One more.

Just linking this site to my new blog, http://choosingsuperman.wordpress.com/ for those few of you who say that you sometimes read this. I'm hoping to redeem myself with the new one. Also, send me links to your blogs so I can follow you too!

How it ends and new things begin.

How can I explain this feeling I'm feeling right now? I started senior year with so much anxiety and fear. Going into the dorms and starting Kairos, I felt so... inadequate. And as the year went on, so many times that I saw my sins, my failures. I saw how blind I was to myself, saw how little my heart was, saw how self-absorbed, lazy, and uncaring I could be. Just looking back all four years of college, I see how full of myself I was, how little I did for anyone, how much I wish I could go back to that person and tell her the truth. How even now, I'm such a small, self-interested person.

And yet tonight, like... I don't know if any of that was for me. I don't deserve any of that. I wonder if my words and actions really got through. I wonder how they could, when I feel like I've done so little.

Yet I feel like I've done so much. I labored over them. It was as if my peers and leaders and I were fighting this great battle to win back the prisoners held captive by the enemy side (we really were, really). I think a staff member during Winter Retreat put it well: it's like trying to hang onto them and anchor them while the raging wind is threatening to blow them away. Just praying for them, accepting their rejections, hoping they'll accept next time, just... how many times I felt defeated, that all our work would come out to nothing. Just hoping with our hearts bare for some sort of breakthrough. And in the midst of all that, wondering how is it that a person like me could take part in something like this?

I look at all that, and I'm so amazed. This. THIS is the irreplaceable, stunning, unbelievably amazing work of the Gospel. How unworthy I am to struggle for this cause and yet find myself so caught up in it and being able to receive all this love and gratitude.

If I knew, when I started this blog, when I started all this my freshmen year, that I would somehow end this college experience in this way, I... I don't know. I never would have guessed. God has taken me so far and shown me so much. God, this... THIS Gospel, THIS work, THIS cross, THIS GOD, who is SO GOOD. It is my treasure. And it's worth it and so much more.

How could I even dare to think I could live my life otherwise? Sadly, how often that I do. That in my sinful ways, I'm so prone to walk that road to Emmaus. But, again in these moments of clarity, do I come back. And here, I will end my college career, and this blog, on this note:

God is good, so very good.

‎"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." - 1 Corinthians 15:58

But Now

When I came as a freshman, all I wanted to do was fully enjoy all the fun opportunities college and the world had to offer me. But now, I want my life to be used for the painful yet joyful and completely fulfilling work of redeeming people to God – even if that means restricting my freedom to maximize the best worldly experiences – because this is the best way I can use my time while I am alive.

Spontaneity

A little something I realized today is that love often consists of spontaneous acts of care. While a lot about loving a person has to do with carving out times for them to meet up for dinner or what not, more often then not, love is about being able to drop everything at the moment to be available for people. It's pushing your current agenda aside to make room for your friend right then and there - whether it be giving advice, helping them with some homework, or listening to how her day went. It's realizing they got sick, so deciding to finish your work later and pulling up your sleeves to make some soup or porridge and bringing it over.

That's why love is so hard. But when you're on the receiving end, it's so touching and heart-warming. So I think I really want to be able to do this better, with less hesitance and more willingness. Knowing that, as that GLive line goes, I want to invest in things that last. And only people last forever.

something read from a long time ago...

"It shouldn't be this hard." He whispered miserably.
The boy just stared at him, feeling his heart quicken at the sight of him looking so dejected.
"Anything that's worth having doesn't come easy." The boy said. "I think that's particularly true when it comes to family."