Lookin' UP!!!

Overall, this week has made me stressed, exhausted, cranky, confused, busy, and sore. Sometimes I feel as if I am drowning in my responsibilities. I can't get a grip on everything I need to get done. I'm unmotivated. Lazy. I feel out of touch with school. Home. God. As I lay here on my couch, pile of homework on the floor, dirty laundry in a basket, and agenda full of duties I should have done 3 days ago, squandering in my failure to accomplish everything, Jesus meets me. He meets me in the unexpected....He meets me in a surprisingly warm day. A game of HORSE. A new friend. A good song that stays in your head all day.

If I have learned anything in my college career, it's that no matter how sad.mad.hurt.depressed.alone.happy.peaceful.frustrated.broken I feel, God is there. Because God is not a feeling. And he doesn't not draw near to us because of how we are feeling. He walks with us. He hurts with us. He laughs with us. He IS with us. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year. And all the time in between.

So in your times of confusion, as you enter mid-terms and the heat of the semester, rather than looking at the massive amount of things that seem impossible to accomplish, look up. Look up because you have a great, big God smiling back down at you.

Someday my Prince will come...

Beside You

Sometimes you just find a song that speaks to you. You become obsessed with it, you listen to it on repeat, and maybe even find yourself applying the lyrics to your own life. At least that is what happens to me. Finding new, quality music is one of my favorite things, so I was floored when my good friend, Ann Beachy, shared the above song with me a few nights ago. Long story short, this song has been the soundtrack of my week.

I know that this blog is usually revolving around a scripture that has spoken to me, but this song has just really touched me. Besides, I'm a girl, and I'm a hopeless romantic at the end of the day (just ask my mom :)), and sometimes I just need me a GOOD love song. This is an exact description of "Beside You" by Marianas Trench.

As I have been reading through the Proverbs (which I just finished last night!!!), I have been learning a lot about what scripture has to say about being a Godly wife. Now I know that I am no where near becoming a wife, but I still feel God preparing me daily to become the woman I will need to be when I meet my husband. Love was designed by God. The greatest commandment deals with love for the Father, and I believe that God had a special special plan for love between a man and a woman as well. This kind of love is a unique love, shared only between two people. And as I have been learning about being a Godly wife, and therefore thinking about what that encompasses, it makes me so excited to meet a Godly man. The Godly man for ME. And I think that is why this song touched me so. "If your heart wears thin, I will hold you up, And I will hide you When it gets too much. I'll be right beside you. I'll be right beside you. I will stay. Nobody will break you." I love that chorus, because for me, it paints a picture of what a Godly relationship with a Godly man will look like. Support. Trust. Faithfulness. Comfort. A Partner. Someone to help carry your earthly burden. Lyrics like this, scripture like the Proverbs, A great big God with promises He WILL fulfill, equals one very excited daughter...waiting to meet her Prince :)

"I am coming undone"

What does it mean to follow Christ? Really? David Crowder says it perfectly in his song "You are my Joy." He says when the Holy Spirit's fire is burning within us, we "come undone." To come undone, we have to DIE. Not a physical death, but a spiritual death. The past week or so, there has been a constant theme of total surrender showing up around every corner in my life, whether it be sermons I hear, verses I read, songs I sing, or evidence I see in people's lives around me. And the more I am exposed to this idea of surrender, the more I am finding the peace it brings to my soul to know that my heart belongs to the Lord. But I am also learning that total surrender is not a one time thing that soon becomes a memory. It's a conscious, daily decision. There are so many situations in my life that I would love to take into my own hands, people I would love to make decisions for to make my life easier, and problems I want to solve my way, on my time. But that is not what I am supposed to do. Instead, God is placing me in a position where I have to make a decision. Every morning when I get out of bed, I have to decide. Is today going to be captained by Brittany or the Almighty. Days captained by Brittany rarely turn out well, (in case you were wondering) and these days I often go to sleep discouraged, frustrated, and spiritually starved. God doesn't just come into our lives one time at church camp and then give us a cheesecake of a life for the rest of eternity. No. When we make a decision to accept and follow Christ, we are committing to a daily death to ourselves so that we can serve Him and HIS ways, not our own. I'm not sure if this applies to anyone else right now, but it's something I have been dealing heavily with. Just taking my death grip off of my life and letting God take me and mold me into His plan rather than mine. It's not always easy or fun necessarily to step out into the unknown that is sometimes the will of God, but I can say that when I allow Him to have his way with my life, I end up more blessed and refreshed than I ever dreamed I would have been at the beginning. So with that, I challenge you, my friends and fellow siblings in Christ, that from now on when you wake up in the morning, start making conscious decisions to allow yourself to die, and God to take you on the wild adventure that is the Christian walk.