2014

there are five days left of 2014. 

that's scary.

but also in some ways a relief. 

2014, it has been a wild ride. 

but 2015, I am ready for you.

december 31, 2013 I was invited to a new years eve party. I drove to my friend's house and sat outside in my car for 15 minutes crying because I was too scared to go in. at the time I didn't know them well, and I didn't know who else was going to be at the party. I thought I was a pity invite and that it wouldn't really matter if I didn't show up. so I went back home without ever even going in. I texted them saying that I wasn't feeling well -- my go too excuse when I'm panicking. my first few moments of 2014 were spent locked in my room watching netflix in an effort to distract me from the pain that I was feeling in my life. 

I remember thinking that 2014 could only go up from here. and for the most part it did, with a few bumps in the road of course. seconds semester senior year was a blur, to be honest. it was a lot of lasts and surprisingly a lot of work. I wrote a thesis paper on the history and importance of book covers and to this day I am still not quite sure how I managed to write 20 pages on a topic as obscure as that. but I survived and on may 2nd I finished high school classes. I went to prom and realized that it is very overrated, in fact it kind of sucked. I graduated high school after getting three hours of sleep the night before, I didn't think I could survive the hour long ceremony on such little sleep, but I did. I did a lot of things that I didn't think I could do this year. 

days after graduating my dad and I went to the pacific northwest, it was a fabulous vacation aside from the persistent panic attacks that I got daily. we visited seattle and portland and I fell in love with both of them. also the trees. the pacific northwest has some fantastic trees. after returning home I had my graduation party where there were entirely too many pictures of me (thanks mom) but I loved having so many people that I love in my house at the same time. that next morning I was off to windy gap (a young life camp) bright and early. I'm going to be completely honest and tell you that windy gap was one of the worst weeks of my life. for outside reasons though, it was not young life's fault. I gained so much appreciation for the organization and their mission, young life is truly an incredible thing. I learned a lot about suffering at my week at windy gap, and a lot of things about myself. I didn't think I could survive the week, but I did. notice a common theme?

in july I went to north carolina for a week and then arizona, utah, and colorado for ten days with my family. we went to five national parks (five!!!!!) and it was absolutely wonderful. I think God spent a little more time out west, it is so beautiful! I did so much this summer that it was kind of a blur. 

and then I went to college. 

and I called my mom saying that I wanted to go home.

I didn't think I could do college.

I didn't think it was for me. 

but guess what?

I stayed. 

and little by little I fell in love with college. 

I can tell you it's nothing that I did. I owe my success in my first semester of college all to God. I could not have survived college without Him. Elon has become my new home (home #7, ha) and I am so thankful for the community that I have found there. for the first time in my life, I have put Jesus in the center of my life, not just as the center of my sundays. and let me tell you, crazy things happen when you learn to trust and follow Jesus. crazy awesome things. I learned to invest in relationships, not things. I learned to base my self worth on God alone. and I learned that God has really fantastic plans for my life. I'm so thankful for this first semester of college even though it was hard, and I could not be even more pumped for next semester!! I think it's safe to say that 2014 is ending a lot better than it started.

2014 shattered my comfort zone, here's to 2015 shattering it even more. 

also, I've declared 2015, the year of adventure, travel, and minimalism.

when more is not enough

this photo was taken at vance creek bridge outside of seattle in washington state. if you know me, you know that I love the pacific northwest. if it is in God's plan for me I will definitely be moving out there as soon as I can. you've probably seen pictures of this bridge on instagram. in fact this bridge is what started my obsession with the pacific northwest. I saw it all over instagram, and I knew that I had to go and see it in person. just look at it. it is a perfect showcase of man's handiwork and God's handiwork side by side. and here we are able to see the difference between things made by God and things made by man: things made by God last even when man makes an effort to destroy them while things made by man fall apart when left alone. but even though the wood on this bridge was rotting and I knew that walking out across the bridge was dangerous, I wanted to. and I would have, if it weren't for my father standing beside the bridge sternly warning me not to go even a foot farther than I already had. but why was it that I wanted to walk out on this dangerous bridge? was just seeing it not enough? if not, then what is enough?

lately I've been thinking a lot about the innate desire that humans feel that pushes us towards wanting more. as humans, it is only natural to desire happiness and fulfillment. but we often try and find that in material things. I've had conversations with people who have told me that their one goal was to be rich. it's a goal for many people, my guess is that you know at least one person who has this as their one life goal. it's so common in fact that most people wouldn't think much of someone saying it. but it breaks my heart. when I hear that all someone wants from life is to be filthy rich I just want to scream. I want to tell them that there is so much more to life than money. that money will never satisfy them. that they will always be desiring more. but I don't. I sit there quietly with a smile on my face, nodding while I listen to their dreams but feeling heartbroken inside. it's not that I don't want them to be happy. it's the exact opposite. I want for them to be happy and I know that if they look for that happiness in money they will never find it. money is good. things are good. but when you center your life around them you will feel more longing than happiness and that will wear away at you.

this doesn't just apply to money. this applies to all of the different places that people try to find fulfillment and satisfaction in. whether it's money, sex, alcohol, drugs, grades, people, or whatever else you can think of you will never achieve true satisfaction from these things. but if it has been proven that we can't achieve true happiness from these things, then what's the point? is there a way to live a life full of happiness and fulfillment?

 you see, there is a way to experience true happiness and fulfillment. there is something we can set our eyes upon and devote our lives to and our efforts will not go to waste. there is hope. the only true satisfaction comes from God. C.S. Lewis writes:

"God made us: invented us like a man invents an engine. a car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. there is no other. that is why it is no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. there is no such thing."

if this quote is not convincing enough to you go read ecclesiastes. it's pretty harsh, but man is it good. nothing gets me more pumped about Jesus than ecclesiastes. good stuff!!!! so now that I'm done fangirling over one of the most depressing books of the bible....

let me repeat one of the most important things that I have learned in my life:

the things of this earth will not provide lasting happiness. God will.

it's hard to grasp. it's easy to want to walk out on the dangerous bridge in search of greater adventure or happiness or whatever you're looking for, even though you know deep down that once you do that you'll only be wanting the next best thing. but it's so easy to get caught up in the now and forget that what awaits you in the future is so much better. God does not just offer us life, he offers us abundant life. now I don't know about you, but plain old life seems a lot less appealing when you are offered abundant life. 

and it will always be a struggle to devote my life to God. it's not easy, I can assure you of that. why "pick up your cross" and follow him when you can easily attain momentary happiness from the latest iPhone? why deny yourself when you can walk in to anthropologie and buy that dress you've been wanting? because while the happiness provided by earthly things might be fleeting, I promise you the happiness that comes from God is not. and that's what keeps me going. kind of like coffee but also a thousand times better (now that's when you know it's good).

beauty in the brokenness

first real post, getting real personal real fast. 

so, I have decided to share my testimony with the internet. I might regret making my deepest, darkest secrets readily accessible for all the world to see, but let's be real, God's got my back. He has healed me enough for me to be able to share my story, and I truly believe that my story is meant to be shared with others so that I can help them. God gave me these struggles so that He could help others through me who deal with the same things. so here's to getting off my high horse, kicking pride to the ground, and letting the world know my story. if you want to continue thinking that I am a "perfect" or a "good" person, I would encourage you to stop reading here. because although I have spent the vast majority of my life trying to make others think that I am perfect, today that wall is coming down. that wall is being torn down, shattering to the ground and what lies behind it is not pretty. it's messy, it's imperfect, quite frankly it's nothing to be proud of, but it's me. and because of an incredible God, the story does not end there. while my life is not perfect by any definition of the word, God is using me in incredible ways and I am so thankful for that. I'm thankful that He came down into my broken life and turned it around for the better. 

(side note: this post might not make the most sense, as my story is not exactly linear. it jumps around a little bit and my only explanation for that is that God is not a linear God. Christianity does not make sense, that's the beauty of it.)

so here we go. my salvation story, my testimony, my life, call it what you want but here it is:

I was born into a Christian family. I was dedicated as a baby and baptized at age ten. I went to Church every Sunday. I was a rule follower. I was the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. I had all of the factual knowledge but the heart knowledge was not quite there. From the outside I am sure that I looked like a “good” Christian. But even though I had heard all of the stories several times,the story of the gospel story never really shook me. I never understood why at Church retreats so many people would cry after hearing the message, I thought that they did it for attention. I was perfectly comfortable living my “lukewarm Christian” life. I thought that I could handle my life on my own, that I had it all under control, I didn’t really need God until the whole after death part of my life. I knew I wanted to go to Heaven but I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to endure suffering because of being Christian. I lived the first seventeen years of my life like this. At the end of my junior year I had the scary realization that I might not even be truly Christian. It was a difficult time for me trying to differentiate the fine line between my faith and my parent’s faith. Although it was not a fun time to go through, I think it was a necessary time to go through. 

At the end of my junior year during this difficult time of confusion in my life, I had an experience where God spoke directly to me through someone. I was at a retreat for my youth group and one of the leaders was praying for me and asked me what I needed prayer for and I told her “school, stress, etc.” and she then told me that God was telling her that she needed to pray for me about self harm. Now I had never told anyone about harming my self, at this point I was still in denial myself about the fact that I was self harming. She didn’t even know my name but she knew my darkest secret, how could this be? But since I had never told anyone about self harming, I knew that it had to be God speaking through her. I knew that God had to be real. Any doubts that I had were gone. God does exist, no question about it. I don’t even remember what she said when she prayed for me because I was crying too hard and was honestly just so shocked at what had just happened. And that was it, game over, I knew that God was real and thus began my journey of transforming my parent’s faith into my own. I knew that He was real and He wanted to be in my life.

In the middle of my senior year of high school something changed, the head knowledge started to turn into heart knowledge. I had heard the gospel probably hundreds of time but it never changed me, I was viewing grace as a list of things that I had to do. I wanted to have boxes to check off, I didn’t think that I was worthy of unconditional love from the creator of the creator of the universe. I hated myself, whenever I looked in the mirror I couldn't find a single thing that I liked. I was in denial about a lot of things, mainly my mental health. I thought that I could do life my way, and my way only. But one day I was having a conversation with a friend (one of the most incredible people I know) from church and she asked me “how do you think it makes God feel when He sees that you hate yourself?” This was something that I had never thought of before, since I had always been so focused on myself. I told her that I probably thought that God looked at me and was disappointed because I was doing something wrong - I wasn’t loving myself. What my friend told me was a turning point in my relationship with Christ, she told me that God wasn’t mad at me or disappointed in me but hating myself made Him sad, because he created me, I am “fearfully and wonderfully made”. That’s the thing, because I didn’t love myself I could never imagine being loved by anyone even though I had heard it a million times, that God loved me, that my parents loved me, that my friends loved me. So I tried something new, I tried not hating myself. Not the most revolutionary idea but the results were incredible over time. Slowly but surely I could look in the mirror and not be disgusted and ashamed of who I was, because I was created by God to be me and nobody else. I am so thankful that I figured all of this out before going to college. 

The summer before going to college was probably one of the hardest times in my life. I struggled a lot with fully trusting God and depending on him in my moments of anxiety. I learned to really listen to Him and spend quiet time with Him and how important that is. Over the summer for the first time in my life I admitted to self harming in efforts to control my anxiety and experienced the sweet release of finally being able to share this burden that had weighed down on me for the longest time, probably over four years. This was when I really began to learn about vulnerability, and it is something that I think God is still teaching me in my life; how to be vulnerable in my struggles and let go of trying to seem perfect. Being vulnerable is scary, when I shared with just 15 people that I have struggled with self harm and anxiety, I was shaking and as my mouth uttered the words I started to sob uncontrollably because that was the first time that I had ever said the words. I had struggled with self harm for four years but when I said it that made it true. It was terrifying, but I survived. And I’ve learned that that’s how life is when you’re a Christian, you can’t just pretend that everything is perfect and go ahead living your comfortable life. You have to step out of your comfort zone. You have to do things that are uncomfortable and scary and in the end it will all be okay, because God can see the whole picture whereas humans cannot. 

When I got to college I realized just how much God had been working in my life. I honestly could not have survived this first semester without Him. If I’m being completely honest, orientation weekend and the first couple weeks of school were hard. It is always different learning how to trust God in situations so far outside of your comfort zone. My first weekend at college I called my mom in tears and told her that I was not meant for college, I couldn’t do it. She told me that I could do it I just had to trust in God. And I have learned better and better each week that I have been at Elon to trust in God and as a result He has been so apparent in my life these past few months. One of the most important things that God has been teaching me these past few months is that I do not need to feel guilty about my past. While I had decided to follow Jesus, the one thing that was holding me back was guilt. I was scared to share my story because I felt such guilt in the things that I have done. But why should I feel guilt when the creator of the universe tells me I am forgiven? He has forgiven me, so why should I not forgive myself? It does no good to hold on to your mistakes when God has already forgiven you of them. If God does not view me any lesser because of my sins, why should I?

So I depended on God. And not just a half-hearted attempt. I went all in. I did not hold back, I gave everything to Him. My prayers changed from “heal me” to “use me.” I devoted my entire life to Him, not just Sunday mornings. And I began to notice changes. My desire for material things waned and my desire to help others has only increased. I found myself giving away my clothes I didn’t need to friends and walking alone at midnight through campus to bring my friend tums because she wasn’t feeling well — two things that I would have never done just one or two years ago. And I realized that’s how it works, you give yourself to God and He uses you and then you see the changes. I used to think that if I could do better, be better then God would love me more, that I needed to change myself to be loved by God. But once I realized that the only thing I had to do to receive God’s love was to accept it, that’s when the real changes started happening. And so here I am, trying each day to live my life to glorify God. I still struggle with everything that I struggled with a few years ago but the difference is that instead of trying to do life on my own, I know that I can’t. I am completely hopeless without God. All of the good things in my life have come from Him. And He is teaching me to be thankful in all circumstances every day which is such a blessing. He is changing my heart each and every day molding me into the person that I was designed to be. 

so there it is. that's my life, written out for everyone to see. I am just an imperfect person loved by a perfect God. I am not sharing this to bring any glory to myself for all of the things that I have gone through, but to bring glory to God and show that He can bring good things through the worst of people. so don't think you're a lost cause because I promise you you're not, that's what I used to think and look at how He has used me so far. 

hello

well hello I guess. 

here I am again starting yet another blog. it seems to me that it's always over winter break that I end up making blogs. weird how that works. it's not even that I'm bored this winter break. I have 17 books I want to read and even more friends that I want to see. and of course pictures to take and paintings to paint. but my instagram captions have been getting longer and longer and alas here we are: a space where I can ramble without end (okay, not quite).

so, about me. 

I'm 18 years old and a freshman in college 500+ miles away from home. I like hammocking. I am known to fangirl over art. I like ivy on brick more than the average person. INFP is my personality type. I am 100% introverted and also 100% good at pretending to be extroverted (breaking the stereotype that introverts are all shy). I love adventuring. national parks are my favorite although if we're being completely honest I get worn out by 3 mile hikes. I've lived in the midwest and southeast united states my whole life but the pacific northwest has stolen my heart and I will be moving there whenever I get the chance. I am a follower of Jesus, He completely changed my life but that's a story for another blog post. other talents I have are making awkward conversations even more awkward, getting excited about literally everything, and falling in love with attractive christian guys on instagram. 

so, that's really all I have to say about myself. 

here I am, it's good to be back.