly. I mean, why not, right? Who ever said just because their my thoughts that they should be kept secret?

This is actually an idea I've been convicted about recently. Just because I have a personal, intimate relationship with the Creator of the universe doesn't mean I should keep that to myself either, right?

I like the idea of beginning, of starting fresh. And that's exactly what I'm doing by beginning this blog. Of course, I could re-create myself via this very computer screen, but that's not the point. The point is to express my contemplations, which can at times be extremely complex (or maybe just confusing). But God has blessed me a whole lot in that He has given me the undeserved ability to get to know Him. That in and of itself is pretty wild. Because of this knowledge of Him and love for Him He teaches me more about Himself every day. Not a day goes by that I don't see Jesus in the world around me. So why am I not screaming from the rooftops this beauty that has been unveiled before me?

So here it is. My first ever blog. Maybe I'll never literally get up on a rooftop and scream about Jesus, but I'd like to display who He is with my life - and maybe this blog is just another step in sharing His truth.

There is, and always will be, so much more to come.