I haven't really posted these past few weeks. The truth is, college has been pretty stressful for me as well as life in general. Not just with things in my personal life but with my faith and with this drug and just plain old college life. It's hard, we are expected to do so well and there is so much work to be done, yet you have so many things to tackle. Sometimes it can feel like things are caving in. Luckily, I have amazing people on my floor who pick me up when I'm down and are trustworthy, honest, and caring to me. They are just the right people I need in my life.
I felt like posting on my blog while everything was so stressful and hectic and not being sure what I was feeling wouldn't have been a good idea. But after today, I think I know and I feel very reassured. You see, with my faith, it's complicated. I believe in God. I know he is there for me and I know that he is all I need, and therefore that gives me eternal life. However, sometimes he can feel so distant or you look at things in your own life and you think "How can he do this?" Sometimes you pray and you pray and others pray and it doesn't work and you plainly think that maybe he doesn't work on you. Those were things that I was constantly going through this past month. Except I had one problem, I couldn't pray. I would go to pray, but I couldn't let my words come out. It was like there was this brick wall that was put up before me, locking me into this dark place where the only light that I would receive, would be by giving myself to God and letting him do the rest. But I couldn't do it.
Not only was that happening, but this pill i've been taking for about 2 months now (Accutane) has kind of been messing with me. When it talks about the side effects that you can have, I think I've had a pretty good majority of them. I have had multiple nose bleeds. I have had a lot of anxiety. And the worst part: my hands are a completely different color than my body. They're bright red and burning almost every minute of the day. It sucks, especially when you have so many other things going on and things that you have to do and yet you can't even control what is happening to yourself. I think that's a struggle. Sure, I could go off of the medicine, but I was put on it for one reason. My chest. And my chest is surprisingly doing a little bit better. Maybe it's worth it? I don't know. But a battle is a battle and I've never been one to back down.
College life is always a stressful time. You get so caught up in your work and it's hard to balance social and academic life. I make sure that I am balancing it though. Social life is never something that I loose (: However while all of this other stuff has been happening, it's probably been the most crazy academic wise; trying to get all your final projects in, studying for midterms and then finals. Sometimes it seems like everything pops up all at once. Its funny how that works. I think maybe that's why I was so angry. Like every single thing that could go wrong was going wrong and I couldn't fix it because I couldn't pray. Yet the only person who COULD fix it is God. So basically I was kind of trapping myself. Sure, it's still stressful and hard and there is no doubt about it given all the things I've been dealing with, but I wasn't giving myself to him. So how could I receive help?
Recently, I've been attending church with two pretty amazing people. One of my friends asked me if I wanted to go with her one weekend, knowing about these things I was facing. I said yes because I honestly didn't know what to do. I couldn't pray. But yet part of me still needed to hear these things that the pastor was telling me. Even though I was angry, I was also scared of loosing something that I had just found. I get really excited when I talk about this church. In the past, I wasn't too much of a fan of going. But this church is so cool. You can visually and spiritually feel the love that all of the people in the room have for him. I think this is why Sundays are my favorite day. Not only spending it with the people I love, but also just being reassured and comforted.
So today is Sunday, church day. I went and I listened to the sermon. Except this sermon was different. The others before were about sin and being forgave by God but it didn't hit me as much as this one. I knew I was forgiven for my sins but I still didn't feel like it would be proper if I couldn't even pray to Him or talk to Him about it. Today's sermon was about seeking pleasures. It's Christmas. It talked about if we give in the right ways on Christmas. Basically the meaning of Christmas kind of talk. But that wasn't the part that hit me. We were reading Ecclesiastes 2 verses 1-11. It talks about how we seek to find pleasures. How we seek for things other than Jesus. Maybe you seek for alcohol (like in this story) or you seek for materials and money or you seek to fit in with others. You seek in those things to have pleasure instead of seeking in God. And I realized that that was exactly what I was doing. I've been seeking in different ways because I didn't think he would ever be able to help me. I think that's where things kind of changed for me. I realized what was happening and why I've been feeling so lost. Was because I haven't been able to seek in HIM. After the sermon, I knew what I needed to do because I've been wanting to do it for a while now... I prayed for a friend. I have still yet to pray for myself but I'm getting there. My friend and some other people have been praying for my hands lately and it didn't work when they did it. Maybe because I had this huge wall that wouldn't let Him help me? But the coolest thing was after the service, my hands didn't hurt anymore. And the redness went down a lot. I still have soooooo much to go with everything in my life, and even in my faith. But that's one step that I made today.
"Just like dust, we settle in this town,
On this merry go round and round and round we go,
Where it stops nobody knows, and it ain't slowing down,
On this merry go round."
"Merry Go Round" by Kacey Musgraves
