Patience is not my virtue. Neither is piety. Pretty sure it ain't humility either. I'm awesome

This has been a semester of frustration and disappointment. Of running into solid walls headlong, with everything I have, and getting destroyed by them; then getting back up and hurling myself at them again.

Of performance below my standards and below what I feel my ability is. Of realizing life can and will ask me to sacrifice much, like relationships, and family, and happiness. Of seeing that much of life is a choice, and consequences are more bitter when their origin is your own choice. Of learning that God, while loving and gracious to me, is also God, and does what He wants. Of being in a very real struggle to hold onto joy in the midst of extremely difficult circumstances. Of releasing a dream to God with no guarantee I'll see it again. Of learning that sometimes, Christians really do have it all wrong.

Of understanding that I do not know Jesus as well as I thought I did, and of seeing that God's love for me has a nature that is willing to destroy my happiness so that my joy might be real and my foundation might be unbreakable. Of understanding the folly of assuming that just because the solution has a Christian label, it is something that is connected to Jesus. Of being let down by people who are supposed to be reliant, and of having to respect someone's position when you don't respect the person at all. Of dealing with incompetence and laziness and self-centeredness, of feeling that I am not vindicated. Of feeling like God abandoned me, and of self depreciation. Of wanting to hold someone's hand for the first time in my life, and of realizing that sometimes, situations call to be walked through rather than fixed.


I have 13 days of this semester from hell left. 13. And as I look back, and forward, I realize that I am getting exactly what I asked for. I asked that God make me real, and make my life real, and show me the truth that it is only by His grace that I am able to get up every morning and go one more day. He is. I asked that God give me a relationship at school that is challenging and real and reminds me that I am not just alive, but that I am living-He has. I asked that God knock away anything that might make me believe the lie that I am self sufficient-done. I asked that I be strung out on that fine line that lives between destruction and victory, where thoughts are the gusts of wind that threaten to blow me over the edge into that chasm, and bare truth stripped of emotion is the only gritting choice that demands that you hang in. And so I am in the middle


Things aren't good right now. And they aren't comfortable. And I really am not happy, or overflowing with gratitude and joy. I know. I am anti-climactic and kind've a loser. If you want a shining, pretty example of Christianity when life actually gets hard, go look somewhere else. I am not trying to be a shining example, and neither my life nor myself is all that pretty.

I am waiting for things to get better. I'm waiting to see that my waiting is not in vain, and that I am vindicated and cared for by a God who promised me He wouldn't let anyone mess me up (That really is the first thing I ever remember hearing Him tell me). I'm waiting to come out on the other side and realize that the blows that are beating my life up are actually turning it into a picture of what Jesus is really capable of if we let Him be. I'm waiting. While I'm waiting, I'm hoping. And while I'm hoping, I'm wondering if this will be the time that God's track record get's a black mark. That He lets me down. That I am not carried, but dropped.


Imperfect hoping, but He takes it all the same. Imperfect faith, imperfect love, imperfect life. That's alright. Because it's still worth everything to a perfect God