Sleep? Who Needs Sleep When...

My eyes shot open and I sat up in my chair. To try to distract myself from my sleepiness, I looked down at my Bible then over at my friend who was artistically doodling notes on what the speaker was talking about. I listened as the speaker continued to talk about Deborah and Barak. His voice became a steady rhythm in my ears, like an odd sort of lullaby, and my eyes slowly closed for a few minutes, yet again. When I quickly opened them up again, I could feel my eyes ache slightly. My eyelids were as heavy as bricks, and I struggled throughout the rest of the "mini-sermon" I guess you could call it, to stay awake.

If I can stay awake during my freaking Intro to Lit and Concepts in Math classes, SURELY I can stay awake to hear God's Word, I thought. But despite my spirit's eagerness to be poured into, my flesh was completely weak.

Yeah, staying up until 3am when I had an 8am class this morning was probably not the smartest thing to do. But when you and your best friend from high school are already having a deep conversation about the day's events in your commons and you haven't talked to each other in FOREVER...well, it's kinda hard to avoid catching up on each other's lives.

My best friend and I are attending the same college. That's like every high school girl's dream, and God allowed it to happen. Of course, barely knowing anyone at the beginning of the year, we hung out mostly with each other, having dinner together and hanging out in each other's rooms to talk and eat and laugh. Then as the semester continued and she had her schedule and I had mine, we kind of became distanced. Every once in a while when I would come back onto the hall at 2am, I would see her and relay the events of my day and she would do the same. But we began hanging out with different people and doing different things.

I'm not saying that any of that is bad. I'm glad that we each have our own friends that we can hang out with. But once last semester ended, a part of me was worried that our relationship wouldn't be the same. Could we still laugh together about the small stupid things we used to? Could we still have those deep conversations that would sometimes end up in one or both of us in tears and hugging and praying for each other? Could we still sit in my room in the dark with nothing but the colorful glow of my iHome on and talk about life, love, and God; eat Poptarts and drink coffee and cocoa; and jam out to sappy love songs or weird hippie music as I blogged and she relaxed? (Okay, yeah, people think that last one is weird, but it's a total best friend thing.)

I prayed over Christmas break that God would allow me to rebuild the other relationships that I felt like sorta dropped. I didn't mean to drop them, but once I officially became a part of the CoonCult fam, I did realize how much I didn't hang out with the girls on my hall and with the people in other buildings I used to always hangout with on the weekends. And I have been doing better this semester, setting designated dinner dates for girls on my hall, the CoonCult fam, and my other friends.

But last night...oh my word, I cannot relate how much joy I had in my heart. Just hearing what God was doing in my best friend's life and telling her what He had been revealing to me as well made me feel on top of the world. We were finally seeing our prayers being answered and seeing the Spirit move in our lives and in the lives of our friends as well. 

Last night, I realized that I had been in this constant cycle of craziness, and that my situation was not the greatest. I didn't want it. I hated that it had even happened and that I allowed myself to fall into that game again and again without even realizing it until then. I told my best friend and asked her to pray for me. Because my flesh and spirit were tired of it all. All I wanted this semester was to build my relationships more, get better grades, and draw closer to God and focus solely on Him. Oh, and get more sleep (yeah, right. Who sleeps in college?) But this little struggle of mine was totally consuming my mind and my life. Even though I don't want to admit it, I revolved my thoughts around those things. I wasn't being patient and waiting for God's will. I was just picking up what I thought could potentially work and ran off with it without consulting God. And I was FED UP.

I just wanted my spirit to be filled with the joy God daily gives me and to be patient for His will, even though it's hard to rely on Him and not see what the end result is going to be. My best friend told me THE BEST ANALOGY EVER to help me with my situation.

She took a plane back home for Christmas break, and she said the experience there and back was not great. But, as she was in the plane, thousands of miles in the air, she looked down and could see the roads and cars below. She said that our lives are like those roads, only from the perspective we have, we're on the ground in one of those cars, only seeing slightly what is ahead of us. We cannot see the entire road, the big picture, aka what our futures will look like. But God is like that airplane, seeing all of the roads and where they will lead, even though we ourselves cannot see them.

I looked at her and said, "Can I quote you on my blog?" and we both laughed.

That was only one thing that God had revealed to us. There were so many other things: realizing what our true priorities are, seeing how there truly is power in prayer, wanting to grow in our relationship with Jesus and with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. The entire talk was magnificent. I wouldn't trade 10 hours of sleep for it!

I pray that the Holy Spirit continually corrects me, changes me, and gives me joy each and every day. For my life goal is to glorify God through my situations, whether good or bad. 

So I thank God...

...even if things in certain situations didn't pan out...

...for opening my eyes to my sinfulness and offering me His grace and truth and love...

...for allowing me to realize the beauty of everything around me, whether good or bad, because even bad things can be redeemed and changed into something beautiful (*cough* MY LIFE for example...).

And finally, I thank God...even if it HAS been rainy, foggy, and windy for like A WEEK STRAIGHT...

...because I heard it JUST MIGHT snow and sleet tomorrow, therefore, cancelling classes, meaning I could catch up on, not only homework, but, yes you guessed it... SLEEEEEEP!!!!!!!

Haha! Love y'all! <3 But God loves you MORE!!!! (^^)