Junior Year of College is Over?!

As the school year has come to close I've been replaying it over and over again in my head.  How have I grown spiritually?  What are the areas that I still need significant refining in?  I realized that while last year I grew extremely rapidly externally after I accepted Christ, this year I grew at the same crazy fast pace--only I grew more internally than externally.  Which means that while it may not be as evident to everyone around me, I know that God still is acting pretty speedy in my growth process.  I feel like when I accepted Christ, He was like, "Okay Alyssa, let's go. C'mon. We don't have time to slow down. There's a reason I perused you. I want you and have plans for you. So let's learn and grow. NOW." And then this year, every single strong Christian friend that I looked up to was simultaneously plucked out of my life (because they either graduated or moved away or got married) and it forced me to, rather than bring my "Christian questions" to them, bring them to God.  And because of that, I've grown tremendously this year, as well.  It's as if God was like, "Yeah I'm glad we're at this point in such a short time, but we don't have time to slow down. There's a place I need you to be in by the time you graduate so let's go go go. No time to slow down."

I picture us in a car, speeding down an empty highway--me sitting in the passenger seat, having zero idea where God is taking me, but knowing that He's driving us away from my old life as fast as He can.

Destination? Not for me to know.

However, this does not mean that I am always moving forward.  Many times I find myself taking two steps forward, shortly followed by one step back.  The past month of my life was CRAZY packed with school things, namely for my physiological psychology class.  My group had to run our experiment and we were in Chandler for about 10-12 hours each day.  Analyzing data took even longer and after we finally each wrote our extremely long papers about our findings, we had to present at the Psi Chi Symposium.  I could go on and on about the time I spent on this one class in the past month-- but that's not the point I'm trying to make.  The point is that literally 20 hours of my day was spent working on school work, and I was lucky if I even was rewarded with 4 hours of sleep at night.  Needless to say, my quiet times were pretty nonexistent.  I learned more in physio psych than I did in three years of college, I had the experience of a lifetime when I watched all the stress/tears come together and our project finally seemed whole at the symposium, I became great friends with my lab group (RARL!), and I realized that I finally found the academic subject I am passionate about learning (the brain!).  While this was all going on and I am so thankful for the opportunity to be in this class, I let it sort of control my life for the past month.  It's okay that I was consumed with school (I'm paying for an education, I might as well be learning and doing productive things!), but it's not okay that I didn't also find time for God.  For awhile, I was running on previous quiet times and sermons and readings of Scripture.  Regardless of the craziness, my faith was still strong--I even prayed over my group before we gave our talk at Psi Chi.  But not after long, I had nothing else to run on and I needed to be fed spiritually.  And once the week of final exams hit, I was back to old habits and unconcerned thoughts.  I felt myself falling away and the worst part was I didn't seem to care.

I'm currently at Outer Banks (in an AWESOME beach house!) with Matt and Ruth.  Yesterday we went on the beach to throw a Frisbee and for awhile, I sat on the sand staring out at the ocean, praying.  I felt miserable for putting God on the back burner the past few weeks.  I began to push some semi-damp sand up into a little mountain with my hands.  When I took my hands away some of the sand immediately fell down the sides, ruining the architecture.  As soon as I saw the sand rushing down, I quickly pushed it back up and held it into place as hard as I could.  I repeated this process for several minutes.

We are the sand--so prone to falling away.  If we are not in direct contact with God (the hands) at all times, small parts of us will immediately erode.  And if we don't allow God to put those pieces back in place, the entire mountain will eventually diminish.  But regardless of how long we resist His hands, He is so eager to mold us back into this sculpture that He wants for us.

God is driving the car.  He is in control.  We just need to make sure we let Him in daily, no matter the school work or personal stress we have going on.  And He will shape us into the image that He deems fit for the plans He has for us.