Frustrations and fears

You know those days when everything goes wrong, and you don't get anything done that you planned to, and you spend your time in useless, wasteful ways?  Well, that's been my week, basically.  And it's all so frustrating!  Just... yeah.  I was reading this book on fasting and it talked about how when you start cutting harmless pleasures out of your life because you are dependent on (you worship) them instead of God, there is a gap between giving them up, and when God meets your needs and desires that you have been fulfilling with harmless pleasures.  And so sometimes you go back to the harmless pleasures, and you find that they no longer fulfill whatever it is inside of you that was once dependent on them.  And so you are stuck somewhere in the middle, entirely dependent on God.  So that's kind of where I am right now.  And oh-my-word is it frustrating.  I never knew that trusting God and being dependent on Him would be frustrating, but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense, as it entails actively frustrating all of my plans and attempts at living my life on my own.

And I guess that I'm discouraged right now.  Actually, I'm probably more disappointed in myself that discouraged.  But it's like, I am unable to do all of the little things that I expect of myself, so how in the world am I going to do the big things?  And the answer is that all things are possible through Christ, but it is so hard to translate that into everyday living, you know?

That isn't to say that this past week didn't have amazing God moments, because that is a patent falsehood.  I fasted on Tuesday, which was good, and I think that I'm going to make it a regular thing.  It was like, oh this hungry feeling is strangely familiar; I know how to live my life ignoring my stomach, thanks to last spring when I was stress-not-eating.  And it made me realize just how much of last spring's mental fogginess was due to the fact that I was not eating properly, which was a huge part of the whole situation.

On Thursday at Connect, my Team leader was talking about listening to God, and hearing his voice, which was so encouraging to me.  I often feel like the listening to God/following the Holy Spirit aspects of my faith are minimized in favor of doing ministry and reaching out to others and sharing the gospel with them at my church here at school.  And so when Mikey talks about the Holy Spirit, or listening to God and being open to his voice, it blesses me.  Especially because I'm not entirely sure the backgrounds of all of my friends at Team, and I don't know where they fall on the Charismatic scale, and I'm afraid that they would look at me like I'm a freak because I speak in tongues sometimes (actually, it's becoming something of a regular occurrence), etc.  Oh look, fear again.  And typing this out, I'm realizing how kind of stupid it sounds.  But it's still something I need to work through.

And then, afterwards we went ice skating, and on Friday I played in the snow and then went to tea with some friends from my dorm, people whom I've spent many meals talking to, but not done much else with.  But now we're actually friends, which is awesome.  They're all freshmen, and they're all Christians, on the non-Charismatic end of the scale (Catholic, Presbyterian, Romanian Baptist, etc), and I think that for all of them, their faith is really important to them, which is encouraging to me.

Friday evening I had a share-your-life-story-and-deepest-darkest-secrets night with one of my good friends here at school (whom I've known for two and a half years, but we've never gotten around to having that conversation, probably because as much as we love each other, we push each other's buttons on a regular basis, because we are very similar in many, many ways, a fact that stood out clearly in our conversation).

There's more, but I don't think that I'm ready to talk about it yet.  I need more time to think, and put words to the thoughts inside of me.  The gist of it, though, is that God is good. :)