child at heart

I am ashamed to say that I have fallen away on updating this blog since I returned home in July. I could say it is because school has kept me incredibly busy this semester {which it has}, and I could say it is because I have kept myself busy in my spare time with work and church functions {which is true too}, but in all seriousness it is because I have nothing decent to say. Any idea or thought I had that could even be seen as spiritual has long since been taken over and filled with remindings of failures and my lack of spiritual fruit in my life. I have fallen into the all to familiar traps that Satan has put out hoping for me to fall into, and my lack of reading in the scripture has left me in a trap I can not seem to find my way out of.

I wonder about things I should not wonder about and I struggle with the most obviously easy decisions: Should I wait to have “relations”? Should I finish school? Will I ever get married? Can I just ask a boy out and stop waiting on them to ask me? Do I really want to be nice today? Will I really be able to be a good counselor? Am I a good sunday school teacher? Why can’t I seem to fit in? etc. My strong desire to fit in and please others constantly ruins my thoughts, and not in a positive way. I second guess my own words not even a second after they have left my mouth, and I am unfairly critical of everything I do, think and say of myself (and sometimes of others as well). In all seriousness I feel like I am not even the same Bella I was in July.

I still think constantly back to July 22nd when I stepped off the plane in the Atlanta Airport at close to midnight on fire with passion, and excited about the possibilities the Lord was bringing into my life. I was so exhausted with the trip I had just left and the 22 hours of flying I had just experienced, but I felt so alive [my parents could not get me to shut up]- and I yet to feel that way again. Even a month or 2 after being back home I still had such a hunger for Christ and such a devotion I had never experienced about sharing the Word to those who did not know Him. Do not get me wrong, I still to this day cannot wait until graduation so that I will be able to fully do missions {If the Lord calls me to it} but the zeal I have for it is different. I feel beaten and broken, and scared.

Here it is, a mere 4 months since Africa and I feel like I used to feel when I would come home from M-Fuge trips, like I had a run on this high and now I was stuck at the bottom and the weight of my sin and shame and failure has broken me down, and Satan has won another day. I continue to cling to Hebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and every sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame , and is seated on the right hand of the throne of God.” If only I could get myself to look at the Italicised part, if only I would stop trying to get through this life on my own.

Even now as I sit in the library at school typing this I struggle not to cry, and about what I honestly could not tell you. I think its my sin, my unworthiness, the shame I feel and how much I despise who I am and the huge difference it is from who I want to be, in WHOM I want to be. I feel so alone, so scared, and so pitiful.

I am anxiously praying and waiting for 2009 and the possibilities it brings for missions; Africa, London and possibly Italy. I feel like I could just scream with my desires for the mission field, if that could some how bring me closer to being there. But even praying about such things I feel like I have failed too, my prayers do not even seem heartfelt. Maybe that is what this is all about, the fact that I do not even know how to talk to my Lord without feeling like a smashed bug. I know I’ve talked with someone about this before but I cannot bring myself to pray to God. Ugh, I am just so bleh about it all.  And that triggers the thoughts of missions and oh my goodness, I do not know how to honestly share the gospel. It opens the pandora’s box.

I just keep saying the same thing Luther cried out when he was where I am, I keep crying it out of the depths of my soul – I am yours, save me!!!