jen has a blog..?

Well, so much for updating this summer. It been about 4 months since that last post. Fort Worth has been great…exciting, scary, fun, hard, draining, fulfilling…sanctifying. At times I’ve wanted to run away, but I know this is exactly. where. I’m. supposed. to. be.

So, the reason for this post…

I don’t think I have every been as busy as I currently am with life. Balancing working for my department working for McKinney AND getting my masters = there is never a moment in my day that I don’t feel like I have something to get done. I’ve definitely had some feelings of being overwhelmed…got a nice bout of the swine flu as a result…but overall I think I’ve handled my stress much better than I used to.

However, this week has been incredible tough. When I get stressed, my guards come down and Satan gets me. I hate it. But its true. Anyways, I was writing a lab report tonight and I went to open a document and came across the thing I wrote in the spring about who I wanted to be and how I wanted to be defined. At that point in my life, I had a crystal clear picture of what and who I wanted to be in life. I had forgotten some of the things I’d put down so it was so great for me to go back and read, especially after such a tough week and hard night. The 3 sentences that stuck out to me the most and pretty much punched me in the gut were these:

I don’t want a comfortable “American Dream” lifestyle. I have realized that it masks the power of the Lord and makes us weak and vulnerable. I don’t want to be stagnant in my walk – and when things are comfortable I get lazy.

Whoa. I said that?! Well, the Lord was definitely faithful in that area :)   But really, as I really started to think about that again, that is exactly what I want…or don’t want. I don’t want my walk with Christ to be stagnant and I know that the tougher my life is and the more struggles I face, the deeper my roots go, the stronger I am, and the more my heart is sanctified. If my life were easy and comfortable I would get lazy and miss out on so much of God’s faithfulness, greatness, grace and power. As my heart becomes sanctified, it realizes that it doesn’t belong here, and it longs for Home. And there is something hopeful about that. That I will never find anything in this world that will satisfy my heart, and that I’m not searching for or missing out on something.

Steadfast: fixed or unchanging, firmly loyal or constant, unwavering.

I’m trying to let steadfastness have its full effect in me (James 1:4).

Struggling. But hopeful.