Darn Near Perfect, a Way in the Wilderness

There are moments in life where you can just stop, look around and think, “Man, everything is just about perfect right now.” You know what I am talking about…you look around and you can’t help but smile. Your heart is happy and everything that is happening is good. All is right with the world. These seem to be very quick moments that you want to hold onto forever. Those are incredible and wonderful moments!

There are two things I now know about these said “perfect moments” that I have just realized in the last few days. Number one is that they are the sweetest when you are coming out of a bad few months or rough time in life. It is like you don’t know the exact moment, but stuff just got better and all of a sudden you see so clearly a perfect and wonderful moment where life is good again. It makes the all crap you went through worth it. Completely worth it.

I have two “perfect moment” experiences that I can remember from the last year. One of them came after a long and horrible healing process that followed an awful break-up. I struggled for over a year with trying to get over this man that I loved and cherished very deeply, but then lost for reasons I couldn’t understand. I struggled with sadness, anger, jealousy…the whole mess. Then spring break came and I went to New Orleans on a CRU hurricane relief trip. On the last day of the trip our group worked so hard and so diligently to finish gutting a house for a family that we’d met that morning and we did it! We stood by our ridiculously huge pile of trash and walked away that day feeling like we helped and loved someone. It felt so great to serve the Lord by serving people in need. That night a group of us went to Café Du Monde in New Orleans and this is where the moment happened. I was sitting around a table with my favorite people, in New Orleans after a sweet day of work, drinking hot chocolate and laughing…sounds cheesy, but it was so good! Amidst the laughter and powdered sugar I stopped and realized that at that very moment life was perfect. The place, the day, the people…I was blessed and loved by God and it was good. The guy I had been getting over all year was even there and I had this moment. That is God’s grace right there. There was also a new guy sitting next to me that I would soon be in a relationship with. That was a good moment…for sure.

Here it is...

The second perfect moment that I clearly saw happened just a few nights ago. This semester has sucked. I don’t know why or what specifically sucked, but it did. I went through some weird spiritual stuff and some weird relational stuff and there was just no reason for it other than God was doing a work in my life and it was some hard stuff to face. I felt dark and anxious inside and lacked a joy that I usually felt in my heart. I couldn’t shake it no matter what. I couldn’t find joy anywhere. So…in short…it was awful. The other night, though…a moment. I was on big group date night with a very special man and it was very enjoyable. We went to dinner and then ice skating in Kansas City. When all the couples got onto the ice skating rink most of us made our way to the middle and started being so cute. There was Christmas music playing, Christmas lights, and people just being fun. My date and I were twirling around and laughing and it was so good. To look around and see my friends being so fun and to see that for the first time in a long time the man I was with and I were truly enjoying each other, was an amazing moment. I felt joy and love…cheesy again, but so true. Life in that moment was perfect. My date even said to me, “This is like a New Orleans moment.” He felt it too.

This is really one of the only pictures of us from that night.

So, along time ago in this entry I said that there are two things I know about these perfect moments in life and here is the second one: God blesses us with these moments of joy and a healed heart, but he ultimately wants us to desire the sucky times that precede the perfect moments. It is during the bad times that he is shaping and perfecting us. He brings us to such a low point that we can’t help but to rely solely on Him. The other day in church our pastor referred to trying times in life as being times when we are “brought into the wilderness.” He said that God takes us into “the wilderness” where we have nothing and there he can begin to work on us and train us to be faithful. As humans we hate being in “the wilderness.” We resist it, want out so badly, and rejoice when we finally do leave that time. But you know what? Here is the kicker…while we freak out and want more than anything to not be in those awful times in the wilderness, Jesus continued to return there. He trusted God so much and had such a desire to be shaped and made to be just like his heavenly father, that he sought out times in the wilderness. Despite the discomfort and hardship that it brought, he knew that ultimately it was preparing him to be faithful.

That hit me. I hated this semester because it felt so bad. I love being joyful and I do seek out the joyful moments. I am not saying that the “perfect moments” in life are not good. They are a blessing and it is a time for you to really see how God got you through the wilderness. He promises to do that and so we should rejoice when we see that promise fulfilled in our lives. We shouldn’t be so resistant and scared of the other times though. We should always be ready and willing to go into the wilderness and trust that God is going to do something good there. Consider it joy my brothers, right?

When life is rough it is ok. We are where we are for a reason and God will not leave us in the wilderness with more than we can handle. He is preparing us to be faithful. He is bringing to light the things that hinder us from knowing Him better. It is painful and the darkenss often seems to have no end in sight, but be encouraged- there are so many perfect moments promised too! Life to the full!

I praise God that I got through this semester and I am so elated to have the majority of the trials it held past me. The other night when I was surrounded by friends and my heart felt nothing but joy in that one moment where I could say life was good again, I almost cried. God brought me through and I was so gracious. The good times that follow the bad show even more the sweetness of our maker. So now instead of clinging to that perfect moment and trying to hold onto it I need to embrace where God has me today and be willing to let Him continue to refine and purify me even if it hurts. He loves me and that will not change. God is in the wilderness and He is in the perfect moments. He just is.

Snow Day!!

ah, the first snow...everybody loves that day! pretty soon we will all hate snow and the winter, but for this first one of the season we are all darn excited. i work in the little kid schools now and it is way more likely for them to cancel little kid school than it is for them to cancel big kid school. i remember one year they cancelled the busses on campus at big kid school before they cancelled classes. some people were trapped on campus, their homes miles away. ridiculous. but! today is a different story...for me anyway. while my roommates get up early to finish homework and study, i get to stay in my sweat pants all day! holler. no complaining here. everybody loves a good snow day.

church was really amazing the other day. tim keel, the pastor talked about james 3:1-12. the main point of it was telling us to love people with our words. it asked how can we use the same tongue to praise god that we use to hurt others? good point. he touched on sarcasm, criticism, and gossip and gave a loving alternative to each one: sincerity, encouragement, and covering. man, it really hit me. i am good at loving people with my actions, (most of the time) but i do not do it well with my thoughts or words. i am really good at gossip and not standing up for a friend. i am also an expert sarcasm speaker and i guess sometimes that can hurt people. stuff that doesn't need to be funny i make funny. why? the criticism happens mostly in my head, but that isn't good either. i can't encourage a friend with my words and in my head think they are ridiculous. that isn't love at all. my prayer for this week has been that i may have more compassion on my friends. that i would love them with all my heart and be able to offer them sincerity and love in all i do. it is hard, but good to have in my mind. i love god and offer praise to him...i want the same tongue that speaks those praises to love my friends too.

so there it is. life is good and god is faithful. i am blessed and i am loved. god is faithful, god is good.

Turkey Turkey Turkey

Ah yes, another thanksgiving day has come and gone. it wasn't the best one, but it was pretty darn good. what really makes a thanksgiving good anyway? it is a day that we set aside to give thanks right? well geeze, i have a ton to be thankful for. i am blessed beyond belief because i have a marvelous family and our table today was full of delicious food. not to mention, we were in a warm house and we all have cars that we drove over to grandmas. PLUS we all have jobs and friends and so much more than that. so...let me re-phrase my first attempt to describe my thanksgiving day: it was amazing and full of more blessings than i probably noticed! i am thankful and should be so every single day when i wake up in a warm bed under a roof and can then walk to a cupboard that is full of food. i can also call my parents and siblings any time i need and they will be right there no matter what, loving and supporting me. dang. i wish i could understand how sweet that is. unfortunately i don't think any of us know how to appreciate stuff until we don't have it anymore. sad right? well, lets stop that! praise the lord for all the blessings you have! even if life seems to be sucking, we are still promised peace and love from our heavenly father. he'll give life to the full! his grace is sufficient.
happy turkeys!

Ah Life

yeah, life has sort of had me down this semester. it has been a bit rough, but God is faithful and i know that this is all a part of his plan to make me love Him more. it is hard for me to even explain what was so bad. a big part of it had to do with an amazing relationship that some how went bad and the rest has just been a spiritual battle i think. i've lacked a lot of joy in my heart even when nothing around me had changed at all. sometimes i just feel a dark heaviness in me. i don't know. God is good and He promises peace and joy and life to the full! He loves me well and He will fight this battle for me. that is comforting and i pray that i would believe that! i am blessed.

it was funny to me to read that last entry that i posted. it was quite awhile ago and stuff sure has changed. i was dating a boy and was pretty much head over heals for him. i don't know what happened, but it got real messed up. i think we sort of rushed things/i freaked out/we were both very selfish. i don't know, but i miss what it was. i miss who he was. i miss how he loved me so well. i miss being able to encourage him. he is amazing, but i don't know where that man went. we had a good relationship and i don't know where that went.

i pray for us a lot, but i am getting to a point where i don't know if there is hope anymore. i don't know if it will be fixed, or if i even want it to be fixed. as of now, i don't. he freaked on me recently and doesn't want to talk for a few weeks. that is fine, but i might be gone when he decides to come back...

hold fast to what is good.

I Hate that Freakin' Bird

Ah yes, that freakin' bird. You know that means I am at home. We have so many pets, it is ridiculous. We could never have pets when I was younger. We only had one stupid cat that was real mean to everyone except mom. Then it died and we get nothing. Ok, we did have hermit crabs I guess. Thank goodness for Buddy, that's all I'm sayin'.

Well...it is April already. That is crazy. I am at home this weekend for Easter and so far that is going well. I enjoy being somewhere where people take care of you. It feels good to be taken care of right? Yes, I think so.

I love life right now...it is so good. Tate is home again and all of my friends are blessings. Of course there is also the new boyfriend, who is pretty amazing as well. I am way excited for camp, which happens soon, but pretty sad that life changes soon also. I'll be walking down that hill! Time flies, eh? Well, this is somewhat boring, so I will go ahead and just end it there.

God is so good and we all need to trust Him MORE! He knows what He is doing, believe it or not. That is all.

Spring Break New Orleans Baby!

Spring Break has once again come to an end. It was definitely one of the best I have ever had. It was so good!

I headed down south to New Orleans, Louisiana for my fourth Katrina Relief trip. It is pretty amazing that you can still see so much distruction even after so many months.

A group of us went back to Pass Christian, Mississippi where we had been before and got to see our Bonnie again as well as some sweet people from the community. It was a blast. Danielle and I washed dishes for two days straight! I am just glad that Bonnie won't have to do it now. We then finished the week in New Orleans and gutted out almost two houses in two days. The group I was in was so great. Real hard workers and real loving hearts. It was a great great great experience. I say it again....it was great! Another plus was that I got to see my Tate again! She is da bomb and she hooked Danielle and I up with some VIP sleeping quarters. Thanks girl....I love you so much for so many reasons!!

Also, Andersen Cooper from CNN talked on my cell phone.

So...needless to say break was awesome. God once again showed His power, love, and grace through this tragedy and I was able to serve Him along side some amazing people! Sweet huh? Yes!

Human Anatomy= The Plaza

I pretty much really love this color.

Ok, so Emily Ashcraft pretty much figured me out and found the Jen Blog. Sorry Tate, I hope you aren't mad that one of your fans is looking at my blog and Emily I am sorry I kept this from you. It really was such a dilema in my heart. Anyway...let's all be friends??

Pretty funny story:
Today I got to my Human Anatomy Class and went up to my usual seat in 130 Budig to sit by my peeps that are in there. I am sitting there pulling out my notes and all of a sudden there is a fountain of carbonated beverage raining down on me. I am totally not exaggerating...it was a flowing fountain that could probably be put in The Plaza. My friend Al, who was next to me opened up this flavored water crap and it totally exploded, rained on her head, and sprayed anyone within a ten foot radius. It was incredible and hilarious. Everyone looked at us and I was crackin' up as Al looked up at me with carbonated water running all down her glasses and said, "Well, I guess I am not going to be in Anatomy today." Poor Al. It was good though. Real good.

So...there is my life I guess. Pretty exciting eh?? I must now continue my afternoon of homework and diligent studying. (I am also a liar.)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I am now in my last semester of college. Scary?? Uh, yeah. Really good too though, because that means soon I will be done with homework and crap like that. Sweet.

So...life is amazing right now and God gets the credit for that. I am ready to live up this last semester here at good ol' KU and then see where life leads. Well, I got an internship, so I guess the next step is actually already planned. Yeah, its good.

This was a lame entry and it has been awhile since I've written anyway. I guess to summarize the last month, break rocked. I loved being home, DCC was a blast, and the Mississippi trip was incredible in so many ways. I got over some certain boy issues and encountered some new ones. Life will always give ya somethin' eh? So, thats it. I loved break and am sad it's over, but I am ready to live it up and party hard! Oh...wait...I'm not actually going to do that. Not in a bad way anyway.

Goodnight to you all. (Or just you, Tate)