life comes at you fast

yep. sure does.

i'm trying not to feel in over my head with school. compared to my 21-hour semester in the spring, this semester is cake. truly. i'm also trying not to feel directionless, still, after two whole years of being in college. as far as being sure goes, i'm more sure now about being a teacher than i have been about anything else. but that doesn't mean i'm positive. i have a lot of doubts.

what is it with doubt? i think i think too much. i doubt virtually everything in my life these days. everything. i guess that's better than the alternative - simply accepting everything and being overly passive, and letting things get past me and being driven by others. but still. doubt is tiring. it can really drain a person.

on a different note...

my faith has grown a lot. i've realized a lot of hard things about myself and others. about the state of things these days. things that grieve me.

about myself - i've realized how capable i am of not being the person i want to be. how much of a struggle it is to obey the Lord, to really follow Christ. how sinful my flesh is. how much i need God. how easy it is to forget how much i need God. how unworthy i am, and how prideful i can be sometimes to actually believe that i have some merit, some good in and of myself. how anything good in me is there because God put it there. how hard it is for me to truly love others sometimes. how lazy and complacent i can be if i let up for even a day. how much, how much, how much i need Him.

about others - i've realized people are not what you think they are. i already knew this but the depth of it is shocking (for example, a friend that i went on a mission trip with being arrested for embezzling $100,000 - shocking). i've also realized how much most people hate the truth. how resistant we can be to hearing it and accepting it as true. how most of us dislike vulnerability and feeling weak. how much others struggle with the exact same things i do, and how much we could help each other if we simply started being real.

about the state of things - i've realized that the world, even my little world at MC - a Christian university, is full of darkness. i've realized that it's impossible to change people, to change situtations. how much the world needs Jesus, because only He can. how much we need to fall on our faces before Him and repent and beg for Him to move. no other answer, be it humanitarian or political or social or whatever, will ever solve anything. only Jesus is the way, truth and life. only He seeks and saves what is lost. i've realized that my disappointment in the church (by church i mean Christianity as a whole) does not, in fact, help the church one bit. how i need to ask Him for wisdom because He will give it generously, and then i will know His will and can act accordingly. how the church really just needs a dose of the for-real-in-your-face-loving-judging-living-breathing-spring of life-redeeming-suffering-holy-humble-healing Jesus. and i can't give them that. He can.

and that's comforting. i choose to cast out the discouragement of satan from my life in the name of Jesus Christ. i refuse to be a defeated, trampled, run down, crushed, despairing Christian. Jesus died for something much more.

i love you, God. thank you.