Summertime

Summer has been rather unexpectedly great so far. I stayed in Abilene so I could rest and get some work done on my thesis, and I have, but I've also gotten to have a lot of fun and do some of my favorite summertime activities. God has blessed me with new friends and given me a new appreciation for some old and I am thankful, for friends, and summer, and lemonade, and disc golf, and movies and board games, and picnics, and wild flowers. I am thankful for it all. As happy as the past couple of weeks have been, here's what been on my mind:

- The future! In my first thesis meeting my teacher asked me what I wanted to do when I finished up at ACU, and my reaction was a little panicky. I have a lot of options and I know what I always say to everyone, but the truth is, I don't know what I really want, and furthermore I don't know how you know what you want. To make a very long and silly story short, I have spent the past several week talking to people that I love and respect to hear their opinion on the matter. One of them, my mentor Vann, asked me what I was passionate about, what have I been excited about forever. He told me to think back, to before I came to school here. I gave a fair and quick response at the time and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Every time I sit back and try to remember what I was like before the storm I can't. I don't know that girl anymore, and I'm not quite sure what to make of that. So I decided that this summer would be my summer of clarity, where I think about what I really want. Now I know that this sounds selfish but that's not how I mean it. I just mean that in Psalm 37 it says "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust him, he will do this." So I am committed to spending some time this summer thinking about what desires the Lord really has placed on my heart and not just about my career, about other things to. I'll keep you posted if I make any interesting finds...
- Boys... haha. Maybe its just because I've been spending so much time with Kathy and Lyndsay but it seems like the three of us can't stop talking about the guys in our life (some that we love and some we love to hate...). But, I can't stop being struck by the ways that men and women are SO different and everything that I thought I knew about them is really only half true. I am humbled by this realization and also afraid that I will never make enough sense enough out of it to be a good girlfriend/wife/friend... yikes I feel like this is another post entirely :-)
-God. I have been wondering if I will ever know in pit of my heart that God is good. When I read the bible, I can't help but ask that question sometimes and when I look around me at the people I love my heart seems to keep filling with this question. It also seems to me that I'm not the only one with this question looming overhead. Perhaps being faithful doesn't always mean being confident in your beliefs about God, and who he is. Maybe sometimes faith means serving God in spite of the unanswered questions. Barack Obama touched on this in his speech at the Notre Dame commencement this year. He said: "In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse. But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own. This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate..." And so I will continue to read and wrestle, and serve the Lord even when I don't know what he's doing.
Hope your summer is treating you as well as mine is...