Renewal

So, it’s nearly noon, and here I am still in bed. Ali and I intended to wake up and go to her church in Little Rock this morning, but we ended up falling asleep again after the alarm went off. That was kind of disappointing, but I’m sure we can spend some time in the Bible and in prayer today instead. Hopefully next week we’ll make it there.

As it is, it’s an absolutely, unbelievably *gorgeous* day outside. It took me a few minutes after I woke up to realize that the sky was blue and the sun was shining, because when I fell asleep last night, Ike was blowing through with tropical rains and 40 mph winds. I was expecting rain all day today, as well. Oh well, as much as I enjoy rain and storms, this day looks amazingly beautiful. We probably had enough tornado scares yesterday anyway. I would be in so much trouble if it stormed today, because it’s so distracting, and I have so much to do.

That reminds me – what kind of university designs a dorm without *any* kind of shelter for severe weather situations? When the tornado sirens went off yesterday afternoon, the RAs sent us to the lobby: a 2-story high room in the middle of the building whose walls are covered with windows. We might as well have been in a glass room. There is no basement, and there isn’t even a hallway or stairwell without windows. Whoever designed that building obviously shouldn’t have been contracted in Arkansas. :P

Anyway, it’s a little hard for me to believe that it’s September 14^th. As odd as this will sound, it seems like this semester is flying and crawling at the same time. (I just got a strange image of a baby in a superman cape…maybe I should sleep a little more.) :P Seriously now, perhaps the academic workload is speeding it up and the relational issues are slowing it down. My class work this semester seems to be more difficult and more involved than anything I encountered last year, so I’m working extremely hard to adapt. At the same time, the spiritual, emotional, and relational issues I’ve been dealing with since I moved into the dorm have also been more numerous and intense than anything I dealt with last year.

It’s a tough mixture of circumstances, but God has shown me lately that He really does know what He’s doing. (Imagine that!) Without these hardships, I wouldn’t be growing. Every single thing I’ve experienced has resulted in exponential personal growth, to the point where the person I was at the beginning of the summer probably wouldn’t recognize the person I am now.

One of the major catalysts in this change has been God working with me directly through Chi Alpha and D-group. The first week of Chi Alpha, I felt like He was calling me to surrender again, because I’d been trying to live life on my own for a while. I pretty much failed that first week, and then God confronted me with it again at the next Chi Alpha meeting. So, He was pushing me in that direction pretty hard when I showed up at D-group last Thursday. Let me just stop here and say that Meghan and Laura, our two D-group leaders, are two of the most Spirit-led young women I’ve ever met. When they pray, I know that I am going to personally encounter God in amazing ways. At the end of our “getting to know each other” meeting, we started to share some prayer requests so that Meghan and Laura could pray for us before we left. Most of the prayer requests weren’t very in-depth or detailed, but when Meghan started praying, she started discerning God’s voice and speaking His words over us. For Ali, God was saying that he wanted to restore her life and gave her guidance for a particular situation. For me, He needed to be a little blunter. His word for me was “renewal,” but He was saying that in order for renewal to come, I have to let go. I have to release my mental death grip on my life. I have to be still, know that He is God, and trust Him. It breaks His heart and wounds him so deeply when I get so wrapped up in myself, in my worry, and in my confusion, because He wants to take care of everything. A confused and burdened mind is not His will for me, and I’m going to miss His best in my life if I don’t learn to let go and fall into Him. After all, He just wants us to love Him, to run to Him, to want to be close to Him. Now, that’s exactly what I want to do every single day. Before, I would have been worrying about what exactly He meant by “renewal” and what exactly He wanted me to let go of. But now, He’s made me realize that all He wants is for me to run to Him with everything and get caught up in Him. That’s what really matters. In other words, even though I’m not yet entirely sure of what He’s doing, that’s just fine with me. I’m perfectly content to figure it out with Him.

So, it’s possible that none of that made sense; for some reason, it tends to be a tangled mess in words. In my heart, though, it’s just an overwhelming sense of peace, and that’s all that matters.

Maybe this will make things a little more comprehensible. Yesterday in the car, one verse of this song caught my attention, and I realized that it speaks in so many ways to what I'm experiencing. Here's the video and the lyrics:

Sanctus Real - Whatever You’re Doing
From the album We Need Each Other

It’s time for healing, time to move on,
it’s time to fix what’s been broken too long
Time to make right what has been wrong;
it’s time to find my way to where I belong

Chorus:
There’s a wave that’s crashing over me, and all I can do is surrender
Whatever You’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos, but somehow there’s peace
And it’s hard to surrender to what I can’t see, but I’m giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone, time to begin again, re-evaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow Your will or just climbing aimlessly over these hills?
So show me what it is You want from me
I give everything – I surrender

Chorus:

Time to face up, clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out that I’ve wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears

Whatever You’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos, but I believe …
You’re up to something bigger than me
Larger than life, something heavenly

Whatever You’re doing inside of me
It feels like chaos, but now I can see
This is something bigger than me
Larger than life
Something heavenly, something heavenly

Time to face up, clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out

Label: Chordant (EMI)

-Grace