While I was on a walk through my sweet little neighborhood, I found a wildflower as I was coming through my back alley. The image of middle school me solemnly removing petals, one by one, is forever engraved in my memory. I will never forget wondering if I lived up to the standards of another human being, searching for the way to which I could make things right again. Now, rather than the too-loud and too-rough "he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me..." I can close my eyes and rest in the quiet whisper of
"He loves me,
He loves me,
He loves me."

It is hard to wrap our brains around heavenly love, a concept so foreign to many of us. The world sweeps us off our feet and it's hard to hold your ground when everyone around you is resting their hearts in the things that are tangible, things that make sense in our minds. We search for a security guard, someone who can post up at our heart's door and keep all of the "bad" things out. But what the world pushes isn't what we need; what we need is a foundational, strong, accepting, unwavering, willful, forgiving, accessible, definite, beautiful love. This is a love we only know by the Lord and the Lord alone. When the world describes love as transient and vastly superficial, a description of genuine truth is found in 1 John 3:1. It reads,

"See what great love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

I seriously love how excited John is about this verse. We should receive it with the same exclamation that it was written in. Jesus had just performed a miracle for the disciples by turning water into wine.  Like the most beautiful gem, the world can't even scratch the surface of the immensity of His love for us. We often underappreciate (or even devalue, if we're being honest) the truth that He calls us His children. We take the most beautiful gift possible and shove it under the carpet, hiding the depth of love that we know to be true. He, the Lord of the universe itself, knows me on a personal level and wants me to reach out to Him as an individual. And he wants the same from each and every one of us. One of my favorite worship artists, Steffany Gretzinger, describes the seemingly indescribable in her song "Cecie's Lullaby." Just like a father's love, God takes us in and doesn't give up on us. "Cecie's Lullaby" goes:

Call My name and I will answer
All you need is here inside My arms
Just breathe and you'll be safe and sound with Me

No one knows you better than Me
No one's been a better friend

So rockabye baby, come and rest
You've been tired lately
Lay your head down
Don't you think baby, I know best?
I've been a father for a long time

Call My name and I will listen
All you need is here inside My arms
Just sleep and you can find your rest in Me

I think this song is so beautiful because it's from God's point of view, and it's so raw. All we ever have to do is call to Jesus and we will feel His presence. In Pastor Chris's words, begin to seek God and He will seek you. The holy spirit is constantly with you; we just ignore it so much of the time. That's why whenever we get into those low places where we feel desperate and alone, we shouldn't. It's a constant tug-o-war between our minds and the will of the Lord for our lives. We will discover that He knows best, whether we listen to Him or he has to reveal it to us in the worst way. We have to get desperate. We have to beg him to soften our heart. Sometimes we just have to let go of our pride and lean into His love- hard.

This is especially hard for me because I'm so incredibly STUBBORN. I don't know why I can't just be patient and know that He ultimately rules over everything. The verse that constantly replays in my mind and often resides in sharpie on my hand is "His will, not mine." This is found in Matthew 26. In this particular chapter, the disciples had the last supper. After the supper, Jesus allowed himself to break to the father. The Message version of Matthew 26:36-38 describes Jesus's pain as agonizing. I don't know about you, but the thought of the son of the Father being in such sorrow that it causes him physical pain is a little shaking. The Word goes on to say, "Going a little farther, he fell with His face to the ground and prayed, "My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but you will." Jesus knew the river of suffering that stood in front of Him. Can you even fathom knowing that your followers would turn their back on you and you would have to go through all of that? It would be especially difficult knowing that your father called you to do it. Imagine your earthly father saying, "Honey I know you don't want to think about this, but everyone you love is going to turn their back on you. They are going to betray you. And then when you are alone and feeling so low, they are going to mock you, and then you will be tortured until you look death in the face. All of this is for the ones who scorned you; to seek them, to save them." Now imagine looking in the face of God and being told that. My mind can't even go there.

But that's what Jesus did. He faced the worst possible scenario one could possibly be put in on this Earth, and he did it for you and me. We shouldn't even be a mere thought in the Lord's mind; yet, here we are. I am a saved woman of God and He favored me with such grace and mercy that I can share this beautiful love story from my own lips. Sometimes, the mere truth of the story of Jesus's time here on earth overwhelms me. That the Lord crafted a beautiful life, carved out a wonderful community, just for it to be taken away for the sake of sinners. His will should be done. Always. No question about it. If I could italicize that twice, I would. Here the Lord took our sin out of the situation, totally out of the picture! Just like Jesus did here in the Garden of Gethsemane, we should fall to our faces and beg the Lord for His will to be unconditionally carried out in our lives. I have begun to pray this morning prayer daily. It goes something like this:

Lord,
This day is yours. It begins and ends with you.
Do with it what you will, even if that will does not align with mine
because you can see the bigger picture and I cannot.
Please grant me the means to use my gifts to the best of my ability
so that your vision for my life is carried out in the most beautiful of ways.
This is all for You, Lord, and help me remember that as I go throughout my day.
My body is Yours, along with my words, my belongings, my friends.
All for Your glory and my good.
Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough to enable me.
Thank you, Lord, for all that you have given me and will give me to bless others.
It's in Your holy and precious name I pray.
Amen.

Finally I just wanted to share with you a playlist that I have been listening to when I forget that no matter what feelings are fleeting, His immense love remains. Music is one of my favorite of the many simple reminders He gifts us with. I hope your week is filled with evidence of the Lord's all-encompassing love for you and your family in this holiday season!

Oh My Love: Spotify Playlist

     I'm sure that this has been written half a million times, but I will share what is on my heart anyway. Grades came out this morning and being the student that I am, I sat in bed mindlessly refreshing the page that would eventually have my grades posted... I even checked a couple of times earlier this week, just in case they appeared ahead of time. Today I asked myself this question: what if I didn't get the grades that I wanted- would that change me? Would that change how much Jesus loves me, or even my family or friends? The answer is no. My grades do not reflect my personal worth. My grades do not define me, The Lord does.

     Now I'm sure I know what you're thinking... I'm one to talk about how grades don't matter. I'll be the first to admit that I seek satisfaction and worth in my school work, and that's a huge flaw of mine that I'm striving to overcome. That's why I'm writing this. While I believe that as Christians we are to work to the best of our abilities to glorify Him through everything we do, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't get that A that I worked so hard to receive. There's nothing wrong with being humbled and reevaluating what is of most importance to us. My heart aches for those who lose their self confidence within their final grades. 2 Corinthians 12:10 says with his help, we find strength in our weaknesses. "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

      School work can be a heavy distraction from our personal relationship with Jesus. If making an A means growing apart from Him, then it isn't worth it to me. I let myself get carried away in my studies this past semester and devoted more time to temporary satisfaction than eternity with Jesus. Compared to the rest of my life, what grades I earn my freshmen year of college are, to be frank, meaningless. The grade you receive is part of His greater plan. "He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." So no matter if you make an A or a C, if you did your best and stayed on the right path towards God, He is proud of you.



     Draw near to Him throughout your studies, do your best, and never forget who gave you your abilities from the start.

I've experienced something since started college that I have never felt so heavily in my heart before, and that is loneliness. I think every student or young person can vouch for me here. Often I feel lonely even when I'm surrounded by people. I'm usually a very independent person, but sometimes being alone gets the best of me. Most of the time when I'm feeling lonely, it stems from jealousy and results in feeling lost and insecure, neither of which are the best kinds of feelings. I thought to write this post days ago, but I kept pushing the idea out of my head. But tonight after an amazing time with Elevation Worship with some of my friends, I realized that there are other people who get just as lonely, if not lonelier, than I do. So here I sit at 4 o clock in the middle of the night writing a post for whoever may stumble upon it.

     Hey friends! It's been a while; I know that... and I do apologize for that. A lot (like a lot lot) has been going on in my life lately. And today I'm going to let you have a peek inside my heart, which is not something that happens very often.

     I'm not even sure where to start right now, so I'll start here: on December 12, I had a bone removed from my foot. That sounds pretty crazy even to me so let me explain. My senior year of high school I struggled with severe pain in the ball of my foot. In January of 2014 it got to the point where I really needed to go to the doctor. They told me they didn't really know what was wrong but I needed to wear a carbon plate in my shoe so my pain wouldn't be so bad and my foot could heal properly. After about a month and a half I decided to get a second opinion since the pain hadn't improved whatsoever, so I went to Andrews Sports Medicine (because if they couldn't help me, no one could). I went to a sweet lady named Dr. Miner, and we discovered that I had a stress fracture in my sesamoid bone. A sesamoid is a small bone in the bottom of the foot that bears 50% of your body weight... I bet you didn't even know you had one. This sounds completely fixable and like a minor problem, right? I thought so too. It turns out to be a really rare injury that doesn't heal well, if ever. She put me in a boot because I absolutely refused to be in a cast for prom and graduation. With more and more visits, we discovered that I wouldn't be able to dance in my senior recital. This was devastating to me as I had been dancing for 14 years. If that wasn't bad enough, they told me that because I had gotten no where in a boot and physical therapy for three months and I would have to go to my last resort. I could either tough this out for, well, forever... or I could get the bone removed. So I went to consult the orthopedic surgeon Dr. Waldrop. I was told that the surgery might not even completely fix my pain, but I was desperate to get back to physical activity.

     Fast forward six months and you'll find me in the recovery room bawling my eyes out because I can't even make my way to the bathroom by myself... yep, that's been my life for the past month. I was pretty much on bed rest for two weeks because I couldn't get up without all the blood rushing to my foot. My surgery took blood, sweat, and tears to a whole other level. Luckily I had my sweet boyfriend waiting on me hand and foot (especially foot), and my family to support me as they always do. For two weeks I was in a splint. I then moved on to a cast for two weeks. The day that I was scheduled to move back into my dorm at UNA, I got my cast off and was boot bound once again. However; I still couldn't put ANY weight on my foot, and I started physical therapy soon after I got back to Florence. After a month of taking baths with my foot sticking out and scooting down the stairs on my bum I was supposed to face community bathrooms and a very hilly campus- non weight bearing! 

     I'll just leave the mental breakdowns I've had up to your imagination. As I'm sure you can assume, this surgery has taken a toll on literally everything that I do. I haven't driven since the beginning of December, I stay in a lot because of the amount of energy it takes to do anything, really... I can't do anything unless someone takes me there, which drives me crazy since I'm usually an independent person. I've had people point and laugh at me- granted, I did have to ride a knee scooter around campus. I've had to get classes changed because there are no elevators in one of the buildings. I've even had a teacher ask me every single day if my foot is healed yet because he just couldn't walk the 100 feet to the next building that our class was moved to. I've had to keep myself together more times than I can count. I've become somewhat of an introvert over the past month because I'm so self conscious of what people think of me, which is something that I haven't felt in a very long time. I feel like I have the self confidence of a 12 year old girl. But more importantly, I've gotten a taste of people who are handicapped or disabled every single day of their lives. Taking the long way to go up the ramp isn't always easy; the stares from unknown people aren't easy to ignore. Asking rides and feeling like the most annoying person in the whole world is so disheartening. While my friends have been awesome and so encouraging, I know that I've been really difficult to relate to lately.

     The point of this isn't to tell you some kind of sob story but to tell you that whatever you may be going through, you can overcome it. No matter how hard things get or how much you want to hide away from the world, you'll never be able to hide from Jesus. Reading my bible or doing my devotional or even listening to worship music while I get ready in the mornings has been my complete sanity. Some moments I've felt completely hopeless. It may feel like no one in this world knows how you feel, but they don't have to. God knows what you're thinking, and he's the only way out of the pit you're in. 

     Earlier I was in a bad place, feeling so small and alone when "In Christ Alone" came on my Spotify. I truly felt as if God was speaking to me through the song; it was exactly what I needed to hear.

In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
this Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
when fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
here in the love of Christ I stand.

I can never lose hope because of my wonderful God who holds me in His hands. I'm allowed to be sad; but I won't wallow in self pity because I am His and He is mine. I just need to remember that God puts trials in my life only because he knows that I can handle them and they will make me that much stronger. Even more than that, I need to see myself as a beautiful example of his healing power, both physically and mentally. My trials are a blessing. 

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to excercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find out that God's spirit is in them- living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completeley obsorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
Romans 8:5-8

     Last week I was so distracted throughout my days. My mind was constantly roaming towards something else; thinking of the future instead of the seconds that were ticking by. But God tells us to live in the now (Matthew 6:34). When I realized what I was doing, it brought me to the question: Why do we get so distracted in our walk with Jesus?

• We try to fill our lives with worldly pleasures, which leaves us with a missing piece that only He can fill.

    I haven't written lately for a multitude of reasons, number one being that I have been insanely busy for the past couple of weeks. I am writing now because I've been blessed with an extra hour and a half in between classes; thank you Professor Linton... Anyway I've been struggling quite a lot, emotionally and physically. Here's why.

     In high school, I don't feel as if I did the best that I could have. It's not even really that I didn't study enough or spent too much time doing extracurriculars; I've always heard people say "high school just isn't for everyone" but I didn't understand that until I got to college. I find that now, having classes on different days and being able to manage my time according to different class times and activities helps me so much in every aspect. However, it's easy to get carried away and spend all of the extra time with your nose in a book instead of investing critical time in the most important book there is, The Bible.

     At first when I got to UNA, I was so conscious of my time spent with Jesus and I had an allotted time set aside every day. Pretty soon after we started digging deep into our classes, I started to spend less time in the Word and I began to see the affect it was having on my life. I started to be more judging of the people around me who don't necessarily make the same decisions as me, and that's never okay. He loves us and calls us to love each and every one of our brothers and sisters. In 1 John 4:7, John says "The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love- so you cannot know Him if you do not love." I am called to love the ones who don't love me, because His light shines through me.

      I also started to be depressed and anxious about everything. I cried a lot, I didn't always want to be around people (which is not always a bad thing), and my attitude towards the world was skewed. I wasn't acting like the godly woman that I should have been. Alan Tate, the youth pastor at a local church in Florence said this past week at The Well, "When you're concerned with doing nothing but the minimum, you'll receive nothing but the minimum." Because I hadn't been seeking god reverently and efficiently, He was reminding me throughout my days that I needed to get back in line.



     I didn't fully realize this truth until last night at my baby squirrel meeting. (For those of you that don't know this already, I pledged Alpha Gamma Delta on September 1st and I'm so incredibly excited about all my new sisters!) It was late and I was getting grumpy as I always do when it's time for my beauty sleep, and I honestly just wanted to go home and hide under my covers and sleep until next week. Then we took prayer requests. My mind was completely blown at my beautiful pledge sisters and the problems that they had never mentioned before; I had no idea how broken they were. That's when I realized that we all need each other and we all need Jesus. No matter how big or small our problems are, Jesus cares about each and every one of them. So when I'm having a bad day and I feel like the world is against me, He's not. It's so cool to always have someone there, someone to talk to. When the world is tearing me down, He builds me right back up. And it's crazy to think we often forget about that.

      So there it is: I'm thankful for the bad days that I have experienced in the past few weeks, because they reminded me of what is truly important in my life and that God is with me. Peace in my heart isn't possible without Him. I failed to recognize all of the wonderful things he's given me so far in my college life... a beautiful campus and city to explore, the fact that I get to even go to college at all, my wonderful family and my boyfriend's family that I think of like my own, my boyfriend himself. And possibly the most important for me right now, the people I've surrounded myself with. My big, Noelle, is such an amazing influence on me and I'm thankful to have such a beautiful person to look up to for the next three years. I've met a new friend in AGD named Kylie and I love her so much I'm not even really sure how to explain it in words. We're just alike and share the same moral values, we're completely honest with each other, and the best part of all: we have a common devotion for our Lord. My friend Eric who I graciously met at our orientation over the summer who is literally the male version of me and quite a bit of a diva, and his love for God is so evident. It's good to share a friendship with someone so relatable. My new pastor, Kevin Johnson, who is on fire for God and never fails to preach just what I need to hear. My new sisters who I can't wait to get to know. All of this plus the people who I love back home... I'm overwhelmed with what God is currently doing for me! Remember to soak up all of the great things in your lives.



     Studying is important and friends are important, but none of that matters without God. Take care of yourself, spend time with God, and grace will follow.
"Don't fret or worry; instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life." Philippians 4:6-7

     It's the first day of classes here at UNA, a day I've been both longing for and dreading for a very long time. I'm so excited about my awesome schedule and tons of free time, but I'm also afraid of professors and keeping up my GPA. I've put tons of reminders around my room reminding me the real reason why I was placed here and what matters, like

I am with you always. Matthew 28:20

But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. 2 Timothy 4:17

and If God is for us then who can be against us? Romans 8:31

     Already I am enjoying my quiet mornings spent with God and the sun in my window, with the smell of coffee slowly filling up the room. There is nothing more special to me than God speaking to me through His word, and this morning it just so happened to be Psalm 23. Ironically enough. I've always loved Psalms, but lately more than ever God has been pulling me to read more of them. Psalms is a beautifully written book of prayer and worship, and is often exactly what I need to hear.