I came I saw I kicked 2011's ass.(An obligitory year end retrospective)

This last year has been a roller coaster to say the least. I started the year jobless and facing losing my apartment. I ended the year in a beautiful and healthy living situation where I’m finally flourishing. If there was one word to sum up how I feel about this last year It would be grateful. I am grateful for the amazing opportunities that I have had this year. The amazing summer I spent working for the most fantastic bosses I’ve ever had and learning how to do so much more than I ever thought I could. I loved that job and look forward to another season of ketchup in my socks, stair sprints and mason jars with my team V. I am also thankful for the ability to finally achieve my dream of culinary school. Its been a long time coming and its finally here. This last year I have been blessed by being friends with some of the most amazing people on earth. First and foremost my best friends.  Christina Fae Underwood. My fats, I am so glad that we had English together in 11^th grade because my life has been profoundly impacted by yours. You have taught me so much about what it means to live and love and laugh. I heart you fats. And then there’s my broooootats aka Valerie Rouse.  I wish I knew how to explain how much you and your precious family mean to me. You teach me what it means to be a strong woman and what it means to be a best friend. Thank you for being such an unshakeable rock in my life.

In 2011 I also had the privilege of making some amazing new friends, in particular. Adam and Jess Aleksy. You guys are a few of my favorite people ever. You are both such genuine and giving people. Thank you for being my biggest cheerleaders about OCI and for being fantastic coworkers and friends.  I loooove you guys to pieces.

I have also had the privilege of being mentored and disciple by the two greatest youth pastors and friends I could ask for. Dave and Amber Wholers you guys have truly modeled what it means to live discipleship and service. Thank you for tons of coffee and picking me up before I drove and for being so willing to pour into my life. I will always be your Rosa anytime you need me.

Now for the person who has had the greatest impact on my life this year. Polly Howell. You have treated me like one of your own kids, you’ve put up with my drama and my messes and have taught me grace and patience and how to be a person of my word. I am so thankful for your role in my life. I know I probably don’t tell you often enough but you have truly changed my life. I will always get you ice water.

So in retrospect this last year even though it had some really dark moments has been a year of overwhelming victory for me. I have been gifted with amazing relationships and if you aren’t named individually in this that doesn’t mean that you aren’t important in my life. In fact if you are reading this it means you have been a cheerleader, a friend, a mentor or just a shoulder when I needed it. I wouldn’t have made it this year without you. Thank you. 

Hope is like a bug on a windshield

So Its been a good minute since I blogged (don’t worry non southern friends I don’t mean a literal minute )  This last season has been anything but easy. At the beginning of October I was feeling like I was finally getting my crap together, great job, doing well in school and had what I thought was a great relationship. On October 7^th all of that changed. It all started with a car accident that showed that not only was my car and body damaged but that my relationship couldn’t hold up to the stress or trauma. Within two weeks of the accident I also was laid off from my job and had to leave school because I had missed so many days from the near constant migraine that the accident left me with.  I was left feeling broken,lost and pretty angry. This also happened right when I was beginning a very intensive counseling class with my church. Talk about having a rough couple weeks.  So I started to pull away from not only my church family but also others who love me and even my best friends. I wasn’t sleeping or spending time with the Lord. Why? Because I was angry and because I felt that I had exhausted my last chances. I felt like all of the things that happened were just consequences of my former life.

One of my favorite verse in the Bible is Proverbs 13:12  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” in this last season of my life I learned what it means to be heartsick. To be perfectly honest I had lost hope completely and was so heart sick it made me physically sick sometimes.  Recently I’ve been reminded of the faithfulness of my Captain even when I am so unfaithful. I was reading Hosea the other day and  in that book a prophet of the Lord is told to marry a prostitute who leaves him several times and he has to buy her back.  As I read that I began to get a picture of hope like I haven’t seen in months. It was almost like I was drowning and someone handed me oxygen. I almost physically felt blood start to pump in my heart again.  The faithfulness of my Captain even in my darkest moments and deepest pain is reason enough to always hope.  He has given me so many amazing things and my prayer is that I can keep Hope in focus becasuse Hope is like a lighthouse in a hurricane and sometimes it’s the only way to make it through a storm. Elbows up and eyes on the prize. Hold onto Hope. Like a bug on a windshield. Like a skydiver to a parachute. Hold on for dear life because Hope=Life.

blood is just as thick as water.

Today   I was having a conversation about my birth family and how weird it is to look like somebody for the first time in my entire life, the person I was talking to said “well they aren’t really your family”  that was like a knife in my heart, I have spent my entire life wondering what it would be like to know people who share the same DNA as me, all I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember is to look like somebody, to be able to say “yeah I have my dads nose” so this past summer when I finally found my birth family I felt like a piece of my heart that had been missing was finally whole. So to the people who think that family is just the people you are raised with, I say, you don’t know what its like to feel so very connected to people a thousand miles away whom you’ve  never met in real life. So until you understand what its like don’t try and tell me what to think. I will always value, love and celebrate the family that raised me and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world but just like when you have a baby and it becomes part of the family or a marriage brings new people into the family, my new siblings, counsins and other family are  just another part of my heart,  so don’t tell me who my family are and I won’t tell you who they aren’t. 

When I was 12 I couldn't see 25

When I was 12  I  couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be 25 years old. I am now 17 days away from being 25 and somedays I feel like I’m 12 still. The last 13 years have been incredibly hard and filled with pain and struggle but I also feel like I have accomplished more than I ever thought I could. But somedays to be perfectly honest I feel like I’m 25 with nothing to show for it. The majority of my friends have jobs and college degrees and babies and houses. I don’t have a job, I’ve only made it through 1.5 terms of school and have no hope in sight for houses, babies or husbands. I can’t seem to finance my own future and everytime I seem to get things in order I fail yet again. People like to tell me “your turn will come” but if I hear that one more time I will freak out. But then I remember…that I have defied statistics and the odds in almost everything in my life. I was told once by a trained professional that “I would never drive ,go to college or graduate from high school” well I have done all of those things and continue to do everything that people tell me I can’t. so I may be 25 and without what the world defines as success but I have climbed mountains and had victory over obstacles that would make most degree holding,baby having home owners weak in the knees. So the moral of the story is that I am successful and that I am seeing 25 and it looks pretty amazing to me.

Faith,Fishhooks and Finally giving in.

Faith ,Fishhooks and Finally Giving in.

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Sometimes I think I’m just the girl who makes the cabin assignments and fail to realize that my Captain likes to work in the strangest ways and that when I help take 60 of my kids to fall retreat that the Lord won’t always be found in the big loud moments during a service or during some  great message but in the dishes,the grilled cheese and the fish hooks.

I remember the day I got saved like it was yesterday, I was 21 years old and had just moved 2800 miles away from everything and everyone I had ever known so I could be free. I was sitting in a van in a cemetery in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia  when I finally tapped. I realized that all I had been living for and all I had once counted dear was as the prophet Ezekiel said “meaningless everything is meaningless” I hadn’t slept more than a few hours in 3 or 4 days and was sitting alone in the van when a worship song started playing and I was overcome with the Holy Spirit in a way I haven’t experienced since. I remember saying out loud “fine I’m done I quit” and I was immediately overwhelmed with a wave of Love I  cant even begin to describe.  So the point I’m to trying to make is that we often think that we as youth leaders need to hype up a worship experience so kids can get saved but I learned this weekend that my Captain is in the tiny moments and that no matter how awesome our worship is or how cool our retreats are, sometimes its  in the fishhooks and the grilled cheese that change happens.

fears,failure and flexeril

Fear , Failure and Flexeril

“Hey girl lets go down, wash our sins in the Carolina tide” one of my favorite songs is playing in my ears as I type this and reflect on how the last couple weeks have been some of the toughest of the last couple years.  At the beginning of last week I got really sick and missed a couple days of school and work and then my brand new computer died, all of those things seem really silly but can be pretty terrible, if that wasn’t enough I was in a car accident on the way to school last Friday that has left me with terrible headaches,neck pain and a debilitating fear of driving in the rain.

As most of you know for the last several months I have been dating a really great guy who I met at church and have really fallen for, I have spent the last several months  fighting with everything I have to not let my past and my failed relationships be the things that define me. I have fought for purity in my relationship and to honor God with it. I have struggled with trust and beliving the truth that somebody who loves and honors the Lord would also love me. Well the last month or so has been incredibly hard on both of us. We are both going to school full time and I’m working almost full time and hes working part time and we are both committed to youth groups. Somewhere in the last month we started arguing more and I started to let my insecurities rule my decision making. So last weekend Dan asked for a break so he could have time to figure out some things in his own life and we could both pray about our relationship. Now one of the most important things in the entire world to me is being a person of your word and so I asked him to honor that request for a break and so we are taking some time to figure things out. This is one of the most difficult things  I have had to go through and the hardest part is not allowing myself believe the lies that I have once again failed at having a healthy relationship and that I will never have a successful one or have a happy ending. But if theres anything that makes sense in this world of ours its that “IF THERES LIFE, THERES HOPE” and I believe in hope, maybe more now that I ever have.

sometimes I forget

I was watching some videos from my old Masters Commission today and those creeping doubts about whether or not I was really supposed to come home came back and again there was that voice that likes to whisper “you know you’d still be doing ministry if you were still there” 

 I’lll  be the first to admit that I’ve made more than my share of mistakes since I came home from 2 years of intense discipleship and outreach in the hood of Atlanta. I’ve given my heart away to those who didn’t deserve it and for a time fell back into my old pattern of drinking. As much as I would like to say I came home and started a ministry or that I am full time staff at church I am neither of those things.

The reality is that as much as my path this last two years has not been exactly what I or my pastors at my MC would have wanted for me , I believe it has been exactly what I needed and exactly where the Lord wanted me

. I have learned that Grace is an action word and that everyday I need to remember the words of one of my favorite worship songs. “you wont  believe where I came from, believe in Grace”  I now have an understanding that Grace is not just forgiveness of sin but the idea that the ultimate soverign God loves me so desperately that He will walk with me through hard things and that as much as I have been given Grace that I should also give it to others.

I am also learning that Love  is a continual laying down of my rights for the better of the other person, that doesn’t mean being a door mat but that Love is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs.

At the end of the day, I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and that no matter what happens I know that “Jesus loves me and the rest we will figure out”