One more week

Yep, there's one more week until I leave for Virginia.

Many have told me I'll be lonely at first, but I will try my best not to become isolated. I have set out to join a church and spend time with people my age that I meet there. I have a tendency to isolate myself, though, and can overcome the temptation with Christ's strength and wisdom. I used to throw pity parties for myself when I was younger (on two or more occassions at my birthday parties), but ever since I came to know the Lord on a more intimate level, I don't do that hardly ever. Pity parties were for the young Gail who only thought about herself, not for the Gail who knew she was loved A LOT by the One who's opinion matters the most. Even if I don't have close friends for a while in VA, I still have Jesus and I want that to be enough. But why doesn't it seem like enough for me to know the Lord at times. I feel bad for saying it, but I sometimes feel like I am unsatisfied with simply knowing my God loves me so much. That's just the thing...I "feel" unsatisfied, so I don't know what the truth is about where my heart's at. My feelings make me question what's true.

And I feel like a traitor for hardly ever pushing myself to do things I don't want to do. When I just do what I want to do, it seems I am happier and less stressed out. Yet then I lack the motivation to do much for other people, it seems. Or if I do actually want to spend time with God, it sounds so good that, like dessert, I save it for last. But then at the last of the day I'm tired and decide to go to bed instead. Will you help me have discipline, Lord, where I need it? I'm confused and scared of what's to come, if I am in this dry land only after 4 weeks out of college. But plenty of people are out of college and still have a close relationship with the Lord, so that gives me hope. Like my cousin and a few others were telling me, I'll find out plenty of things about myself.

I don't want to do things out of fear. But I don't want to do things only when I FEEL like doing them. I am really glad I forced myself to do humanitarian acts and visit my neighbors when I didn't feel like it, but I did it many times out of fear and worry, not out of love. So when I choose not to do things out of fear, my heart looks ugly to me in its desires for laziness, selfishness, and greed. But even though my heart looks ugly to me, God sees that sin, too, and yet I hear Him saying "Your forgiven, my daughter; move on because I have and I'm going to mold your heart to look more like my Son's". And I simply have to trust that He means what he says! Oh that's so good to hear.

I also want to have feelings and praise God in the good and bad, not just shove feelings to the side due to other peoples' stories of how they went down the wrong road because of those feelings. I need to learn how to live in His grace and I trust that I will, in time. I won't set aside His grace. Thank you, Holly Hoppe, for giving me that book by C.J. Mahaney "Living a Cross-Centered Life" :).