Devotions

Hello. It's Christmas Eve and I have a lot on my mind. Time to vent. WARNING: This isn't a fluffy Christmas post about hot chocolate and snowmen. It may challenge you to rethink your behavior and may encourage you to make some changes. It sure did for me. Recently I've just been in this weird, disillusioned stupor. Nothing really makes sense lately, which I know is a really vague statement, so I'll try to give you some specifics. 1. I turned 20 years old. And it does NOT feel like I should be in my 20's. People get married when they're 20. People have babies. They get jobs and pay bills and live in their own homes and pay mortgage and move away from their families and it's FREAKING ME OUT. 2. It's Christmas and it does NOT feel like it because of the temperature. (Climate disruption, perhaps?) It's 60 degrees and last night my grandma's power went out because of a violent rainstorm. Not snowstorm. Rainstorm. 3. It's Christmas and it

So today I've been thinking pretty deeply about things. Not sure why, and it's kind of annoying when I overthink, but that's beside the point. I've been pretty happy lately, and for some reason this last week has been pretty up and down for me (hormones, perhaps?) and I guess I just wanted to know why . Oh, "why?" The age-old question. "Why am I unhappy? Why aren't I fulfilled? Is there something more to life? Why haven't I found it yet?" I've been feeling a little neglected, I suppose. Coming home from college will do that for you, I guess. And I don't know if "neglected" is the right word, either. I have a lovely family who loves me very much and my mom even washed my sheets for me so I could sleep in my old bed with nice, clean sheets. I don't have any practical reason to feel like no one cares about me, but sometimes, when I'm laying awake going over the previous day in my head, I wonder, "Why don't

Do you have those friends that you could literally not talk to for a year, and then you run into them and talk for hours like nothing happened? These are the good kinds of relationships-- those that produce fruitful, edifying conversation and are sustained by God's grace and not our own efforts. (How could they be a result of our doing? We haven't talked to that person in a year!) I have a few friends like that. They're the good ones-- the ones I can go to for anything, and the one's whose connection is effortless. So effortless, in fact, that I forget about them sometimes because I don't have to constantly work to maintain their affections. I know they'll be there, and I'll always be there for them, and that's that. But I feel bad sometimes. I feel like I don't give these people enough credit. I don't tell them I love them enough, and sometimes when I do tell them "HEY I LOVE YOU!" out of the blue, it seems random and disingenuous

Sometimes life gets so hard I just need to vent about it to the worldwide web. I need to process things because I can't make sense of it all. Today is not one of those days. In fact, today is fabulous. I love it very much. And instead of trying to organize my scattered, broken thoughts about a hurting world, I will try to process the goodness of the Lord, even though I won't really be able to experience its fullness until I'm in His courts. I've been exploring the concept of waiting for the "right" kind of person before getting too emotionally involved in a relationship. (And, by "exploring," I simply mean trying... failing... learning... repeat. It's quite the process.) Anyway, I've had my ups and downs, but overall God is teaching me that there are  really great, wholesome, honest, God-fearing men out there that love people how Jesus does. They open doors for you, and not out of obligation or societal standards but because it's a wa

Recently a friend of mine asked if I could pray for peace for her. That was all she said, so I'm not sure what specifically she needed peace for, but it got me thinking about peace and surrender.  Because if we go to Scripture, it's pretty clear about God's peace, given freely: «The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.» Psalm 29:11 NIV Jesus himself said: «Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.» John 14:27 NIV He's basically like "stop being afraid and just let me give you peace, please! I want to!" And yet-- it's hard for us, for some reason. It's difficult for us to rest in His peace-- hard enough that we ask for people to pray for us to be able to accept it. Why is that? Why can't we just be like, "Okay, Jesus! I believe you. You offer Your perfect peace and I will take You up on that fabulous offer.

So, I'm a single college student and it's summertime. This may seem like an average statement but when you break it down, it becomes much clearer the confusion I face at this time in my life: 1. I'm single. (translation: I don't have a husband, a boyfriend, a lover, or a fling, or anything of that nature) 2. I am a college student. (translation: I'm surrounded by a hookup culture that is fueled by a reverent belief in "living in the moment" and "only living once" and basically intentionally screwing up because it's what everyone does at this age) 3. It's summertime. (translation: I'm bored sometimes, I miss my friends, and everyone and their sister is getting married and posting cute relationship pictures on social media 24/7) Put them all together and  BOOM-- I've been struggling lately with singledom. Everyone seems to have their own opinions on this "stage" in life, and they've been quite adamant about

I was having a conversation with some people today about love and hope and faith. (You know, typical lunch topics.) It was surprisingly morbid, our little chat, especially when it had to do with love and hope and faith. This, however, was probably due to the fact that my fellow conversationalists didn't think much about love, they rarely sincerely hoped for things, and their faith was nearly missing altogether. This fascinated me, because I am such a hopeful optimist. My faith is so very, very important to me. It defines who I am... and Who I put my hope in is integral to my being. So to hear such statements... such claims... claims such as "love will always be interrupted by distrust" and "it's silly to hope in something divine..." they broke my heart a little bit. And the worst part is, I'm in a foreign country with almost-strangers in whom I cannot confide. I feel like I'm on an island, almost. No one really understands the hope that I have, an

I am writing this post from Cartagena, Colombia. I'm sitting outside, listening to the sounds of the children practicing soccer, (they're only like 5 years old, and now I understand why Latin-American countries are so good at soccer...) and life is very good. I have a belly full of pizza and a heart full of new experiences. I have a family that loves me and a new handful of close Colombian friends. I volunteer here in the city teaching English to the less-fortunate by day and go out dancing with my international friends at night. I'm not quite sure how life could get better. I attribute these various blessings to a Sovereign God that loves and blesses me, but it's times like these when I think to myself, "who needs Jesus?" Because if you think about it, I can travel to Colombia as a Buddhist. I can eat pizza as an atheist. I can certainly "go out" at night, enjoying the highly festivities as a young adult who doesn't believe in anyone or anyt

Hi Friends, This weekend has been a really epiphany-esque weekend, and I need to blog about it to get it all out. (Translation: this is going to be a rant that probably goes nowhere.) Going to the graduation ceremony of the grade that graduated after me was weird. For a variety of reasons, and I won't get into all of them, but let's just say I felt SO out of place. I wasn't a current student anymore, and I wasn't old enough to feel like an alumni that was coming back after a really long time... I was just kind of stuck. I saw people and faces that brought back horrible memories, and I saw other faces that affirmed me of the fact that regardless of all the mistakes I had made, people still loved me. (Or pretended to love me while they passed me in the hallway, anyway.) The world is cool and so are animals but the only thing that counts is people . They're it. They're all that matter. How you choose to interact with someone not only defines who you are to th

So I usually write during the low-times... the days where God is all I have, and I'm sad, and hopeless, and I need something to boost my morale. So I remind myself about God's goodness and His promise to bring better days. But recently, I've been having some really good days! And I'm not complaining by any means, but there's just this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get-- even on the best of days-- that makes me wonder, "Is this all there is? This is as good as it gets?" I have no practical complaints for these types of days, no obvious disappointing moments, no visible evidence of pain or strife. But I'm still longing for something--  anything better-- at the end of the day. And I haven't been able to know why yet. Until recently, that is. Because recently, I've been repeating this prayer over and over again... "Don't settle." And it first appeared to me in a conversation I had about boys, (go figure,) but it'

FYI: This post will be partially in English and particlly in español. I can't help it. I just watched un magnifico documentario and now I can't stop thinking about how much I love español and how much I want to use it to ayudar y apoyar communities pobres. (For the record, I know how to speak Spanish and I'm not just inserting random cognates into my English to sound smart.) I'm sitting here in my comfy dorm room, with my comfy covers, and I watched a documentary called "Living on One Dollar" en mis pijamas. Con mi computadora. My Macbook, to be exact. And although I'm super thankful for these things, it makes me a little uneasy to watch footage of so many people without. Without food, medicine, a basic income... it really opened my eyes, which it always does. Every time. You'd think that I'd be so used to the heart-wrenching stories about los pobres internacionales, but I am not. Every time it gets me because I've met some people in extr

An idea that has been frequenting my thoughts recently is simplistic and fairly basic, but vastly forgotten and misunderstood: Don't base your worth off of someone's past opinions of you, or even the hopes that one day someone will fully love and accept you. Base your worth off of the knowledge that right now, in this very second, God loves you and values you more than even the most precious aspects of the earth He created. I can get pretty wordy, so let's break it down: 1. Don't let your past define how you see yourself 2. Don't let the hope of a future spouse's approval get you through life 3. Realize that in the right now, in the present, God adores you. And that is enough. I've been struggling to accept all three of these pieces of advice lately. First, the past. It's a jerk. Especially for people with OCD who have a really hard time letting things go. I replay scenes over and over in my head, and I would not wish that upon my w

I have a confession to make. Up until this very moment, I had lived my life following God's Word to the best of my abilities-- except when it came to one all-consuming, worldly thing. Boys. You can laugh at my choices of phrasing, because I'm laughing at myself. I somehow thought that if I followed God in most aspects of my life, specifically the parts that were easy to do so, that I would be okay... that following Him when it was comfortable would be good enough. And when it came to relationships-- to "talking" and "dating" and "spending the rest of my life with someone--" I just kind of went rogue and did my own thing. God was there to help me pick up the pieces after my failed relationships, but I rarely looked to Him in the middle of them. And it wasn't bad enough to stop thinking about God during these flings; I blatantly ignored what His Word said about relationships, and love in general. I wasn't oblivious to what Go