Time for a whirlwind

Buckle your seatbelt because I have a feeling that life is about to take off.

And I'm really, really excited about it!

The Psalms according to Betsy

I'm thoroughly enjoying the Bible study I'm doing right now, which is a workbook written by Beth Moore called "Stepping UP: A journey through the Psalms of Ascent".  I haven't even been doing it a week, but I can tell already that God is going to teach me incredible things through this.  One of the things Beth has one do with each Psalm we study is re-write it in our own words.  Doing tasks like this has always been a big help to me because it forces me to really dig into what the passage is saying and processing it in my mind and ultimately finding ways that it uniquely applies to me right now.

Although it has been a surprisingly good day considering how things could have gone, I've been having a little bit of mental trouble.  I think that God is protecting my emotional side and my physical side right now but Satan is putting quite a lot of attack on my mind.  He's dragging my thoughts down into sad places where I just don't want to spend anymore time.  So, I thought I would take the time to post the two Psalms I've rewritten so far in the study.  Writing them one more time will only help to solidify them more in my mind, and that's the best way to get Satan out.

My Psalm 120

When stress overwhelmed me, I cried out to God and He held my heart as an answer.

God, guard my heart against deception and block the lies they send my way.

Watch out, you who lie and plot against someone, God will throw your lies and plans back at you, but they will become like the arrows of a warrior and flaming coals as they hit you.

The worst place for me to be emotionally is right where I find myself to be now.  I'm surround by situations that ignore peace and it is wearing on me.  I strive for peace, but when I mention it, their yells for more war drowns me out.

~

My Psalm 121

I look nervously at the challenges that lie ahead.

How am I going to get through this?

The Lord my God, the One who created everything I see, He will help me along the way.

He will help you to, to keep your feet steady.

When you are exhausted and weary, He who is always well-rested will protect you, just like he protected Israel.

He is like a warm cabin that is comfortingly near.

Legitimate physical threats will not hurt you, and neither will the ones your mind makes up along the way.

He's not going to just protect you from the cuts and bruises of the trip, but He will protect your very life.

And as He demonstrates His power and desire to protect you right now, know that He will continue to do so for the rest of forever.

~

Challenges

Partly inspired by a friend's blog, and partly inspired by the Bible Study I am currently doing, I think I want to take the time to honestly look at my life right now and list the challenges that I'm going through.  It might better help me to put things in perspective and to keep track of my progress as God moves me past each thing.

Challenge #1:  Scrooge

I am realizing now what I have gotten myself into and that it is going to be a much longer 3 months than I anticipated.  It is by far one of the most challenging things I've done creatively and professionally, but that was something I knew about ahead of time and was excited about.  But it is going to be quite taxing emotionally and require amounts of patience that I have never known myself to possess.  I know that God is bringing all these trials so that I will never be able to say that I did this on my own strength or in my own timing, but it is still a huge mountain that brings me to tears when I have to think about climbing it.

Challenge #2:  Relationship Issues

It is a much bigger challenge to get over Adam's break up with me than I thought it would be.  I cannot fully distance myself from him, and that only leads to more hurts.  I struggle to find new friends and to get out and do things, especially on my own.  All I've known for almost 2 years is being with Adam and staying home to talk to him online.  I'm not opposed to going out with someone else, but it's not like I have someone interested.  Most people are already in relationships of their own.  And those things provide their own sets of hurts.  I'm at a time in my life when it is fine to be single and most people are encouraging me in that but the bottom line is that I want to settle down and I think I'm ready for that and for a year now I've had a boyfriend who was leading me on in that direction and with whom I was making plans.  It's hard to just let that go and face a big empty slate. 

Challenge #3:  Luna

There is so much riding on this and all of it boils down to how well I'm working with Luna.  That's a lot of pressure on em.  And even though I know that I could keep Luna as a pet, it would still mean starting over at Square One and that would be hard for me to handle emotionally, to get tentatively attached to yet another dog. Especially after seeing how hard it has been to come this far with Luna.  It's just a tough road on top of everything else.  I'm second guessing the timing of all this.

Challenge #4:  Work

The job itself certainly isnt a challenge, but everything else connected to it certainly is.  It's hard to remember that even if it is for only 15 minute increments, I am to be a witness to my coworkers.  More often than not, that is really hard.  The things these women say and do, especially in regards to each other, is sometimes pretty bad and I can easily get stuck in the middle.  I need an awful lot of wisdom about what to say and when to not say anything and how to show Christ and His love to these people that I don't really even want to be around.  And also with the job just comes a unique need for responsibility with a schedule that is always different and duties that are always changing.  I have to really use the rest of the time wisely to fit in everything else that is required like walks, Scrooge, and Luna's training.  And I really want to make an effort to have my Bible Study be the one things that does not get put off.  It's become too important to me and I want to keep it that way.

Challenge #5:  Friends

I lost my extraverted personality and socialite status when I lost my hearing.  It's very much a challenge for me to go out and meet people and initiate conversations and take an active role in making friends.  But I need friends - I need good friends, friends that aren't Adam - and God hasn't seen fit to just drop them in front of me.  Maybe this time He wants me to take matters into my own hands so that He can teach me something from it.  Sigh.

Well, that is all that I can think of right now.  But it is certainly enough.  I guess I know better now how to focus prayers, and also what to ask people to pray for me about.  Now that they are here in print, the next step will be to see how I move past each one.  It could be terribly exciting, so stay tuned.

A Book Blog

It is now September 1st, which means that our summer alliteration for our reading material ("our" meaning my mother and I) is now ended and our fall alliteration is about to begin.  I don't exactly remember the summer one, but it was something like "The summer will be spent slackfully skimming stories and other semi-serious selections" which basically meant that the summer was the time to do our frivolous fiction reading to sort of bring ourselves down from the more scholastic material that the school year had.  So in honor of those 4 months (wow!), I would like to post pictures of the books that I read that I remembered to take pictures of.  There was more to my reading list than these, but I'll just focus on the ones that I documented.

In no particular order...

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Some other books that are of note is that I finished the entire series of the Chocolate Mysterys, and I've ready 5 1/2 of the Aimee Ludec  series by Cara Black.  Please do not consider all of these books to be ones that I would reccommend.  This post would be 18 chapters long if I took the time to write my opinions on each book, so if you are interested in one, please ask and I'd be happy to fill you in.

Now, because we are "Fed up with frivolity, the Fall will focus on factual forays but not fully, for fictional friends are always favorites." 

You can look for another Book Post sometime in November.  Happy reading!