Originally Posted on June 12, 2020
Hey everyone! I know that the last few months or so has been a crazy freight train for many including myself. I know it has been a long time since I posted something on my blog. When my college went online, my work load doubled, so my schedule became pretty crazy. When I finished school in the beginning of May, I thought about posting on my blog, but I really struggled with the idea. I had something all written out about prayer, and I was ready to post it, but something just didn’t feel right to me, so I chose not to post it. I wanted to talk about what is going on in the world, but I didn’t know what exactly to post or if I should at all. When I thought about all the brokenness and struggle in the world, I was speechless. I had no words. But the one thing that I did have was emotions. I listened and watched the reactions of others, and I felt it all. I could see where each point of view came from, whether I thought it to be right or not. All I could do was listen and empathize. I had to walk through that and it was difficult. It still is. I may come back to this in another post, but right now I want to talk about what God has shown me recently.
When the quarantine first began, I didn’t feel like my life had changed all that much. While my school did switch to doing online work and I moved back home, I was still busy and consumed with school. I was also able to meet with some girls from school each week virtually as we continued going through the book of John. I was so busy with school, I didn’t really have time to think about anything else. It wasn’t until school ended that things began to get real for me.
A lot of people had been talking about what God has taught them during this time of slowing down. I thought really hard and realized I didn’t have an answer. Life had seemed to be pretty normal and hadn’t really slowed down for me until recently. I didn’t know what God was trying to teach me in that time or if he had been trying to teach me something at all. I was listening and asking, but there wasn’t any answer. I realized that maybe God just hadn’t revealed anything to me yet. I moved on, continuing to listen.
It wasn’t until this last month that I began to struggle deeply. With the world continuing to spin into chaos, I took some time trying to figure out what my goals are and where my life is right now. This was the beginning of me walking into a dark cave. The root of it all was comparison and expectation. I compared my goals, my schooling, finances, body, singleness, spiritual life, etc. Literally almost anything you can think of, I compared where others my age are at in life to where I am. I’ve fallen to comparison in my life before with certain things, but never anything like this. Not with comparing all of those things all at one time. I reflected on it day and night, and it wasn’t pretty.
If I’m being brutally honest, there was one day that I told my mom with tears in my eyes that I just wanted to lay in bed and never come out. While I did not do that, I truly wanted to because of how bad I felt. I’ve never been in that state in my life, and I knew long before this that I never wanted to be “that person”. I felt ashamed because I felt like I hadn’t and wasn’t meeting the expectations of others. While those people had never voiced their expectations, I just felt that I knew what those expectations were. I knew that I had my own as well. The combination of others and my own expectations made it even worse. I reminded myself of what God says about me, rather than all of the expectations, but the feelings of loneliness and struggle still remained. On top of my internal struggle, I could feel myself taking on the emotional burden of hurt that was going on in the lives of some of the people closest to me.
Not too long after this, my mom and I made a trip to Virginia. It was renewing in some areas, but I could still feel what was there. The trip hadn’t made everything magically disappear. It just allowed me to take a step back and reevaluate.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that something began to click. In one of the bible study’s I am a part of, we are going through the book of Mark. One of the stories that we read was about when Jesus calms the storm. There were two specific verses that stood out to me here. “Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?’” (Mark 4:38). They said the magic words. Don’t you care? While during this time of struggle, I never flat out asked God this question, I knew this was the underlying feeling. When I prayed to God that he would just show me what I am supposed to do now and later in my life, when I prayed that if he wouldn’t reveal this to me that he would at least take away the deep emotional pain that was there, when I prayed that he would just show up, all of those prayers, the underlying question I asked was: Don’t you care?
Then Jesus calmed the storm. But then in the next verse, Jesus said, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40). Mic drop. Just like that it hit me, and I knew that was His answer to me. I read Jesus’ question again and realized the underlying fear that laid under the surface of the comparisons and expectations. I began to think about literally every hard trial I’ve faced. I thought about when I had to transfer high schools and move away. I thought about when I struggled for an entire year of immense physical pain and was diagnosed with a disease that I will have to live with the rest of my life. I thought about when I transferred to a new college. I could go on and on. But the bottom line is I remembered how God came through for me every single time. And each time he did, he came through on his timing and his terms. Not mine. And the same is true for me right now and what I’m struggling with.
God has a unique story for me just like he does everyone else. I cannot attempt to compare or meet the expectations of others or myself. I can’t do that to myself because I’m right where I need to be and doing what I need to do. I am following God. I am following his expectations of me and what he says about me.
Just before I began writing this blog post, the first song that came on my playlist was the song I Still Believe and it was the movie version that was sung by KJ Apa. I hit repeat, and I’ve been listening to this song for the last hour. I feel like this song matched perfectly with what I’ve been feeling. Even though I do not understand, and I can’t see my future story, I still believe that God has it perfectly written. I know this is something I’ll struggle with every once in a while, and I know that I’m still going through some deep emotions. But here is the good news. Every single time, I get to come back to God and walk with Him through that.
“Even though I do not understand, and I can’t see my future story, I still believe that God has it perfectly written”
Abundant Joy 