Wow, it’s all beginning.  I am starting nursing school in 2 days.  Nursing School?  What?  When did this happen?  It’s all so exciting and nerve-wracking. After orientation yesterday, it is the first time I actually feel excited and anxious.  I literally can’t wait.  I am excited about my readings and to just get started.  I am training for my life.  I just feel like for the first time learning is required, no excuses, just straightforward wisdom being passed down to me from the wise.  I am so pumped about being in a cohort too.  I was surrounded by 55 other people feeling the same way I did.  I just feel like it will be a family, and we will forever be connected for being the Fall Nursing Cohort of 2013.  It’s special.

For any person like me trying to figure out how to live life, I wish someone would have recommended starting at the beginning of Matthew.  Matthew chapters 5 and 6 are really blowing my mind.  I mean it’s all in red, just straight from Jesus.  What more of a clear answer can I get, ya know?  I didn’t even know that it was there, but so much is there, just waiting for us to discover it.

I just want to profess that God is good.  He has made me recover a new person, see things in a new light, and walk a little taller and straighter.  Even just this summer, I just feel refreshed by God’s love for me.  I can’t think of anything better than something that uplifts you so strongly.  I went from this time last year to being so consumed by my own warped idea to now feeling so free just by letting go.  Time is such a weird thing.  Each day really is an adventure, and none of us can control it.  It’s funny how each day we have to remind, and sometimes convince ourselves of that. 

Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.  -Matthew 6:34

also..

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Be perfect… whaaaa?

I have been back in Dawsonville for a couple of days.  It feels very funny to be here.  Sometimes I feel like I am in some kinda time warp.  I just don’t know what to do with myself when I am home.  I feel like a new person being plucked from my life and pushed into a world that isn’t familiar anymore.  It belonged to a young girl who didn’t know anything.  But nothing else has really changed.. just me.  I just don’t know how to feel about feeling like that.

Whoa.. I am so scattered.  There is so much that I just want to pour into this blog.  I honestly have to pace myself, haha, because there is just so much I want to say and write.  I have come to realize that blogging is one of the best ways to reflect.  As you know, I am a big reflecting person.  Add some caffeine (which I have, 2 cups o’ joe), and I could literally write your eyes closed.

Ahh.. but I love this coffee shop.  I am sitting at Steamers, which is literally the only coffee shop in my Dawsonville.  I just had the best conversation with a complete stranger.  I am so glad that sometimes you just get to have one pleasant conversation with someone about something important in their life.  I wonder if God puts them in our vicinity for a reason.  Was there a purpose for our conversation?  Is there a reason I know that she just moved here and has two kids?  I am not sure.  Sometimes I wonder if all these questions we have will be answered.  Maybe when people get to Heaven, maybe later in life.. I am not really sure.  I know I’ll probably forget, but God doesn’t.  He knows each question I’ve ever had.  Sometimes I wonder if He will sit and talk to me about my life, what I could have done better.  But who knows, maybe this life we lead will be forgotten?  I don’t know.

One thing that has been brought to my attention is what living a life for Jesus really looks like.  I have been getting fearful that I am not doing it in the right way.  I know that in my first post I confessed that I am trying to get to know Jesus.  The first action I have taken to do this is by reading the Gospels.  However, just reading the Bible isn’t enough, and I know this.  I have to LIVE in Jesus.  I have started reading Radical by David Platt and reading this book has definitely heightened this fear.  One common idea of the book is that one must give up everything to and for Jesus.  It is so hard to do this.  It talks about how Jesus told people to give up their family and possessions to follow Him.  It states how people try to reason with this.  I know I do.  I tell myself that things have changed, and that Jesus wouldn’t actually want me to give up everything.  But that means that I am defining my own sort of Jesus, a Jesus that I am comfortable following.  But that is not what He said, and that is not what He asked.  I just don’t know exactly what we are called to actually do, what Jesus actually calls us to do, which is why I am searching to know Jesus.  Because I feel that the more I know about Him, the clearer the picture of living a life of righteousness will become.

There are only a few of you who I have told about this blog, and as you can see I get very personal in it.  I have a deep respect and trust for you all, which is why I feel so free be so intimate and share the deepest depths of myself.  I also see that I am using this blog as a sort of accountability.  It makes me feel less alone knowing that people do know what’s truly on my heart, but moreover, I feel more responsible for staying true knowing that I have a family of support behind me.

But I am about to see some of my family, and my dear sweet Hannah Parker, who is one of my most truest friends, is soon to join me for a couple of days.  I just can’t wait to talk to her for hours about our lives and summers.  There is nothing better in this life than a true friend. 

But I will leave this post with a verse I came across in chapter 91 and verses 14 through 16 of the Book of Psalms:

      “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.  With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

I realize I am a morning person, but waking up to studying this early should be illegal.  However, in just 2 1/2 hours, I will start the test that with mark the end of my summer classes.  HOORAH!  That sure is a nice feeling.  Then I get to see my family today, and it has been awhile since I have spend QT with them.  It should be fun.

Yesterday, I started reading Matthew.  I read about the genealogy from Abraham to Christ.  I then read about Joseph, as a righteous man, how he was going to divorce his virgin wife quietly when he found out she was pregnant.  But then an angel appeared to him and explained that this child was Jesus. 

My first question was that in the genealogy, it seems to use the number 14 often.  I just didn’t know if it had a particular significance.  But moreover, whenever I read stories in the Bible, I really really do wish there was more emotional response from them.  I have no idea how Joseph told her that he was going to divorce her.  Did he even tell her?  Did she cry, plead, and try to explain?  Did she take it quietly knowing that God was going to send His angel?  I just wonder why more wasn’t said about it?  I guess it really doesn’t matter because in the end Joseph found out that this child was Jesus the Christ.  It’s just kinda funny though because we say things like it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.  But I seems that in the Bible through passages like these the destination is what’s important.  I just feel as if the Bible leaves so many things to the imagination, which could cause different interpretations.  Is that good or bad?  It is the way it is so I guess it’s fine, maybe God meant for it to be that way.

This year is the time when my life will be changed.  I am gaining a faithful guide that will show me my strengths.  I am finding the best partner that will be the counterpart to my weaknesses.  I am making a new best friend that will listen without fail.  I am gaining a father who will reassure me as I cry.  This is the year that I seek Jesus- heart, mind, and soul.  I want to give away all that I am and come away a new woman covered with the armor of my God.

I want to know who Jesus is.  I want to learn about who He encountered.  I want to know Him as a carpenter.  I want to see the miracles He performed.  I want to know when He laughed and smiled, and I want to know when He cried. I desire to feel that I know Him like a friend, father, lover, and Savior.  Mostly, I understand that until I know who Jesus is, I will not understand the full extent of what He did.

It’s time.  It’s vital.  And I am ready.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13