Year End

So this year has been so rough for me. I feel as if I've seen more valleys than I've seen mountain tops YET, I am so very grateful for every valley I've seen. At the beginning of the semester last year God gave me one promise concerning school - you will never be put to shame. I've held on to that promise like you wouldn't believe. I'd already failed a class and it was such a struggle to go back. I felt as if I were to go back I would have to hang my head in shame. Last year over the summer, God told me to lift up my head.

Here I was at the beginning of 2008 and that was the only thing God spoke to me. I made it my foundation to stand on, well as far as school went. So I made it through the semester and then September came. I was fine until I went away on a retreat. It was so amazing. God could not have orchestrated it any better. I came back with such a passion and a fire for God. It was amazing. Almost two weeks later, this unbelieveable fear gripped me. It was unlike anything I've ever known in my walk with God. It was so paralyzing. All I could hear was "you're not going to graduate. You're going to fail again. What will everyone say? You're a failure" It was so overwhelming that I actually began to put myself in danger of failing. This fear was affecting my school work, my clinical performance, exams...me. God never said that I was going to fail but yet here I was failing because of what I did, not what God did.

My worship began to suffer. I sat in service for about two fridays and two Sundays and couldn't enter in to the presence of God. I was becoming more and more fearful and more and more in bondage because of this fear. My quiet time with God was just that - quiet. I couldn't even pray. Then one day I'm sitting in my room, TV on mute, computer on and just sitting. I began to feel as if I was suffocating. This fear was beginning to suck the life out of me. For some reason, and I can't explain why, I lifted my hands and just cried. It was almost as if every tear carried with it the fear that so gripped my heart and with each tear came a freedom like I've never known.

So at the end of the night, all I could do was rejoice and claim the word that God had given to me; to declare it! At the end of 2008 I am beginning to see promises that God made to me when I was 14 years old come to fullness. Things that God said I would be doing are beginning to happen and I'm excited to enter 2009. It is truly going to be the year of the miraculous. I guess I would be remissed if I didn't mention that I am graduating in about three weeks with grades that only could've been by the grace and mercy of God! See you in 2009