What Makes you Feel Alive?

This year I am serving on an adult leadership team for a youth group. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my year, and of my life.

At the beginning of the year Drew (youth minister) asked us what makes us feel most alive in our faith? It was something I hadn't spent much time thinking about before, but it has been something continually impacting me as the year goes on. I realized that I feel most alive in my faith when I am serving. I came to know who God was through mission trips in high. My best friend at the time invited me to youth group because she didn't know anyone, and she didn't want to go alone. So we went, and we went on a mission trip with the youth group. I had never had much guidance in faith up to this point. There was a while when my family went to a little Methodist church at the end of our street, we went to a Christian preschool for a while, things here and there that at least put God as an idea in my head, but knowledge didn't span far beyond that until I went on this mission trip. I went two years in a row, and after the second one I really experienced an emptiness due to the lack of God's presence in my daily life. I soon made the decision to complete RCIA and become Catholic... and well here I am 4ish years later, knowing that it was the best decision of my life.

Last week was my first week back in school after Christmas break, and tonight we had our first youth group night. Now, over my Christmas break I did basically nothing. I worked a little bit, but nothing compared to what I've worked in the past. I went to mass, and laid around watching netflix, did a little bit of crafting... and that was pretty much the extent of it. In two weeks I watched approximately three seasons of the show Bones. It's actually kind of pitiful to look at what I did over the break... because it was pretty much absolutely nothing... which what I'm getting at.

Earlier in the week I posted a blog about seasonal depression you can read it here. In my nothingness, I got stuck in a place of self-loathing. I was doing nothing outside of myself. I was being completely selfish and justifying it by saying this is the last time for a really long time - like 7 months really long time - that I will be able to do this, so I'm going to take advantage of it... and did I ever... But now, I had a week of school, youth group, etc. I was so excited to go to youth group tonight...because I was finally going to do something for someone other than myself, and that was an awesome feeling.

In prayer the other night I realized the extent of my selfish actions the last month. I realized how I was being consumed my anything and everything other than God - school, work, loneliness, television, pleasure reading, etc. I was not allowing God to consume my heart or be the focus/center for my life. I just kinda set him on the back burner to cool off, and placed myself in the front running. Upon that realization I have been making my prayer for God's love to consume me. I want to be consumed by him. I want to know his love. I want to choose him. I want my life to bring glory to his name. But most of all, I want to feel alive.

I chose nursing because I knew I wanted to spend my life taking care of people, serving other people. Think about the last time you said "man, today was a really good day?" Now, why was that day a good day?

The world tells us success, money, accomplishment, sex, and beauty are going to fulfill us, they are going to satisfy us, make us feel alive. Those notions are wrong. But there is validity to some of them, well all of them really, but I would write a novel if I went into all of those - we're going to focus on success/accomplishment. We tend to feel very alive, or well pleased, or like we're thriving at life when we accomplish a goal or our successful in something. I felt really good about myself when I got a ton of stuff done the other day. But I also felt livened tonight when I was serving my high school youth group. And that's ultimately what I wanted to get at in this blog post.

For the last month we have been on break for youth group. I was on break for school. I didn't work very much. I was pretty much on break from life duties... and I did absolutely nothing, and it was glorious for a while. But soon I got bored and started to feel rather apathetic about life. I wasn't loving it; I didn't feel like I was thriving.. We need to do the things that make us feel alive, fulfilled, satisfied. Jesus ultimately will satisfy us, so I want to leave you with this question: what gifts and talents have you been given, and what allows you to utilize them in such away that you feel alive in life? Essentially, what makes you want to keep living your life? Go out and make it happen! May everything in your life bring glory to God, and may you live a life of joy and love!