A Major Change

It's finals week. Two days and I'll be on my way home for a month. Done with my first semester of college.

It seems almost surreal. I look back at my writings from August and September and I see so many answered prayers. I see so much growth.

I've been learning at an exponential rate. Learning how to pray, learning how to hear God's voice, learning about knowledge vs. spiritual maturity, discernment, the duty of the church to judge, how to trust people, how to look for the areas in my heart that I need God's light in because they're shrouded in darkness.

I've been soaking up so much information and wisdom that I'm actually excited to get away for Christmas and mull it all over.

I came into college a scared little girl with an anxiety disorder. Maybe I still have an anxiety disorder, but I'm no longer letting it control my life. I'm starting to see my relationship with God outweigh my fear, so that when He asks me to do something, I do it. Regardless of how scary it is.

I've moved into adulthood, into making my own decisions and taking my life into my own hands. For instance, adding a double major.

Pre-Seminary Bible-Theology.

I've been told time and time again that it's impractical. I know this. No, I don't know that I'll go to seminary. No, I don't know what on earth I'll do with the major. I want to go into orphan care in Russia. Not very applicable.

But I do know that this is what God's asked me to do. And that I'm going to love it. I'll take classes on Psalms, the Pentateuch, the Growth of the New Testament Church, and the Epistles of John. Christian Theology, Philosophy, Biblical Interpretation. I will love it.

It was scary walking into that office and signing the paper (albeit, kind of anticlimactic). It was scary planning my 18-credit-hour semester for the Spring. It was scary to tell everyone that I was doing Pre-Seminary Bible-Theology and had absolutely no reason except that it was what God had told me to do.

But I did it.

And it is in those four words that you can see how much I've grown in just this one semester at Asbury.

And I am loving pressing my heart ever closer and closer to the One who created it. Listening. Waiting. Obeying. Being transformed.

Humble

I hate needing people.

I would so prefer to remain independent and aloof. It's easier. People can't hurt you if you don't let yourself open up to them.

Already this year at Asbury, God has been teaching me lessons of dependance and trust. I'm learning to trust my friends. To trust that they really are friends, in the truest sense. To trust that when they say they'd do something for me, they really mean it. To trust that they really do love me.

But a leg scooter is a whole new level of dependance.

I knew something was wrong when after two and a half months in a boot, my foot still had not healed enough for me to walk on it. When I went home for Fall Break, I saw an orthopedist and got an MRI. The results: my foot is fractured and a ligament is partially torn.

The doctor suggested a leg scooter, insisting that I need to be completely off my foot for at least a month in order for it to heal.

Sure, the leg scooter would be embarrassing, but it wouldn't be that bad, right? Everyone would get a laugh, including me; I'd get some new nicknames. Fun and games, scooting around campus for a month.

Two days on the scooter and my dream vision is already shattered.

The realization sunk in yesterday morning. I want to cry when I go up the hill to get from my dorm to the rest of campus every morning. The muscles in my left leg have been worked more in the last two days  than they have been all year, and I can feel it. My right knee is bruised and battered from all the new pressure from the scooter. Walking is slow and arduous.

But the worst part?

I can't open doors for myself. I can't carry my own plate in the cafeteria. My friends walk almost at a standstill when they walk next to me. I can see people's eyes on me. Glancing quickly up and away. They feel sorry for me.

And I hate it. I hate that I'm reliant upon other people's kindness to get into my dorm building because I can't open the door. I hate the someone else has to take my dirty dishes to trash line. I hate that when I sit with friends at dinner in the cafeteria, we have to think about where my scooter can and cannot go. I hate that when I go visit my friends at their dorm, I have to call them to open the door for me.

But it's not humiliating.

It's humbling.

How often after this will I see someone struggling to get through the door? How often will I see someone who's having a hard day and trying to mask it with a good attitude? How often will I extend a hand of kindness to someone who needs it, but doesn't want to ask for it?

And so, while I am still adjusting to life on a scooter, I am learning to be thankful for it.

I am thankful that my foot was injured.

I'm thankful I have to be dependent on others in this new and terrifyingly beautiful way.

I'm thankful that God is teaching me to be humble.

Life or Death

Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders.

Let me walk upon the waters wherever You would call me.

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander,

And my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior.

I've stood in a room with a thousand other students singing this song. I see a sea of arms raised around me, eyes closed, hands open wide in surrender.

To the casual onlooker, chapel at Asbury University would look like a little piece of heaven. A body of young people seeking after the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength.

But that onlooker wouldn't hear the conversations that occur afterward.

Obsessively worrying about a test the next period. Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders.

Freaking out about a relationship they're being convicted to leave. Let me walk upon the waters wherever You would call me.

Complaining about the inconvenience of going to chapel three times a week. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander.

Talking about how ridiculous the expectation is that they spend time in prayer and in the Word every day. And my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior.

How can they go from such spiritual highs to such spiritual lows in the course of mere minutes?

It's because they're looking for a feeling instead of a person.

The church today has so watered down Christianity that its become nothing more than a moment in time when you get a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card and move on with your life, with a Christian facade painted over your sin-saturated heart.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Christ calls us out of our past lives. Completely out. Not one foot out. Or one finger out. Completely out.

He calls us into holiness, so that He can indwell us and be Himself in us. A relationship with God is so much more than a two-second prayer before you eat dinner, than flipping your Bible open once a week at church, than praying when you want to do well on a test.

Christianity, true Christianity, is hard. It demands allegiance. Loyalty. Your very life. It demands that you take up your cross just as Christ did. It demands that you die to yourself. Not just once. But every day. Until there is nothing left of me and everything left of Him.

And for the first time, I am seeing the spiritual death around me. So many are hanging on by a thread, acting like they're fine, but wondering inside, Is this all? Is this all the Christian life is?

And, no, it's not. They need more. They know there's more. But the more is uncomfortable. It's hard. Oh, it's beautiful, it's rewarding, it's fulfilling too. But it's not easy.

And there comes a time when you have to decide, "Do I want to be comfortable or do I want to live?"

Life or death?

It's your choice.