Time/Life.

A lot of time has passed (over a year to be exact) since I last committed to sitting down and taking the time to write and really openly share my life with the few of you that actually take the time to read my ramblings. Recently though I've felt called to share some of my hardships and triumphs hoping that this slice of my life may impact you (my faithful readers) and allow you to learn a little bit of what God has taught me these past few months. So friends, settle in, and maybe grab a snack, because this will be a bit longer than many of the other blogs I've written and please, enjoy the ride.

In the past six months or so God has opened and shut more doors than I can count. I've had my dreams fulfilled and taken away, I've been built up and torn back down, I've laughed and even shed more than a couple tears, and most importantly I've been shown an unfailing love from not only God but from my community and my family that I haven't experienced in a really long time.

I've learned that God works in some really weird and confusing ways... For example, a few months ago I was given an opportunity that I had dreamt about for years. I was given a job rather unexpectedly that allowed me to tour around the country with some of my friends in a stinky van listening to loud music every night. It was perfect. I've never loved a job more than I loved that one. You know the old saying, "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life"? Well I had heard that one a million times over and always thought that it was just a phrase that old people said to encourage the younger generation to keep working. But when I started working with/for my friends I finally understood the meaning of this saying and learned (to my surprise) that it could actually be true. My plan for life was to continue doing this for the next few years. I put everything on hold for it. I pushed back school, I pushed back family and even pushed a potential relationship away because in my eyes, it was all worth it to "live the dream". This became all I thought about and all I talked about, but just as quickly as it had been put into my life, it was taken away. I received a text one afternoon telling me that I wasn't going to be able to continue working for my friends and they were going to need to find someone more experienced and older to take my place. I was so torn apart. What I felt was mostly disappointment but it was also the realization that I had put everything else on hold for this and didn't have a clue how to get the balling rolling on "normal life" again. All I could see were the negative aspects of it, and my disappointment didn't allow me to see that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. During the six months that I toured I gained so much more than I realized. It allowed a break from the daily monotony that I experienced in "normal life", it paired me up with tons of new friends that I would have never been able to meet otherwise, and arguably the most important part is that it brought me closer to the friends I was working for. It allowed me to share in their lives and really get to know not only them as the people they are on the outside, but the people they are in the inside. I never would have been able to do that as well and as quickly as I did while living a mere 5 feet from them in that smelly van for days on end. Those are friendships that I wouldn't trade for much of anything.

Another thing that God has made so very clear to me in the recent past is how unbelievably blessed I am to have the community that I have. I am a person who is greatly affected by what I surround myself with. When I was younger I surrounded myself with people who were the same age as me and made really dumb decisions, which in turn caused me to follow along and the same dumb decisions. By the time I made it into high school I was one of the most easily influenced people I knew, but by a crazy series events (which included me losing all of my friends from school) I was thrust into a loving group of people all older than myself who all had good heads on their shoulders and really took me under their wings. The whole "it takes a village to raise a child" applied pretty well to the situation... For the past couple years I've been held accountable, had people to call and cry to when everything goes wrong, and has tons of people to share life and laughs with. For the longest time I never really thought anything of this, but (as stated above) I realized recently that without this group of people I wouldn't be who I am and where I am today, so for them and the impacts they have made on my life, I am eternally grateful.

The lesson in all of this is that God is not a predictable being. You can pray and plead for things to go one way and it may seem right in your eyes but God can have other plans for your life and He will never fail you. Allow the changes and unexpected events come and when they do, welcome them.

Read between the lines. Not everything is as it seems at first glance. Hardships can become triumphs. Tears can turn to laughter, and what may seem to be an awful situation could actually turn out to be one of the best things to happen to you.

Thank you for reading my words and taking time to listen to my rant.