Have You Not Heard?

I am exhausted. Midterms are killing me mostly because they are mixed in with papers upon papers. But Jemima, do you now know? Jemima, have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, Creator of the ends of the earth does not get weary. His understanding is beyond comprehension. He gives strength to the weary and those that lack might He gives power. Youths may get tired and weak but strength comes to those that wait on the Lord. They will renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary and walk and not faint. (loosely taken from Isaiah 40)

In my weakness I must wait on the Lord. In my exhaustion I will wait for Him.

My God is always faithful. He restores my soul.

As I am weary I will praise God for who He is and bring thanksgiving for all He has done.

I look to Him only, for He is my salvation.

Cupcakes

I need to make some cupcakes. I've realized today that making cupcakes is how I cope with my feelings. Its not always cupcakes, it could be cookies, or a cake. But its the act of baking. Maybe its because I need to do something that I'm good at, something that I can control. I don't even like to eat cupcakes. Maybe I'll eat one, but usually I give the rest away or just throw them away.

This is what makes living on campus really hard. I am upset. And I need to bake.

Standards

I got in a discussion just the other day about relationships. I know I know, big surprise. It's all us Bible College students talk about, well that and calvinism. But something struck me about this particular talk. In the end I discovered that in fact it is possible to settle for someone who looks the part, acts the part, and is incredibly awesome in every way. Well not every way... because setting involves giving up on something you want/need/require. I've been thinking that its really important for the person you spend the rest of your life with to have the same standards as you do. I'm not just talking big stuff like Christianity, and the BIG QUESTIONS of life. I'm also talking about other things. Many people in Bible College look the part. The BIG QUESTIONS line up but sometimes what we want is different. I see people settle on mates that are wonderful people, but in all honesty, aren't 100% what they want. See, I have standards that my guy must live up to. He MUST have the same views as me, on many different things. I hope that I never settle on anyone that has different views and convictions that clash with mine, no matter how amazing he may be. There are some fantastic guys out there, some of which I call my closest friends, but no matter how great they may be, I know what I want and I know what I need. But more importantly God knows what I want and what I need and He'll provide.

Bottle

God gave me a sweet word tonight. Psalms 56:8 says, "You have taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Your bottle, are they not in Your book?" And I thought to myself, I've wept for my future spouse before. I have wept at the void in me without him. I have wept at the thought of what he is struggling with right now. I have wept for him. What if God collects my tears? haha. I'm just filling my bottle.

And maybe it will rain on the day I find him.

Ruts

I'm becoming more aware of how satan chooses to attack me. This is good because you should know your opponent so you can always be one step ahead. I guess I'm getting pretty tired of him going after my self worth. This weekend has been hard for me in many ways and I've caught myself falling into satan's old trap. I can't allow myself to go there. I can't think that way. Satan lights a fire and then steps back to see it burn. JJ Heller says it perfectly in her song All the Beauty when she says "I know that she's a liar, when I look into her eyes. But I believe in every word she says. She's out to start a fire burning everything I have. I can't put it out cuz its all inside my head." As soon as any thought belittling my worth comes up I just run with it. I seem to expand on it and dig a deeper hole. See its all inside my head. Its a combination of satan's lies and the ruts I've made in my thinking. It's like when I was in high school the route to school every morning was so burned into my mind that sometimes when I wasn't thinking on the weekend I would drive and just take the route and get close to the school and realize that I was meaning to go somewhere completely different. All satan does is whisper "See, you're not worth it." and my brain immediately gets in a rut and fast forward: later that night I'm sitting alone in my room crying. I wish I was kidding, I wish I was being overly dramatic (as per usual) but alas, over the past few years I've found myself repeating the same track over and over and sitting alone, sad, and broken in my room crying. I guess its hard for me to put all of this into words without being specific but like I've said before in my blog, I don't write for other people. I write for myself. I write to release and process. So it might not make sense but this is what I'm going through.

But here's the truth: I am a child of God and my worth is in Him.

I'm not that girl anymore

Oh yea. I have a blog. So easily forgotten....

This month I was handed an incredible opportunity. A mysterious uncle of mine named Moses sent me a message asking me to be staff at Tillamook Outdoor School. Every year he does this to me! Every year he pulls on my heart via e-mail message and I fight the urge to go. But why would I want to go? Why would I want to go to a camp where I only know like 6 people? Why would I want to push my comfort bounds even farther? So every year I politely turn him down with some sort of excuse that is severely lacking in believability and every year he sends a gracious e-mail back pretending to believe my excuse and always saying "well maybe next year" knowing full well that I will never come back. It's not that I didn't have wonderful time my senior year in high school as a counselor. But it was hard back then to make friends and I knew it would be no different this year. Well, what I "knew" turned out to be completely absurd.

You see, I didn't factor in one very important component. I'm not that girl anymore.

The Jemima PLBC knows today is not at all who I was in high school. Let me paint the picture of who I was. I was non-existent. If you asked anyone from my high school what my name is they might be able to tell you considering my name is... unusual. But that's all they would have known. I was the girl that didn't talk, most definitely didn't have a personality, and didn't care to try and get to know anyone. I had my 5-6 friends and I thought it would be best to just keep it that way because then I wouldn't have to put myself on the line to make new friendships. I didn't want to risk rejection so I rejected myself. In retrospect it was foolish, but it was the only way I could deal with my severe social anxiety. I was sad really. I had a loud mouthed, opinionated, social girl inside of me but despite all my efforts I couldn't get her out. My self esteem was so low that if you graphed it, it would have been in the negatives. I hated myself, I hated my body, and I hated life. The only place I felt like I fit was at church because those were the people I knew from childhood and I was comfortable enough around them to be myself. That's probably why I have wanted to be a youth pastor because I want to make youth comfortable at church and help them grow like the people at my church did. High school was full of judgment and social classes and I despised it. I was significantly bigger then I am now, so that didn't win me any friendships with the popular, (later found out) bulimic girl crowd. I've never been interested in conforming to look like them but so many times in high school I wished I could be them. Life seemed easier. I had programmed my brain to hate myself. I related everything to my size. "If I wasn't such a whale then they would have picked me for their study group.", "If I wasn't so obese then I would be able to be social." etc... It was an act of God that got me to Outdoor School. I still don't understand how I committed to do it because it was so outside of my comfort zone. When I got there I discovered that my self esteem was so low that when we did the "web of life" exercise as a group of counselors I was convinced that this group of 12 people wouldn't be able to pick me up and lift me through the web. I actually thought I was so heavy that no group no matter how strong they were would be able to lift me. And when they did, something in me broke. Something changed. Something came alive.

Fast forward to where I'm at now. I drove up to camp on a Friday night and I was terrified. I was just hoping I would immediately see someone I knew and could cling to them for the rest of the week. Well camp doesn't work like that! I knew only a few people but I wasn't working with any of them. I was working along side four other staff members who I had never met. We lived in a shady house that we named "The Galaxy" because our role on staff was as STARs (Super Talented Adult Resource). We all slept in the same room and there was no escape for me. I had to socialize and I had to work at it! The first two days were a little rough because I had to remember all the songs for camp and act like I knew what I was doing for the sake of the counselors I was leading. But before I knew it the week was coming to a close and I had made lifelong friendships. The girl high schoolers I was mentoring were telling me that I was like a big sis and that some of the things I had told them at our little campfires they would keep with them for years. I had done the "web of life" again with complete confidence and success and I couldn't be more proud of myself. I am not the girl I once was. I love myself now, I understand who I am in Christ and I am able to be myself around people. It's crazy to see where I used to be and where I am now. But the week at camp was a great reminder of that.