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rose_in_shadow
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Name: Sarah
Gender: Female
Interests: words, music, rain, theater, bad hair days, and everything else that catches the human conscious off guard
Expertise: intellectual stupidity
Occupation: writer
Industry: twirling
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/1/2005
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| This past weekend was spent with my darling twin sister, whom I have not seen in two months. Seeing her was like a ray of sunshine when I didn't even realize it was dark...but it was. I miss you, Hannah.
God is "working big" (as they say) in Hannah's life. It was beautiful to see the whole tapestry laid in front of me in one weekend -- to see how she was the same, yet how she shone even more, as though more of Hannah had been chipped away to show more of Christ underneath. She told of her friends and her campus, and how Christ-centered almost all parts of it are. I felt a deep joy rupturing out of me.
I also felt a small twinge of jealousy. My life has been the "slow, steady drizzle" lately. I'm at a Christian college, but it is one where a passion for Christ has been deadened under the weight of "fear of man." Most people seem concerned with the horizontal perspective, and I miss relationships in which Christ is continually brought up simply because the people can't help speaking about what they love more than anything else! I also feel as though I'm somehow falling short because I seem unable to do anything about it. I don't know. I don't know!
And in all my confusion and subtle moments of temptation to despair, God speaks firmly, warmly: love and power.
"I sought the LORD and He heard me,
and delivered me from all my fears.
They looked to Him and were radiant
and their faces were not ashamed."
-Ps. 34:4-5
In this slow, steady drizzle, I become more alive. So rather than waiting for the lightning, I'm going to step out into the rain.
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| The question at 2:45 this afternoon:
Begin to crack the 9 chapters + 70 pages + 2 essays due at the beginning of next week....
OR
...join the RUF inner-city ministry that was to leave in fifteen minutes?
It was a really difficult decision, more difficult than it should have been. I've been saying for so long, "I'd love to get involved in outreach ministries, but I'll have to do it when I actually have time." I began to ask myself when that would be, and that's when I decided to start now. I will never "have time." God has been gracious enough to make me zealous about diving in. At 2:45, fifteen minutes before the small group of people headed for the inner-city, I decided to go with them.
It was absolutely amazing. All we did was go to the YMCA down there, where the "richer" poor kids come after school while their parents are working, and love them. We talked to them, tutored them on their homework, played games, and read Bible stories. It was such a blessing to me to be able to hold a sick, crying girl in my lap and have her fall asleep in my arms...to play clapping games with a 6th grade boy starving for attention. It didn't feel like anything in the grand scheme of things; but I knew that for me it was a step down the right fork in the road. Glory be to God.
I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for school work. There's only now for living.
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| The strangers. Yes, the strangers, the faces surrounding you on all sides. They tell you they love you with two-penny words that don't mean much when you've really known what it is to be loved. Their eyes are asking one another what your name is again. You remind yourself that you are here to know God. You are here to know God, and that is all.
That is not all.
I am here to love. When love is a two-penny phrase you begin to wonder what that means again, and when they're trying to remember what your name is again, you wonder what love is.
And then someone smiles at you, and that's a smile you know. That's a smile that contains the lesson of love.
Oh, yes. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to know God.
And I love you deeply.
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So college has its difficulties, and so far they aren't coming from the classroom. In fact, I'm trying not to become a study-a-holic. I didn't think I could be one, but I am one right now. Tonight a girl on my hall invited me to go get a smoothie with her. I think that was one of the best things that has happened yet.
Leaving college this weekend made it difficult to come back. But I love it here, and I can say that utterly truthfully. God has made me to know Him in ways I have never known Him before. He's taught me to love others in ways I've never had to before.
And, gosh, can I say, college is really fun when I sit back and think about it?
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| Walking across campus this afternoon, I closed my eyes (not the best idea while walking on a curved pathway, one side of which drops down a great hill into the soccer field -- but I don't always have great ideas; just good ones... *cough*) and took a deep breath of the sweet grass baking in the August sun, pondering on the eccentricity and superficiality of cliques, listening to the flopping of my sandals on the cement, and heading back to a messy dorm room that feels too sterile and empty in the absence of a twin sister.
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"Let me tell you that I love you, that I think about you all the time...."
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Classes start tomorrow. Right now I'm sleepy. I need to wake up for the Honors dinner that is in an hour. I miss my old world, yet every day God gives small tokens of love that make me more excited about the new.
<3
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| I leave for college on Thursday.
Any last words?
"We must present our lives to all our world. And we must look upon it as an adventure."
-Miss Potter
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