I Love You More

My senior year in high school will be starting in just a few days, and it seems like all of a sudden, there is very little in life, other than trying to plan for college and summer reading. 

The pre-college process is stressful.  I am currently looking at a short list of colleges, all of which are Christian colleges, and there are so many different details and options that have to be weighed when trying to choose the one that I want to go to.  Of course, if you know me, or if you are familiar with this blog, you'll see that I have a constant desire to know the future, to have life planned.  I have this deep urge to be able to plan everything in my life, and right now, not knowing where I'll be living or going to school in a year is quite daunting.  I haven't even visited all of the schools that I'm considering yet, but already I feel like I should have a college picked out. 

I'm so worried that I'll make the wrong choice.  What if my favorite school ends up being the most expensive?  What if I can't tell which school God wants me to be at?  Even worse, what if it really doesn't matter to God which school I go to, so long as I'm still following Him?  And how am I supposed to find extra time to pray about this process with school starting in just a few days, with my most challenging schedule yet?

And then, once I've figured out where I'll go to college, how do I figure out what I'm going to do there?  How am I going to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life?  What if I do what I love, but then I can't get a job?  What if I do what will lead to a lucrative career, but end up hating it?  How do I make all of these decisions before I'm even a legal adult?

On Wednesday, after I had just gotten home from a college visit, and feeling the pressure to know where I'll be in a year, I turned on the radio in the car, and this song came on.  There was an initial peace that fell over me when the song began, and the first verse said "I am with you wherever, and where you go is where I am."  The chorus was another part that really spoke to me.  "I love you more than the sun, and the stars that I taught how to shine, you are mine, and you shine for me too, I love you.  Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow I'll say it again, and again, I love you more."  It was like God telling me to calm down.  If He can set the stars and the sun to shine each day and night, He will surely guide me through this process.  He will guide me to the right decision, whether or not it matters to Him exactly which college I'm learning to use the gifts that He gave me to use in order to shine for Him.  He will also guide me towards finding what exactly it is that He wants me to shine with.  He loves me no matter what, and I am His.

Passing on the Advice: Dating

For Christmas the leaders of the small group I attend at Church gave each of us a gift. It was a book, "Girl Talk With God" by Susie Shellenberger. This book is full of modern day conversations between a teenage girl and God. They are real, contemporary, and oh so easy to connect with. Though I haven't quite gotten through the entire thing yet, there is a lot of advice and a lot of truth in this book, some of it we don't want to face. It's from this book that I'd like to pass on advice about dating and relationships.

As a teenage girl, I am no stranger to how dating relationships work, and to the fact that they are all around me. I see couples all around me, happy couples, angry couples, good couples, bad couples, and a few just plain weird couples, and it is easy to wonder why I'm not involved in this dating scene, and I'm sure that I am not alone in this. I know that I would rather be with no guy at all than the wrong one, but often times I find myself wondering why that right guy, at least the right guy for this point in my life, hasn't come along. Why am I so different than so many of my friends?

This book, "Girl Talk with God", spells it out wonderfully. God is pointing out to the girl in the book that this boy that she's dating is not the right one for her, not for that moment in her life, and certainly not to marry, and He asks her to trust him with her love life. God says: "Trust that in My perfect timing, I will bring exactly whom I want in your life."

This goes for anything, not just dating relationships, or marriage, this goes for all kinds of relationships and scenarios. God has things under control, I promise you. He knows what He's doing, and even though sometimes we don't understand it, we have to do our best to trust that He is going to lead us in the right direction.

As any teenage girl, or any person, for that matter, the girl in the book responds to God conflicted. She wants to trust Him, and she knows that His timing is perfect, but, as she points out, God's timing isn't always as fast as we wish it to be. And to this worry, God replies simply: "But I'm never late."

Like the previous quote, this applies to practically everything in our lives. God knows what He's doing, and even when we wish He would hurry up with His plan, He is never, ever late. So take some time to breathe, and to trust in our Lord, that He has our lives under control, even when we think that all we do is wait.

God: "You don't have to do anything except be totally in love with me." This can be tough for some of us, taking a step back and allowing God to have total control, especially in a thing such as our love life. This means that we do not need to be constantly looking for a boyfriend, or girlfriend, because when God wants to bring someone into our life, He will, He doesn't need our help. God will handle it all, our only job is to fall so deeply in love with God that another person has to seek Him to find us.

This one last piece of advice from "Girl Talk with God" is probably the most difficult one to follow. God asks the girl: "What if I choose not to share you with a man?" and the girl replies: "I can't understand that, God." God: "I know. But with My strength you can accept without understanding." For many of us the idea that maybe God isn't planning a marriage for us can be scary, and as the girl points out, not easily understood. We won't understand everything that God has planned for us, it's likely that we won't understand most of what God has planned for us, but we aren't meant to.

So if God doesn't put someone in our lives, that doesn't mean that we are any less than someone who has a boyfriend or girlfriend, or than someone who is married. It simply means that He has a different plan in mind. Accepting that is difficult, and not possible to do by ourselves, but with our Lord's strength, He has made it possible. God loves us, and even when we don't understand, and even when we are waiting for what seems like forever, He hasn't forgotten us, He hasn't left us.