it's been a long month. and yet, it seems like the weeks are flying by...it's odd. the leaves have already started to change, the weather's been freakishly cold lately, and tomorrow begins officially the christmas season...and i'm so excited! i love christmas! it's my favorite time of the year...the sounds, the smells, the cheery people (and some not so cheery) christmas shopping, the pretty lights on all the houses, christmas on the mountain with christmas convo and coffeehouse and open dorms, flying home and seeing all the soldiers in the airports on holiday leave...it's just the best! and i can't believe it's so close...it freaks me out. less than forty days and i'll be a college graduate. i can remember how terrified i was the night before i was supposed to leave to drive up here...i couldn't begin to imagine being this close to graduating...and then i blinked. and now it's three and a half years later and i'm just over a month from being done. and yet...
it seems like an eternity. not to graduation, that's close. from the beginning of the semester. i knew coming into it, this would be my hardest semester, academically speaking. i didn't figure i'd be that homesick, since i knew this would be the end. and i knew it would be hard to say goodbye to my friends. and that will be hard. but i wasn't anticipating the strain this semester would put on me from home. that was a low blow.
it's funny how sometimes you have this one defining moment in time that everything else just revolves around. it's like time just stops, and, from that moment on, you just know -- nothing will be the same again. it may go back to "normal", but that moment has become this defining moment for your life, something you'll judge everything that happens against. and sometimes those defining moments are good: graduating high school, turning sixteen, your first real job, etc. but it seems our lives are best defined by those moments that challenge us. not those wherein we've reached a mountain top, but instead those wherein we are forced, not to look down at ourselves, but instead up to our Rescue. it seems most defining moments revolve around some kind of rock bottom, a helplessness that demands nothing less than every bit of our surrender to the only One Who's arm is long enough to reach down into the whole we've fallen into and strong enough to pull us out.
it seems i've had my share of these moments. don't misunderstand me; i am by no means in a bad place, particularly not one i've created myself. i am blessed beyond measure. but my semester has been redefined by this moment God put into my life, a moment that begged nothing less than my absolute and total submission to God's will. and time stopped. and things will eventually go back to normal, but i doubt it will ever be the same. and that is what my semester has been defined by. my walk with God, my grades in class, my focus, my time with friends, my activities, my every moment; it has all been defined by this single point in time when my world collapsed around me and i was forced to face some of my worst fears and let go.
letting go. that's been a huge one this semester. transparency is hard for me, but if i'm going to be honest, that is one of the bigger lessons God has been teaching me these last few months -- He is bigger than and far more important than any earthly belonging i have or had or ever will have. and it scares me. and i don't really like dealing with it. in fact, it still causes me a slight pang, even to write. i lost pretty much everything. like, most all of my belongings. pretty much anything i didn't have with me (which was most of my stuff since i didn't bring much for my last semester) is gone, lost forever to that dadgum hurricane. and you know what, i can't change that. and you know, in the midst of my anger at God and my questioning His judgment, He had the audacity to love me. and then, to add insult to injury, He had my itunes shuffle start playing a song that inevitably brought me to tears...and it hit me: God is bigger than anything that hits me. and i haven't even got it the worse. i'm more blessed than a lot of people back home, let alone the impoverished world. and more than my material things, God is bigger than any storm i face.
and so here i am, month and a half later, still dealing. and at that not well. and just over a month left to go. and it hits me, all this stuff in the Bible seems to revolve around forty days. Jesus remained between ascension and resurrection forty days to get the ball ol' Petey dropped rolling again with His ministry and offer some instruction and encouragement. Further, Jesus was in the wilderness fasting, praying, and being tempted for forty days. But i think most applicable is that Noah sat in a boat full of seasick land-dwelling animals and grumpy shipmates for forty days, all the while riding out the biggest, baddest (and only) thunderstorm he'd ever seen or faced. so it seems logical then that if Noah can do it, so can i.
so here i am, with a God bigger than the storm i'm in behind me and nothing left to lose except my pride, forty days left to go in what has quickly become the longest and most draining semester of my life...
bring on the rain.
God is bigger than
the air i breathe
the world we'll leave
God will save the day
and all will say
my Glorious
the world's shaking
with the love of God
Great and Glorious
let the whole earth sing
and all You ever do
is change the old for new
people, we believe that
God is bigger than
the air i breathe
the world we'll leave
God will save the day
and all will say
my Glorious
clouds are breaking
heaven's come to earth
hearts awakening
let the church bells ring
and all You ever do
is change the old for new
people, we believe that
God is bigger than
the air i breathe
the world we'll leave
and God will save the day
and all will say
my Glorious
my Glorious
my Glorious
my Glorious...
God is bigger than
the air i breathe
the world we'll leave
and God will save the day
and all will say
my Glorious
glory, glory
send Your glory
glory, glory
send Your glory...
-- Chris Tomlin: My Glorious
