It Is Good to Wait on the Lord

Every day is different. However, the desires of my heart remain the same, and the struggle remains. I Face these desires, which I know are good, but struggle to surrender to the Lord and trust in His plan and His timing. I wonder. I wait. I wish.

I keep finding myself saying I wish I could have a big girl job. I wish I could have an apartment of my own. I wish I could own a car. I wish I could have fancy clothes. I wish I was done with nursing school. I wish I was closer to marriage. I wish.... fill in the blank. I struggle with restlessness with where I'm at in my life. I struggle with loneliness. I desire to love and be loved.

This week was good - I knew the Lord was with me. I was centered, I was focused, I was good - I started off the week strong, refreshed, renewed, rejuvenated. And then yesterday hit. I was tired. I knew there were things I needed to do, but I didn't want to do them, so I didn't. I watched way more tv in one day than any normal person should. I then lead myself into a downward spiral of beating myself up, which continued into the majority of today, and rather than facing the feelings, I numbed them and continued to turn to media and wish for an unrealistic love. I questioned and wondered what it might be like if I were to take a break from being Christian, even if just for a day. Finally, this afternoon I turned to the Lord. I read His word. I was vulnerable with Him. He already knew what was going on, but He rewards us for coming to Him for consolation (even if it did take me longer than I would've liked). In my time spent with our Lord today I read a homily on waiting.

I wanted to share with you some of the parts that really stood out to me.

"Waiting is open-ended. Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something

very concrete, for something we wish to have. Much of our waiting is with wishes: "I wish that I could have a job. I wish that the weather would be better. I wish that the pain would go." We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes. For this reason, a lot of our waiting is not open-ended. Instead, our waiting is a way of controlling the future. We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed and can even slip into despair. That is why we have such a hard time waiting: we want to do the things that will make the desired events takes pace.

...Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah were filled with hope. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes. Hope is open-ended.

I have found is very important in my own life to let go of my wishes and start hoping. It was only when I was willing to let go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me.

To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear." -Henri J. M. Nouwen

We must wait on the Lord. We must surrender the desires of our hearts to Him. We must wait open-endedly, trusting that His plan, His will are far greater than anything our minds can create. It is good to wait on the Lord, for when we wait with hope in His plan for our life we are most able to follow the narrow path, and to most fully have the desires of our hearts satisfied.

By Your Steadfast Love

Oops - it's been a while since I last posted. Over 2 weeks! In all the hype of exams and school and life this gets set aside. However, the Lord has not ceased in working and I want to share with you a little of what He has been doing. Hmm the Lord is just so good.

I went on a retreat a little of 2 weeks ago called steps to freedom. We trial ran a ministry called unveiled this semester where we dove into sin in our life that really dealt with our sexuality - whether it was our perspective of sexuality, struggle with sexual sin, or past hurts from relationships with guys and gals. So Steps to Freedom was a retreat where we examined 7 different areas of our life and surrendered different sins and hurts to the Lord and asked him to free us.

This past weekend I went on a retreat where we talked about the 2 Kingdoms - the Kingdom of God and the kingdom not of God but rather of this world, of satan . We talked about how the world (the environment around us, fashion, media, etc), the flesh (ourselves, our own desires), and the devil (his lies, his tactics) affect us and pull us away from the world. We then had an opportunity to pray with small groups. We all have a small group that we meet with every other week throughout the semester. And so we had an opportunity to surrender to the Lord an area that we saw needed particular work and healing, and so we each prayed our own prayer asking the Lord to come into that area, but had a handful of men or woman (gender specific small groups) praying with us and for as we prayed our own prayer.

Last week was a rough week. I had recently taken 2 exams and didn't do well on either of them. On one of them I received the lowest grade ever in my life. That was hard to stomach, hard to accept. I sobbed for an hour after I saw my grade. I wanted to quit, to give up on nursing school. That happened on Wednesday. It took me a solid 2 hours to pull myself together after seeing my score, and a lot of encouragement from 2 of my dear friends and my dad. I proceeded to use every numbing technique in the book so I wouldn't have to think about it, and tried to just bury this feeling of failure. So for 2 days I watched endless hours of Gilmore Girls on netflix, ate comfort food, hid in my room, scrolled pinterest, fell into the temptation of a heavy sin I struggle with and have to effortly fight to combat, and used painting and wine drinking to try and help me relax and keep my mind off of this feeling of being a failure.

Come Thursday night I was walking to women's night and my brain started spinning with endless thoughts of you're a failure, you suck, you're a terrible sinner, you're a horrible person, you're never going to be good enough, you shouldn't be a bible study leader - you haven't invested in these women an shown them you care, you shouldn't mentor high school students you're too great of a sinner.. Once I snapped out of this  cycle of thoughts I approached the Lord in honesty, in vulnerability and I told him 'Lord I don't even want to ask your forgiveness because I feel like I don't deserve it.'

Friday I had made plans to go to confession, so I went. While I was waiting for my turn I was reflecting on my examination of conscience and I recalled Thursday night. I recalled specifically that thought - 'Lord I don't even want to ask your forgiveness because I feel like I don't deserve it.' And I had this feeling of I don't want to confess that... and that I was like pause - wait... the mere fact that I don't want to confess this means I definitely need to.

So it was my turn, I go into the confessional, make my confession (via my list) and I paused for a moment and confessed that thought - Lord I don't even want to ask your forgiveness because I feel like I don't deserve it.' As soon as I said that the priest says Ah that's the problem (or something to that effect) and he goes on about how I've fallen into a pit of darkness and satan's kind of got me on a hamster wheel just running and running and running... which makes so much sense in hindsight because my biggest complaint was that I was just so tired, and not just physically but spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. But then the priest progresses to say you don't need to do anything to be made worthy. Simply because God created you, you have worth. It was something I'd heard 100 times over, but I needed to hear it from a priest. At the end he encouraged me to never ever give up, to always keep fighting. And left me with a penance to go before our Lord (who was exposed in the monstrance) and let the Lord embrace me.

I walked out of the confessional trembling, shaking, exhilarated, relieved. I knelt down in a pew and collapsed before our Lord. I saw myself collapsing onto his lap in agony, in repentance, in sorrow, and he simply tells me my child, my child I love you. And the Lord consoled me. He loved me, and I just let him love me. I didn't fight or resist it, but just allowed him to embrace me for the first time in a very, very long time.

A few hours later I left for retreat. Saturday night when we were praying with our small groups I surrendered restlessness and loneliness, 2 of my greatest struggles. I asked for grace to combat the lie that I'm not good enough and never will be good enough, and to combat the lie that God's love isn't enough for me.

After small groups had finished praying we were singing praise to the Lord and we were singing a song that had a line about the Lord being everything. And I realized in that moment how much the Lord loved.. loves me, how he truly satisfies my every need, my every longing. I realized our God is a living God, and lives and reigns in me. I can have peace in knowing that He is my King and He has a plan. I have no need to be restless, for I can rest in Him. I have no need to be lonely, for He is with me always. He has provided for my every need thus far, why would He not provide for every need from here on out?

What I have most taken away from this, and what I hope you may take away from this is that the Lord is faithful, he is steadfast in his love for each of his children. Each of us worth simply by the fact He created us.

The Lord's faithfulness is a protecting shield. Psalm 91:4