if only...

i dont know how much i have to say today. or how much i can say. i hate keeping things from people, but i seem to be freaking good at it. we'll see what happens when i don't sit down with anything specific to say...

i get to go home in three days. that seems so soon but it feels like forever just because of all the things i have to do before then. this whole riding home thing is getting confusing- we have ten people to get from anderson to meadville, and three cars. i'm not in charge of any of it though, i'll just give gas money to whoever is driving the vehicle i'm in... it will be really nice to be back- get out of the college life for a little while.

...i hate letting any thing other than christ or even myself dictate what i do. i'm letting something else make all the little decisions in life. the big ones are affected by something completely different, but the little ones all seem to depend on this one thing, no matter how far i try to push it from my mind and get down to the bottom of me, the rawest part, where i can't hide from myself. the inescapable truths that are there, but that i've smothered in spending so long watching and trying to mimic others and push down the parts of me that i didnt think fit this perfect emotional/physical/spiritual mold i've created in my mind. who is that girl in my mind? she's not me, she's not even possible. she is a conglomeration of all the things that i admire in other people and that i feel i should/could be myself if only... if only... she doesn't exist. she can't exist. god didn't create her. he created me... here ya go world! leah. bam. like it or leave it i guess. i know that i'm not done. my work has barely begun, and god most certainly isn't finished with me yet. and he/i wont be done until it's time for me to go. so yeah, i guess it's fine for me to have a mold in my mind- something i'm working to become. i guess it just needs to be a molding mold. constantly changing... as i change and allow god to change me. god doesnt try to fit me into a box, so why should i do that to him? or to myself. he wants me to fly. and he will be there the whole time. hmmm, so this sounds all fine and dandy... someone told me recently that i work out a lot of my own questions by talking (or writing) about them... processing them in solid word form... but i'm still left knowing that i understand all of this about myself and i know that i should fix it... but i'll get up tomorrow morning and start subconsciously answering the simple questions of the day with my cute little bias. to satisfy that cute little unsatisfyable part of myself. ugh. i'm getting there...it just seems like whenever i manage to get both feet on the train for five seconds, i get knocked off the track again and i didnt even see it coming. god- help me to be constant. and aware. and ready to see it coming.

third world faith

hmmm. i dont know what my deal is. but i think i've become... complacent maybe? i feel like i'm not accomplishing anything. college makes me really selfish. i'm all concerned with what MY schedule is like and when I'M going to eat and what classes I need to take and when and who I want to hang out with and when I need to be alone and the homework that I need to do and what MY problems are and how i expect others to deal with them. ugh. it makes me sick, because i feel like it's just expected. life is a movie about me right? i seem to be the star of every single scene that i've ever watched... but even with that in mind, my movie needs to be about god through me. i've grown so blah because it's a christian campus here... not everyone is a christian but everyone is expected/assumed to be. why make a big deal about your faith or try to evangelize to a bunch of christians? yeah right. kids here need jesus as much as anyone else, they just are often more stubborn against hearing it because they've heard it all before. so here i am not feeling like there's a need to be met, not feeling challenged or persecuted or like there's anything to fight... and who wants to sit around and not be fighting for something? so of course satan takes that and whispers 'yup, theres nothing for you to do here because nobody wants to hear it anyway. you have four years until you need to be responsible for your faith again so why dont you just chill? you're at a christian school, why do you need to work so hard to keep up being a christian- it's assumed whether you actually do it or not...' and so here i am struggling with things that i've never needed to struggle with before and getting so caught up in myself and sitting around and not doing anything of value. i need to be somewhere that forces me to put all my trust in god. that doesn't give me any other choice. it's like exercising- who keeps up an exercise program on their own if they are only holding themselves accountable? but if they are on a team that practices every day then they have no choice but to run their brains out and work muscles until they scream with pain. it is hard and grueling at the time but at the end of the day they know that they accomplished something that day and that they will be different tomorrow because of it. i need that type of situation with god. something that forces me to put into use what i know to be true but cant bring myself to do on my own. another dumb analogy-- allergies are a first world disease. people in third world countries dont have allergies because their bodies are too busy trying to stay alive. first world bodies really have nothing better to do and so develop health issues with random things... my faith has become like a body with allergies, dealing with things that dont really matter and spending way too much money on allergy medication just so that i can have relief because god forbid i should be uncomfortable. i need a third world faith, that strips down to the bare minimum, the basics of christ and his love for me and my love (however seemingly shallow right now) for him, and forces me to strive just for my faith to survive... because then at the end of the day when i have followed christ through the storms and droughts and i know that i am still not too far behind him, i can sit back and say, yeah, i accomplished something today. and i'm gonna be stronger tomorrow because of it. i want to remember how it feels to be desperate for christ and the relief of finding him when you expected to find nothing to hold onto. because those are the stories that i can really tell people. and they will understand the desperation and see a difference in me and want to know more about this mysterious jesus character. and that's life. ugh- i just want to go. go and make disciples. take up my cross and follow him, not make him wait four years until I'M ready to go out into the world with his message...

where do you turn when...?

SEEK. It’s what the bible tells us to do. Seek with all your heart. Seek and you will find. I think we focus too often on the “all your heart” and “you will find” parts. What about the seeking? What does it mean? How do we do it? What are we seeking for? I have been struggling with faith issues since the beginning of july… but they’re not just issues of growing through new territory in my faith. No, I was stronger before this summer than I had ever been. Ever. But then I was knocked off the track. So now, it’s not a matter of continuing to grow from where I was, but rather starting over. Starting at the beginning again. The basics. For instance, god loves me. He LOVES me. With a capacity of love that I cannot even begin to fathom. And nothing I can do or someone else can do to me or how far off the track I fall can change any aspect of this love. I’m beginning to learn that again. But in the past, anytime I struggled with something I knew that I could turn to god with my generic formula and everything would be just fine: read the bible and pray. No matter what was going on. That fixes things. Anyone can tell you. Problem? Stress? Anger? Insecurity? Read and pray. But not now, and I think that’s what scares me the most. I tried my typical formula, and nothing happened. It still hurt. A lot. And I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I still had trouble believing that god knew what he was doing. And that scared me- what do you do when your time-honored solution doesn’t work? When your spiritual medicine gives your pain no relief? I had nowhere else to turn when my same old same old reading and praying didn’t work. I guess that’s where seeking comes in. We are told over and over in the bible to seek BLAH BLAH BLAH. Seek and BLAH BLAH BLAH. And so we write sermons and have debates and encourage each other with the promises and warm fuzzy parts that precede and follow the seek part. But what we need to hear when we have nowhere else to turn is SEEK. God is there. That’s the promise. But he doesn’t promise to always make us feel warm and fuzzy and to find US and pick us up out of our problems. We need to seek him. With all our heart. With all our heart: SEEK. Not just by reading and praying but by taking those things to the next level and making it the primary motivation and goal of your life to seek god. In thoughts by yourself, in relations with others, in any type of work and school, in reading, in eating, in thinking… seek god. Let your life overflow with his influence. Then how can the problems remain stagnant? They have no choice but to change and mold when the creator of the universe is allowed free reign in your life.
Don’t think this means I have it all together. Don’t think my problems are magically gone. This is new for me. And it’s hard. But after four months of panicked frustration over not being able to find god and fix things the way I always had… it’s a start. And in the midst of it I still need to stop and remember that god loves me. And let him love me. And know that he is there, and no matter how far off the track I am pulled, he is still there. Waiting to be found when I seek him. With all my heart… seeking.