When it's 4am and I can't think of a title...

I can't decide if my problem is impatience or a need for control.

God has a good and pefect plan for my life, but sometimes I get in the way of that. Everything in my life is taken care of, and things will happen in God's timing, but sometimes I think I need to help. I'll just pick up some area of my life that I feel like God's not working on at the moment, and start trying to take care of it myself. In reality, of course, He's already taken care if it, and when I come in, I just mess it all up.

God has given us free will and the ability to make our own choices. He's laid out the choices that He wants us to make, because they lead to good things, but the wrong choices are still there. There have been several times that I have made the wrong choice, and often I make to same or similar wrong choices.

Recently, I decided to just pick up an area of my life and try to handle it on my own. This area is one that I've tried to handle a few times before. It doesn't ever end well. Looking back, I feel like God was probably watching me saying, "No. Child. I've got this under control. Remember what happened last time? I don't want you to go through that again. It's going to hurt you. I have something better for you. Just wait."

But I didn't listen. I went with what I thought was best. I tried things my way. In the end, it did hurt. Luckily, God caught my attention before I messed things up too bad. He stopped me before I was in too deep and the pain could hurt me like it has before.

Even though I tried to mess up the perfect plan God has for me, when I came back to God and let go of that area of my life, He welcomed me with open arms. God doesn't want to see us hurt. He wants to see us happy. He wants us to trust Him. He wants us to rest in His goodness.

There are times when part of God's plan requires that we take action, but we have to listen very carefully to know when these times are, and what areas they are. We need to follow God's instruction on what we should do.

Maybe I'm not the only person who has ever done this. If you're currently trying to "help God out" by taking control of something that God has already taken care of, then I hope this post has somehow helped you. If not, maybe you've done this before and you can understand. If you've never done this before, then I hope this helps you to never make this mistake. Trusting God completely means letting go of your life.

Hope you enjoyed my random middle-of-the-night-thought. Now I'm going back to sleep.

What is the Meaning of Life?

Have you ever stopped to think about the big picture of what life is? Why are we here? What is important? Where are we going? What are we doing?

I often hear that we should "live in the moment." Being a senior in high school makes it very difficult to do this. I'm thinking about the future in every thing that I do, and everything that I don't do. Most of the time, thinking about the future only succeeds in making me freak out and become stressed. This generally happens when I think about the upcoming months, such as graduating high school and starting college. When I think about things that are much farther in the future, it actually calms me down and helps me realize that what I freak out about right now will become very insignificant as my life goes on.

Tonight I took a moment to map out what the typical American life looks like, and this is what I came up with. Please note that these numbers are approximate for the typical American. They will differ by a few months or a few years in some cases.

Childhood
-5 years of "freedom," where we have no responsibility whatsoever. During this time in our life, we are free to do whatever we desire, but we aren't old enough to realize it.
-13 years of school. We have to spend the majority of our time learning for 13 years. We get a little bit of time off, but even during our time off, there is normally still some school to do.

Adulthood
-This is where we get our first choice. 4 or more years of college, or straight into working.
-About 45 years of working. (If you're lucky. Most people work longer.)
-10-20 years of retirement, depending on how long you live. This is our only real freedom on Earth.
-Eternity in Heaven or Hell. You have your whole life to make this choice.

Somehow, for me, looking at life this way makes things such as passing a test seem way less significant. In reality, our life should revolve around the last part:eternity. Where am I going to spend eternity? Where are you going to spend eternity? What about your mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandma, grandpa, son, daughter, niece, nephew, best friend, neighbor, worst enemy, teacher, etc. etc. etc.?

I don't know why God decided to make people, and why this is the way life is. There are definitely times when I would rather just spend time in heaven with Jesus and not have to worry about worldly things anymore. So, while I don't know why there is a such thing as life, I do know that God created it, and it must have been for a reason. I do know that God intended for all people to spend eternity in heaven with Him. I don't know how to end this post. So bye.

Baptized? Again?

Let me just start out by saying wow, it's been a while since I blogged. The only good reason for my absence is that I've been busy. I haven't given up on my blog, though. In the future I really believe I will blog more.

Obviously, a lot has happened since my last post. It's been 6 months. I don't have time to tell you everything, because I am leaving for Mexico in a few hours (whoo!) and I have stuff to do before I leave, such as take a shower, clean my room, mani/pedi, etc. So, lets get right into the point of this post.

Yesterday, (Sunday, July 14th, 2013) I got baptized. For the third time. I never thought I would be baptized so many times, but each time was special in it's own way. I'll try and quickly run through each baptism in order.

Baptism #1
I believe I had just started 6th grade, but I may have been a little bit younger than that. I was currently attending a United Methodist Church. At this church, when you turned a certain age, it was common to go through several weeks of "confirmation class." During this class, you learn all about what it means to become a Christian. It was actually really informative. At the end of the classes, they ask everyone if they want to be baptized. I really did want to be baptized, and I was so excited. At the time, I really didn't like water, (I still don't love it) so I opted for a "sprinkling" rather than full immersion. I was baptized, and that was that.

Baptism #2
My second baptism was a few months after going back to a church that I went to when I was little. I think my baptism was on July 29th, 2009. My reason for this baptism was because I felt like I needed to be baptized with full immersion. My mom baptized me. In between my first baptism and my second baptism, I grew a lot in my walk with Jesus. The first time, I was a "church goer" and someone who loved God, but that was it. The second time, I knew a lot more about serving God, and I was serving God. I "thought" that I knew all about what it meant to be a Christian, but I was wrong.

Baptism #3
I've been going to my current church for 3 years. I have learned SOOOO much about God since going to this church. My third and most recent baptism was yesterday. Thursday night-Saturday night I was at a youth conference with my youth group. It was absolutely mind-blowing. On Saturday morning there was a really powerful message about baptism. It touched almost everyone in my youth group, and we all wanted to be baptized. So, that's exactly what we did. Yesterday morning, 14 youth got baptized at my church. Almost all of us had been baptized before. For me, this baptism symbolized the new relationship I have with God. It's a completely different relationship than what I had the last time I was baptized. It also symbolized me burying my past. You won't see many more posts about depression, because that was drowned. I won't get angry at everything, because I left anger in the water. I am made new!

I would like to end this post by saying that I realize some people don't believe in being baptized more than once. If that's your opinion, good for you. Please keep your opinion to yourself. I'm very happy with each of my decisions to get baptized. I also understand that a lot of people don't believe that sprinkling is real baptism. At this time in my life, I don't believe it is either, BUT, I still count that as a baptism because it was real to me at the time, and it means something to me still.

Also, I am leaving for Mexico in the morning, so expect a blog to come soon about my trip there. I am SO pumped for this trip. Adios, America!

Happy 2013

I have sooooo many things that I really want to blog about. To make sure I remember them all, I have made a list. It's quite long. I wasn't sure what I wanted to blog about right now, so I decided to "start from the beginning." I didn't know where the "beginning" was, so I went with the beginning of the year. To start off this post I would just like to list a few things, to get them out of the way. These are things that I want to say but don't want to make a whole post about.

1. I FINALLY got a new laptop. I've been waiting two years, but the wait was worth it. I hope.
2. Christmas wasn't all that exciting this year, but that's okay. I would make a post about it, but I've complained enough. I'm trying to move on from that.
3. Since my last post, I've come to realize that, due to events of 2012, holidays now mean pretty much nothing to me. They're just days like all the rest.
4. I hope to be writing more blogs now that I have a reliable computer to type on. I normally just write them on my phone, but I much prefer using a laptop.
5. My laptop has a keyboard that is a lot different than what I'm used to, so I apologize if my next several posts are full of typos. I hope it doesn't take too long for me to start navigating my computer like a pro. ;)

Moving on to the point of this post. I will split it into two parts. 2012 and...you guessed it...2013. I won't bore you with the details of me cleaning my room on New Years Eve and cleaning the house on New Years Day.

2012

For me, 2012 was split into two very different times. I will classify them as "before Mexico" and "after Mexico," since that was a real turning point in my life. It also conveniently came around the middle of the year.

Before Mexico, I was generally happy. I had lots of friends, (or so I thought) and life was pretty good. Sure, I had my few off days, but it wasn't too bad. Before Mexico, I was a junior in high school. When I smiled, I really was happy.

I'm not sure if it really was Mexico that changed me, or if it was more the things that happened soon after I got back. Probably both.

I'm not 100% sure if I really was a lot different after Mexico, but it seems like I am. I don't think that I'm the kind of "changed" that people expect after a mission trip. I've felt more alone than I ever have. I've been depressed. (That's no secret...to anyone who reads my blog. Everyone else is completely oblivious.) I get mad a lot easier. I've lost most of my friends. I'm even more closed up than I used to be. Of course, since Mexico, I've started my senior year of high school. That alone has cause a lot of changes. Mostly good ones.

Now, this may sound like Mexico was a bad thing. It absolutely was not. I love Mexico with all of my heart, and I have been working really hard and saving up to go back this year. I feel like there is going to be a huge change that will happen inside of me when I go back.

2013

I'm pretty sure 2013 will be split into 3 very different parts. I'm excited for each part and I can't wait to see what happens. Since nothing has happened yet, and there's not much to say about it, I'm just going to list the 3 parts.

1. January-May. My final semester of high school. Oh. My. Gosh. I have so much school work to do during this time. I'm pretty sure it will kill me.
2. May-August. The summer after high school/before college. So much to do in such a short period of time! I'm hoping to make this the best time of my life.
3. August-December. My first semester of COLLEGE. Speaking of college...I think that will be my next post. It dawned on me the other day that the last thing I posted on my blog about college was that I had no clue what I was going to do if I didn't get that perfect ACT score. Well, I can tell you this much. I didn't get the score I wanted, but God makes anything that's in His will work out. I promise :)

Until next time, remember to smile, even if it's fake. If anything, it's a good workout for your face.