My, my. It has indeed been a long time!

This semester at MICA is actually a simple, yet stretching transition (if that makes any sense to you).

Btw! I got my first dose of xhtml as they now call it.

Now, getting onto more important topics that have been occurring.

I am going through a time of continual transitions, as I am assuming many may would understand. I am 19 years old for goodness sakes. That's close to two decades I've been breathing and alive. Well, it does seem like I've lived longer than that! I might say that I feel like I've lived 30 years. At the same time, my future appears to me a condense and intense vision that excites me but nonetheless scares me. Everything that I built to believe as a child is receiving, from time to time, reality shocks. To explain this further, I would utter only one word that comes to mind when I think about growing up: responsibility. To me, I can dream and fantasize, but here's my recent shock: Now, the present, is what I have. I asked myself, "Who do I trust?" To believe in God, I learned, is often undermined for the reason that knowing God (and even his power) is far, very far, from actually resting our fate in his hands. There is an illustration I recall from a sermon that described the difference between knowing and believing. A man can know that his partner can cross a tight-rope across a canyon in the middle of the jungle, but a man who believes in his partner would have him carry his life on his partner's back as he crosses the rope. Continually, I asked myself this question: "Do you believe in God?" "Do YOU believe in God." "Do you BELIEVE in God?" And flashbacks of my baptism would occur and I said, "I know God, but..." "I can't" I couldn't continue to state, "I BELIEVE IN GOD." I was doubting because I felt like I had something to give up, this control that had quite actually proven itself to be futile in the run. I had believed in God, fully surrendered myself to him, in fact, too completely that I had given up on myself entirely. No, I learned that God wants us to keep ourselves, to keep our conditioning as a human and to be co-workers in his glory, as a humble being. This human conditioning I allude to is the intellect I too easily threw away. I feel now that I had a reckless faith. I was quite a disaster to a sense, even though arriving to that degree allowed me to find the appropriate balance that now allows me to BE instead of NOT BE. God never intended for us to be robots. Of course, that's why Adam and Eve had choice. To me, to BE is something WORTH discovering and frankly, that entails letting dreams and fantasies dissolve in the air like mist for the being in order that one would properly analyze himself in order to be fully awake again.

This has been, concerning my reflecting of my entire past, a very unexpected, certainly a very unpredictable unraveling of events that never cease to keep my senses acute. I have fallen many times. I have had a good share of dark hours as well as blissful ones. Nothing right now seems quite certain except the faith that I have in God. Most recently, I questioned the importance of the Bible. IF I believe in God, Believe as in appreciating the potency of God's power, how then can I so easily dismiss the Bible as something near sacred to God, near potent, near alive and present. The answer was simple: I can't. The Bible, I declare, is just as living and breathing as God is here with me now. To dilute the Bible's validity and power was, on my part, an oversight. When I open the Bible and read it for the first time again, there is no doubt a sense of fear that washes over me to observe a God, who's work has been recorded in the very text I held, be as real to me as the present. Stories, they call them. Stories have a fantastical aroma we instinctively relate. To dispel this aroma was a time when before my very eyes the clarity of God's realness overtook me. I imagined Jesus' miracles to be as real as the feeling of sand grains running through the fingers of my hand; I could feel the coarseness of each grain scratching against each other as the fine roughness would fall through my hands. In a passage in Ephesians, _ prays that I may be strengthened in God. Strangely, I saw myself as the food Jesus took and multiplied to feed the thousands. On my own, I would never be able to feed that many if at all satisfy. But finally creating this relation helped me understand that I, Stephanie, am also a miracle - that I can be taken into the hands of God so that he may multiply those who are saved in Christ. I understood. I can't rely on my own strength, because it was easy to imagine how quickly and easily that reservoir would be empty within days and even hours. Nothing is as sustaining as God. I remember, "He provides." It's not that he "provided" - past tense. He provides, in the present tense, says that He can multiply with what limited humans we are. I find that amazing.. btw.

My focus has begun this semester on the basic of learning, simply allowing myself to learn. Yes, I am a student, that is a given. But I have realized that my mind never allowed me to learn, only quickly adapt to situations. But in noticing that, I wanted to change so that I would take on the full ownership of a submissive student undisturbed by any other desire other than that to feed my intelligence instead of "eye-feeding," which is a form of pleasing others than your own needs. I want to build knowledge and wisdom. I want to be able to recall dates of events and the names of creators and rulers. I want to learn.. forreal, whatever and everything that word stands for.

So as I am easing back into school life, yes.. school life, I want to learn, forreal this time. I hope God can sustain this hunger.

What does it mean to fear God? I feel I sense that better now. His power and love is as raw as I believe it to be. Please continue to pray for each other.

Our Past Is Never Lost

When it seems as though the freshness of a new day only beckons forth visions for our future, we can easily erase our past and move on. In these past several months, I thought I was being left behind in all the adjustments that were forged through time and I felt the life around me moving forward, pressing towards the future. But in these last few days, I've come to realize that our past is never lost. In fact, our past is so deeply engrained in our present and future that we hardly notice it. Recently, I discovered how easily that portal to the past can be opened. There is a lot of hurt in that portal, I am sure for many of us. And any unreasonable anger is an easy sign that our past is right there with us.

We would like to think of our past as something more blissful than it was. We will do everything to remember the smiles and the good moments. But my reality is that my past is not simply a series of memories. My past has significantly shaped who I am as a person, including what my desires are. The ugly sheds light on some truth about myself that I am determined to face. Nothing is solved unless I do that. When something repeatedly occurs, I will notice the pattern and try to figure out what about myself is so disturbed by the act. Why am I so angry? And then I will realize...

Right now, there are many things out of my control. I am reminded, though, that I have the power to influence and that is all I will bear.

Long Journey

It's been a really long journey in life. Over all, I've changed so much, or maybe I've discovered who I've become. Thanks to Ellice, I've assumed a much healthier life with less thinking and more doing. The advice was given at the perfect time because everything clicked and it felt so right. I can't help but think that this is all God's timing. As always, I can never see it coming, but I'm baffled at how he's prepped me so meticulously, and because of that, I am rest assured that His plan will prevail in the end and that I will not lose faith in Him.

As I connect with people in school for the first time, I'm also realizing how much I've 'missed out' on - the time and opportunity I had this semester to get to know them more, which my incessant thoughts kept me from doing.

In need of sleep right now, I'm going to go, but this is to check in and say that God has been good to me even though I find his voice softer nowadays. On another note, the weather outside is seriously ridiculous. The wind, as I described to someone, is ice cold that it feels like it's burning the skin. It's ridiculous and I hope that the homeless and the underprivileged can stay warm during it all. Please continue to pray for each other. I know God listens.