I'm sure it has occured to many more than just myself that I haven't posted in the past 5 months. Well, an explanation is simple, that I got a job while taking 18 units at school... and a girl can get busy. But I'm glad to be having more free time on my hands - actually a lot of free time on my hands soon - to really pursue what is important.
I got a job slinging bagels in early February in order to pay my own rent for a place off campus in the San Francisco city and start putting roots down in in the city and see what living on my own is like. It started off as an ambition that I wouldn't force, some thing that if the opportunity arose, I would take it. I just took the wrong opportunity to be honest and found myself at a job I really wasn't cut out for just for the sake of having the money. I chased money and it led into a black hole of days gone by with little sleep or too much, freindships falling apart and a lot of crying alone. But hey - I was getting paid.
I've learned a huge lesson this semester about finances and provision, and what it means to really let God provide for all of the things I need. I remember it started in April when, in the midst of a human geography class and the passages of the Bible I was studying with my freshman girls study, the idea of giving away everything I own to follow Jesus - literally meaning giving up the material possessions I don't need that someone else does - was so appealing to me suddenly. A horrible confession - this is the firs time I've felt like this in my whole life.
I grew up in a success society, and a success family. I feel myself teetering on the expectations I have set for myself and the fear that I might be that daughter and sister who ends up on the street with no home, chasing helplessly after a simple life filled with joys no one but I will understand. Yet when I think of that kind of life, the kind of life Jesus lived, there's a joy that comes to my heart.
However, this semester I wasn't embracing this joy at all, or even entertaining it. I was working a 5-9 or longer and could hardly hold my life together for the past few months. Things only got worse when I faced a family emergency that I just barely got the time off work for. I was distressed and wishing for simplicity and total reliance on Jesus. But sometimes, that can't just be figurative in our walk of faith, can they?
So this summer I've decided to jump headfirst into the commandment Jesus gave the rich young man, to give away all his posessions and follow Christ. I've never felt the need so strongly to do this before, and even this post cannot do justice to the feeling I have. I have plans to stay in San Francisco for a while over the summer and really pursue whatever God would put in front of me. Right now, thats involvement in my local church and continuing to build relationships with some wonderful friends I've made in this city. I plan to pour more of myself into the relationships I have with my family and really cherish the happiness that comes without all the "stuff" attached to it.
I'm excited to see where God takes me, not where I take myself thinking He's taking me there, but where He takes me this summer.
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