Hello again! It has been WAY too long since I last wrote here. Life has been super busy. I am in my last year of high school and have been always on the go for the past 6 months. So a lot has happened in my life lately.
This past July, I went to my church's regional summer youth camp. I was so excited to be back after not being able to participate last year. We always have such an amazing time, and this year was no different, but this year God really messed up my life. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming God, but He did ruin everything.
At out camp (and most camps probably) the first two days or so are for getting to know each other and starting to get into God. Then usually Thursday night is the night where God really moves and people's lives are changed. This year, our youth leaders challenged us to let everything go Monday night, and really press in during worship, and that is when everything changed. While worshiping, I felt like God was telling me that I needed to let go of a guy that I have had feeling for for a long time. That was really hard because this guy is one of my best friends and I couldn't understand why God would ask me to do that. Then Thursday God told me that he didn't want me to go back to Uganda this summer which I had been planning on since the day i got back from my first trip. I couldn't understand why He was changing all of my plans, that I had spent so much time making. Then in the quietest parts of my heart, I heard a whisper saying "Don't worry about your future! I am calling you to be an example where I have planted you. Do not be afraid. Storms may come, but hold fast to me and I will be enough". At first I didn't think much about it. I mean, I thought it would be easy to be an example because all my friends were Christian, but boy was I in for a surprise!
After returning home from camp, life was amazing for a week or so. I got to go on vacation and see family. But once school started my life started going downhill. I am home schooled and therefore am quite sheltered from the things that go on in a public school. Probably about a week after all my friends started school, they started telling me things that were going on in their lives, and I was shocked. I found out a bunch of my friends were getting drunk at parties and making horrible choices in certain areas of their lives. Other people I knew were struggling deeply with their faith, and what God wanted them to do with their lives. And the thing was they wanted me to participate too! It was then that I remembered what God told me that Thursday night at camp. I was to be an example. That was probably the hardest thing i have ever had to realize in my life. God was calling me to be an example to my friends and the people around me. He was calling me to take a stand against the devil's advances in my friends lives. It is always hard now. I feel like I'm standing alone everyday, and its the hardest thing to deal with. We as humans crave relationship with others, but because of my faith I am being shunned by almost everyone I know.
A week ago, i was at a college preview at Life Pacific College in San Dimas, California. I went with a group made up of people from my church and people from a church in Montana. The day after we arrived, we were able to be a part of the weekly chapel, and heard from LPC's president, Robert Flores. The title of his message is the title of my post today "Ruined For Normal". As he began to speak, it was if he was speaking right to me. This was exactly what I needed to hear. He talked about how we as a nation and even as a work have developed a status quot where everything is about us and what we can get out of life. How can we fit in and just float by at everything we do? That is normal. But he spoke about how we want to be ruined for normal, and how we need to go above and beyond normal, and be the people Christ created us to be in order to change the world. God was showing me that there were other people struggling with the same things as me, and that I need to be ruined for normal. My friends are falling prey to the idea of what a normal life should entail, when he is calling me to live a life that is so much more than normal. He is calling me to be what my friends need: an example of a teenager who is on fire for Christ and who's light shines through in everything she does.
I am still struggling with this and would appreciate your prayers, but God is really getting through to me and is beginning to change things in my life that need to be worked on. I still have a hard time trusting him, but I realize now that no matter what, I need to cling to him, because there is nothing else in the world that can help me but him.
Just needed to get this off my chest and I thought I would share it with you all.
Thanks for reading. Love you all!
Love,
Hannah
