Nothing Else Matters

All the time I forget how blessed I am to be alive! It is amazing to me where God has brought me and what he wants to do with my life--the fact that he even wants a part of it at all. I'm not perfect, but God doesn't care. He takes all the parts of you--the good parts, the bad ones, all your passions, the things you want to hide, everything--and each day he's molding all of that into the person you are becoming. And hopefully, if we listen right and try to follow best we can, we become who he wants us to be. I wasn't so sure of that before, but I know that if I'm going to be the best possible version of Kristin White that I can ever be, God is going to have a big part in my growing and changing. Without him, I've got nothing.

I've just been blessed so much with friends that are incredibly strong in their faith, and they've rubbed off on me with that. And for that, I am so truly thankful. I grew up in the church, but I feel like I was born with this mutating rebellion chromosome. I was always at church, my parents did the right thing, I served and I attended, didn't generally get into much trouble. But if I look at the path I was headed toward at the end of high school, I am still amazed at where I might be right now. Isn't funny how God calls us? High school felt so dramatic and huge to me--everything was the end of the world, and my day to day decisions felt like a huge stamp on who people thought I would be. But really, why did I care?? And HOW I have changed. I know some of my experiences aren't the greatest, and they definitely aren't what people in church might like to hear, but they are part of me. And I've learned from them. Lord knows that I will mess up again, but I really feel like now...I'm trying. And it feels so good.

We get this idea of what church is, you know? It's like we put it in this box, and that's all that church can be. And when I say church, I mean God. Because generally nowadays, people think of the two being one (and that is a whole different story, completely!). Church was what I was "supposed" to do. And so I went and I talked to my friends, and I served in sunday school, and I belonged to a dgroup. But mostly, church felt to me like it was about the all things I wasn't supposed to do. And there wasn't much beyond that. And even with that list of things off limits, I still did a handful of them. It was like not being allowed to do something, just made it that more exciting to try. So what was the point of church, for me? Why did I keep going? I could rattle off scripture, I knew the books of the Bible forward and backward, I felt like things were fine. But I didn't KNOW Christ. I'm searching and learning and desperately seeking him now, and I'm still not sure I'll ever really know him. How can I know something bigger than the universe? And why, seriously why, does he want to be such a big part of my little life?

Somehow I was pulled out of the church daze I found myself in, the masquerade I attended once a week. And somehow God is putting changes in my heart that affect my lifestyle. Really, it's amazing. I'm so scared but I'm so excited at the same time, and I never honestly thought I'd feel this way. Tonight, it's a normal Thursday night. I didn't go on a mission trip or to some camp and come back on a spiritual high. God makes me feel like there's nothing else I can do--that's how helpless I am compared to who he is, and what he can do all around me. But what's strange is that I love this feeling. I am so helpless. But he wants to help me. What is this love? How did we receive this grace? Just... why?

Because he loves us. And he meets us right where we are. And he scoops us up. 

And then nothing else matters but to return the favor. Or come as close as our humanly nature will let us be.

Unwise.

Someone once said that gray hair is a sign of wisdom. But I am not wise. I am only 19, but I am quickly aging--our bodies are all quickly aging, day by day. By the time I am thirty, I will have a full head of gray hair. Naturally, of course. This won't stop me from putting a little fake color in it :) We are all aging day by day, and the hope would be that we are also getting wiser. Gray hair doesn't make me wise, but the days that pass could be.

It's my goal to learn something new each day. And today, the things that I learned may not be the most beneficial, to me or to anyone in general, but I learned them. And tomorrow holds new things out there for me to learn; I just have to seek them. Because I feel like God has given us so much to explore and to become, and I hate wasting that. If we took even half the idle time we sit through in our lives, imagine what all we could do with it! There are hours upon hours where we mindlessly watch TV or sit on Facebook, and look at how much more we could do. As humans, it is nice to have some down time, I know. But really, how much do we need?

God has just blessed us with so many big and interesting things, even small and detailed things that we can go and learn about. New people each day to learn about. To love and to grow with. But we may never know.

Gray hairs are not wisdom. Wisdom comes from God, as do all good things. And days passed are not wisdom. But they could be, if we pass them right. 

Sticky But Sunny.

I do not adapt well to change. Not big change, after I've gotten so comfortable. I wish I could take this year and wrap it up in a box to carry around with me, before I forget everything that has happened. I feel like a completely different person, in every aspect and every area of my life. I knew I wanted to go away to school, but something bigger than me knew way more than I did how important this move would be for who I am, and who He wants me to be :)

Outside today it's really mucky and humid, sticky and damp. But when the sun peeks through the clouds, you realize today couldn't be a more beautiful day. That's how I feel today--bittersweet. Sticky yet sunny. I'm caught in one of those in-between places again that I find sometimes, today wanting so badly just to go home but never wanting to say goodbye to this place and these people, even for a couple of months. You become who your friends are, so they say. But I want to keep these friends and take them with me. I want to be everyone I meet and let those back home see what difference has come about in me in this last year. I don't feel like the same person, and I don't know whether or not they will see that. And if they do see it, I'm not sure exactly how they'll react to it. I won't be doing some of the same things as before (or so I hope), and I won't even be looking at things the same way. I really hope I don't start to change based on the company I'm with, and I hope that they can accept that...

I just fell in love with a few different things this year that I didn't expect to fall in love with. One of them is being overly excited about people, hugging all the time, and trying to be spontaneous. Not that I was boring before, but I tended to invert all my emotions. When I got excited, I got REALLY excited. But now I see more opportunities and reasons to be joyful every day. And another thing is that I was never a hugger. I remember telling my grandma when I was young that I wanted to her to give me high-five's. Yes, I was THAT child. And how horrible was that to say to your grandma! But hugs mean the world--human touch is all we really are longing for when it comes down to it. And though I'm still not a really big hugger, and most of the time I just give extremely awkward hugs, I feel like it's something we all need to do more of every day to reassure people how much we love them. And the last thing was trying to be spontaneous. I've never really been that person either, but I'm falling more and more in love with spontaneity. Who says you can't just pick up and do something? A lot of this has to do with the fact that I am slowly but surely pushing the importance of my hours of sleep to the bottom of my to-do list. Sleep will catch up to you, I feel like. There are so many other things to pick up and do.

These are just a couple of trivial things I've learned this year. Don't even get me started on how I've grown with God. Leaps and bounds, leaps and bounds. It's incredible the path that I was headed toward and the one I am struggling to stay a part of right now. And I never realized the difference in the rewards, or my responsibility to purposefully share my faith and be there for others. It is a guiding light, and they don't just say that without meaning it. I could not have gotten through this year without my faith, and now I can honestly say that I don't know who I would be without Christ in my life. I can only pray that this summer somehow this change will really thrive within me and help me be there for those I haven't in past years. I want to love and to live, with purpose. I don't want to leave, but part of me feels like this summer has so much potential. This summer could change someone's life, my own life. Anything. God is calling me back home. And even though I may not really want to leave here at the moment, the time will soon come when I get to come back.

It's been a blessing.