Ten: Designers

This new job is working out fabulously! God really blessed me with a great environment and some really awesome designers to learn from. Every day I come home more and more inspired to design the things I love. Sad to say, my previous internship drained me. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to design anymore this summer!

Thankfully, this place pretty much rocks my face off.

I'm not sure if any of my co-workers are Christian or not...Things seem kind of ambiguous. So I'll just continue to work hard, ask lots of design questions, and know that bits of my character show glimpses of the Kingdom of God.

The interesting thing about designers is how introverted most of them are. I continue to be one of the most extroverted people in studio, as well as the office. Charity and Adam (my mentors) are a little slow to warm-up, which is understandable. They seem very pensive and unassuming; I like that about them. Designers are an odd bunch.

Nine: Praises

Yesterday God supplied one of my prayers. I had been praying for a new internship, one that would give me experience in many different areas of design, a good environment, and a place to learn. And it happened!

Actually, I'm not very surprised. I had faith that God would provide me with a new place to go, and I'm so excited to finally see what is.

Eight: Mundane Gifts

I've been challenged by my roommate to look at how God blesses me each day. Let's see...

Today:
• Constructive and hopeful job interview.
• Solidification of a new friendship.
• Connection with an old friend and the chance to hear about his current walk with God.
• Consumption of delicious crumb cake.

All of this may sound mundane, common, or even boring (though I doubt anyone could say crumb cake is boring)...but I have to learn how to live with God in the mundane and non-turbulent times of life if I really want to live with him when things get scary.

My good friend Emily told me tonight, "Life isn't a series of jumping from one emotional high to the next..." We have to live with God and trust him in times of inaction. It's amazing that what may seem like stagnancy to me, is actually God working out his plans in billions of others.

Seven: Provision

Women in Christian America. Women in Navigators. Women who don't believe in God and those who do. Many fall into a category of females who would let the gift or non-gift of a man, rather than the gift of God's provision, determine the outcome of their lives.

I came to the stark and sad realization a couple days ago that I am in the same drifting boat as those women.

Up front, I want to make clear that I am not one of those women who says, "You have to be happy just where you are before God will bring you a husband." I think that's a ridiculous thing to say! Most women I know who are now married have told me, "No, I wasn't comfortable, I was scared." Or at least something to that affect (usually involving the words confused, anxious, and nervous).

There are some, though, who have had the privilege of trusting God with their hearts, minds, bodies, money, career, and growth before men even came into the picture. While I don't think God rewards only those who have been able to rest in him completely, I do think he is able to better prepare those women for marriage and motherhood. When a woman can find her value from the Lord and not from what the Lord provides, she can rest in the fact that God sees her as desirable, lovable, beautiful, capable, and filled with worth. It frees up a lot of a woman's time to pour into other girls' lives, family, school, and personal time with God. And for a woman who is eventually going to be married...it gives her security when her husband, children, and the world will fail her.

I've been drifting in and out of that place for months. I'll feel like I'm resting in God one minute, and the next I'm overcome with loneliness and fear. Sometimes my feelings have more to do with the difficulty of resting in God than the fear of being alone. My fear of being alone has really been fizzling away! But it's the anxiety over feeling comfortable with God's provision that really takes it out of me.

I've been in prayer for a while now that God would calm my heart and show me how he provides...in little ways, you know? I don't need a husband right now, or the perfect job...but seeing how God provides in the relationships with my housemates, in finding a church, and in my internship would be so affirming. Prayers would be really appreciated.

Six: The White Room

Yesterday was a bad day.

It was one of those days that leaves you beaten and battered, wondering "How did I get here?" Yup. How did I get here? How did I get here? Sometimes when I sit with God, I ask him...and usually I don't hear anything.

So often, the entitled culture of our time thinks, "If I ask God a question, he should be able to give me an answer now!" I'm there. I admit that I'm a part of this selfish generation, focused on receiving immediate answers to my questions. God! If you want me to go there and do this, make a bird fall from the sky...or text me...or...something........please? Recently I've been getting stuck in my questions that relate to the past. I'll ask him if I lost everything I loved to learn about his love, or to gain insight, or to see how he's able to bless me years and years from now. But I just end up in this big, rotten mess with running mascara and puffy, red eyes because I don't hear God's booming voice saying..."Yes. That's right." I have this fear that when I'm 80 years old I'll look back and say that I missed out on this great chance at life because I just couldn't hear God. It's not that I'm not trying to listen, it's just not happening. My question is: How can you listen for something and actually hear it when you don't know what it's supposed to sound like in the first place?

I thought I had understood God's voice long, long ago...and I turned out to be wrong. Then I actually did hear God's voice through the Word, but it seems I've forgotten what it sounds like. I went through a hard time a little while ago and couldn't do a quiet time for close to two months, and in that time I forgot how God sounded. Now, I'm actually afraid every time I open my bible that I won't be able to know if what I hear and feel is God or my own ambition.

Yes, I've prayed about it. But even now, when I pray, I feel nothing. I've gotten to the point where I don't allow myself to feel anything at all, because of my fear that all the feelings I have are actually beasts of my own design. How sad is that? I cherish my ability to feel and empathize more than most things in my life and now I feel like I'm standing in a white room with no windows and one hidden door that's the only way out into a world of color, vibrancy, and the life for which I yearn.

Paralyzed by fear is a term I never thought would describe me at this juncture of my life. I'm a Senior in college, about to graduate and move on into a world of uncertainties. God is the only thing certain in my life but right now either he's become silent or I've become deaf.

Five: The Retrospective Year

One year later. That statement sounds so trite. Yes folks, It's been one year since my last entry. Maybe it was supposed to be like this. Maybe I was supposed to sit and think about how my Father God has led me and guided me over this last year.

Life is so different from what I had envisioned for myself. And, God, thank God, it is so much better! I remember when everything fell apart...all my hopes, dreams, and plans...when they fell away I felt hopeless and without purpose in the world.

After a while I felt like an empty woman. A shell of what a woman should be. God had made me beautiful and with value, but all that value felt like it had been stripped away by an abusive boyfriend, assault, self-deprecating thoughts, misconceptions of my abilities, sin, and fear of failure in almost every aspect of my life.

It has been a hard year, but it has also been, by far, the greatest year of my life.

Yes, I was in love. For nearly two years I was in love with a man who was not able to love me the way I should have been loved. A man who would rather hurt me out of his own evil nature and selfish desires than love me with patience and selfless care. I have prayed much to the Lord about the purpose of my time with Austin. I know that God gave me chances to leave Austin, but I chose to stay and make my own plans work. I chose to reject God's best plan for me and accept something less than what I deserve...I thought that if I could work harder, oh if I could try my best to not sin, and if I could do everything in my power to strive to please God...oh then I would be enough! I would finally be enough for God, for the world, for Austin, for myself! If only I could work just a little harder, I would finally be enough!

What a lie.

It's a lie that I believed for a long time...that if I could control my behavior, work a little harder, do a little better...that I would be able to earn God's love and approval. But when I accepted Christ years ago, I also accepted God's gift of grace. And that gift comes free.

I found that my heart was broken (over so many things!) so God could fill up the cracks. Yes, it still hurts sometimes, but God has grown me each week into a woman of greater patience, forgiveness, and love. God gave me Rachel, Emily, Christine, my housemates, and so many more amazing women to be my strongholds in a time of constant self-doubt. While questions always surface, I can find rest at the end of the day in the knowledge that I was redeemed by the blood of Christ.

It has been a hard year, but it has also been, by far, the greatest year of my life. Because God pulled me out of captivity.

Jeremiah 29:11-14 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity..."

At my point of greatest desperation, I was finally able to lay my plans to the side and see that God had ordained something more perfect for me than I could ever dream. I may not know what it is yet...but I know God is good and God can be trusted as the designer of my life.