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jgldfsh718
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Name: Jaime
Gender: Female
Interests: adventures, randomness, dares (i will do anything you dare me to), beauty (its part of my story), reading, driving fast, air soft guns, being crazy, pursuing and experiencing christ, exposing conversations, being outside, hanging out with friends, cuddling, camp!, cereal, writing...
Occupation: student and smoothy maker
Message: message me
AIM:  jgldfsh718
Member Since:
8/26/2006
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| i have never felt so acutely my inadequacy and yet so effective and inside his will. i think this is what Paul was feeling when God told him that he wouldnt take his thorns from him because his power is made perfect in his weaknesses. i think i understand what it means to boast about my weaknesses now too. God has just been amazing me at how he turns these days where i am home to take a break from school into significant achievements for His grace and purpose, and its not the days that i feel particularly close to Him either or when i am at my highest obedience. he has taken my bad days, my sin, my boredom, and my restlessness and have used THOSE to accomplish what he desires. its something i always learned in bible study and heard speakers proclaim to me and even experienced on more forgettable occasions, but over the past few weeks i have seen God overlook my good days to specifically pick out my weaknesses.
like i mentioned before God really worked in my heart and turned it back toward Him from a semester of falling back into sin and battling my body. as He revealed to me truth and brought healing, He also reminded me that it isnt going to be all easy and that there were going to be days when i wouldnt feel so excited or victorious. i understood that but i was still riding the high of new felt grace and so went forward into the next two weeks with such closeness to God and little struggle. i hit a bad day, though, toward the end of last week and felt like a failure despite the fact that i knew that this would happen. God had warned me and yet i was still surprised. i felt that i had utterly failed and that i was once again turning my back on God and that he would never want to offer me grace or use me again. its kind of funny to look back and see how satan convinces me to fall then makes me feel guilty about it because its so ridiculous what he gets me to believe. but really its only funny when i look back, not when i am in the middle of it. so anyways i found myself having a bad day and just praying that it would be an isolated occurrance and not the cycle again that had developed in the months prior. I got to the end of it and just wanted to talk to someone and have them reassure me and i had made plans to talk to this amazing woman that night whom i hadnt seen all break. i just knew that she would have godly wisdom and would be able to make me feel better, but when i called her to tell her that i was on my way she told me that she needed me to do her a favor and started debriefing me on the situation with a young woman who is a senior at my old high school. she is battling anorexia and is losing and gwen (the amazing woman) really wanted me and catherine to talk to her and share our stories and speak truth to her. wow. God gave me this to do....on my bad day. what? i was thinking, "um God did you catch the fact that i have no right to be able to share truth with her? were you with me today and see how badly i messed up?" haha but God didnt care one bit...he wanted to use my weakness and he knew that he could heal my heart and speak to me better than gwen ever could. sure he could have used her sweet words that night, but he wanted to speak louder than that to me.
so i found myself that night sitting next to catherine and across the table from a perfect reflection of me when i was a senior in high school, sharing the Gospel and my testimony and praying thanks to God for the struggle that i endured and the chance now that i have to proclaim his name through it. FOREVER WILL I BOAST IN MY WEAKNESSES FOR CHRIST!
God also spoke to my tendency to focus on myself that night. Sure i was having a bad day, but this woman is losing her life and God gave her to me to care for and to share His love with, and the moment that i met her (haha i also realized that i had gone on a trip with her a few years ago) she became my focus and her soul became my worry. Paul says to count others as better than yourselves and this experience really made that verse come alive in my heart and i understood it better than i ever have. We really are His eyes, His hands, His mouth, His feet, His love in the world and i know that i need to keep that always on my heart or i will easily forget it. im just so thankful that God uses the useless and the weak and the inadequate... | | |
| good things always happen on swing sets. maybe its the aerodynamics that your body acquires while on them. maybe its feeling of time travel that you get as you swing back and forth between childhood and adulthood. or maybe its the distance you experience from any part of your life and the sense of nearness to heaven as you fly through the air. maybe its all of them.
sometimes God speaks to me when i am swinging, especially late at night. one particular instance was a few nights ago when i found myself outside talking to a new friend on the phone around midnight. i dont get reception in my house so pleasantly the swing set offered me a place to enjoy my faulty technology. after a good conversation i decided to sit out there a little bit longer to savor the swing's gifts. it was a beautiful night, not too cold and clear with every star seemingly present to greet my eyes. i started thinking about everything that had happened in the past week, and i began to realize how much God blesses me despite my sin and limitations. A renewed battle with the meaning of beauty and its source developed this semester and so of course my guilt along with it. i think that i have to be one of satans favorite people because i am so easily distracted. i keep myself from God for not measuring up and satan doesnt have to do a single thing, but i dont really put him out of business, i more provide him with insurance. but thats besides the point.
even before i went to urbana God was working so overtly in my life and in my heart. his scriptures were coming alive right before my eyes in the middle of starbucks day after day until he had won my heart back. i traveled to urbana knowing that my God is good and that he is powerful and loving. and then while at urbana God spoke in so many ways i didnt even realize a lot of them until the swing allowed me a glimpse into parts of my heart that had not been ready to be viewed yet. had i thought about all of what God was doing all at once, i would have been on spriritual overload, but he kindly stored up his words and fed them to me gradually when i got home. he answered my cry for deep friendships at school; i met and shared my life with some of the greatest girls i have ever met and the best part is, unlike camp, these people will be there when i go back to school. HUGE answer to prayer :) He also taught me something so profoundly life changing and yet so simple it makes me smile: THE GOSPEL IS ENOUGH. i went to a seminar on sharing your faith with a Jewish person, and the whole time i sat there staring at the powerpoint and thought that there was no way that i would ever be able to compose a convincing or persuasive argument for Jesus to these people. i thought about all of the years of witnessing to my family and only being met with unbelieving minds and defensive words. and i sat there defeated for absolutely no reason. then as i continued to listen to the presentation, god began to speak so clearly in my heart. i heard it but at the same time i didnt. he said to me that the gospel is enough, its sharper than a sword, and that my only responsibility is to be faithful to my calling to speak about my Jesus. he told me not to work on arguments. he told me to pray without ceasing and he would do the rest. even with just that message i was overwhelmed. every insecurity about witnessing was shattered and i knew that i had everything that i needed because i have the gospel and the work that it has done in my life. its trustworthy and enough.
if that wasnt a lot of encounters with god, he spoke some more in the next days. i came to urbana convinced that i was called to go overseas to a muslim country, the most dangerous one of course, and that i would go after i was finished with school. god told me that that was not his voice and that that was my own. he told me that i would go to the people that i wanted to have no more to do with. i have endured a lot from my dad's side of the family, the Jewish part of my family. details aside, i became hardened toward them and decided that the Jewish people were a lost cause and wherever they ended up after this life, it was their own fault. when i read that, the sensitivity that God has replaced within me winces, but before i would not have been affected by that statement at all. its a miracle. so God told me that he wanted me to minister to these people and i received an opportunity to do so this summer. I gave my God a "yes" and whether he sends me this summer or not, i told him that i am willing and he will take care of the rest. I filled out an application to go to Israel for the whole summer to learn hebrew and to go to the streets to proclaim the name of Jesus. it sounds amazing but as the time has drawn closer to staff reunion i long to work at camp more and more. he has been reassuring me though that no matter where i am this summer that because i have said yes to him he knows that i will be there for him.
this break has been awesome. frankly i wasnt expecting it to be, but God has a way of blowing away expectations | | |
| soo i have found myself training for a marathon. im not really sure how, but it involved one of my roommates and my apparent proclivity towards agreeing to anything when i am tired. so here i am, on day two of training, which officially makes it 6 times that i have worked out this semester...not good. i have gone from exercising none to running a marathon, i mean i guess it works! so day one of training involved burning lungs, rain, and three miles. not so bad. day two involved another 3 miles, seeing 7:30 am appear on my clock for the first time in a while, legs that refuse to go down steps, burning lungs again, and slight improvement. morale is at an acceptable level, im feeling good. tomorrow is another 3 mile run and then i get to rest on friday! woohoooo! i think im really going to be living for fridays from now on. saturday i will pretty much be running straight into the depths of hell...or at least 6 miles into it. im still working on a way to get out of it, but unfortunately i enlightened my running partner on all of the ways i will attempt to weasle out when it starts to get hard, so she's onto me already and i havent even tried. oh well, i suppose i will live. and if i dont, i will die training for a marathon! thats a pretty intense way to die, im inclined to believe. if all goes well i will be on a plane to run a marathon in california over spring break and from the looks of these past two days, we are pretty committed to training, but we'll see when that 20 mile run rolls around. haha, but i left out the best part...i hate running with a passion :) | | |
| somedays my mind runs all over the place and i dont really have one coherent thought process going through my head. today has not been one of those days. i have been thinking about something that happened last night when i found myself harshly criticizing a girl that comes across as rude and snide, which was an easy thing to do because i felt wronged and my humanness then wants to wrong her back. i realize my sin in this situation and it actually goes back to a bible study we had last week about unwholesome speech and where we usually slip up in that area. in light of that, hindsight of last night is very humbling. i blew it, but im moving on.
it did get me thinking, though, about me judging other people and not giving them a real second chance. sure, i will still talk to people and be nice to them socially, but in the depths of my mind i have passed judgment, irreversible judgments. i thought about how much gets lost in translation, though, and i felt somewhat sick about what i had said and participated in last night. there are so many times when i want to say something and just dont know the right thing to say and so i remain silent. i bet to some people that comes off as insolent or haughty, when really its a miscommunication of intentions. my stomach dropped at this realization. this time my actions werent misunderstood, they were genuinely hurtful and intentional. god knows just how to put me in my place, and i need that rather often. but thinking about this one instance really opens the door for a whole different way of looking at everyone in all different situations: ignorance, slips, kind words, angry preaching, shortness, momentary impatience, accidents, and the like. everyone deserves more thought from me than the usual automatically processed verdict. i think that loving people, at least for me, starts with my time in realtion to my thoughts. it should take me more time, more effort, and more conscious thought to assemble my opinions. and i really need to let god in on that process a whole lot more often. these are his children and i have not been asked to criticize them, i have been asked simply to love them. and im now starting to realize the more minute aspects of that love | | |
| it feels good to live again! i spent an entire week straight in the library absorbed by my work, thinking i was using my time wisely all the while wasting every minute of it. i didnt get to see preachers that provoked much conversation around here until thursday when i only had a few minutes to listen. now instead of looking back on a productive week, i see a week of missed opportunities and challenging conversations i could have had. but god will use it, i dont doubt that at all, he is mysterious like that. i didnt get much of a chance to get outside of my mind either, and that proved to be a setback as well. self-centeredness is something that i have to fight hard against because it is so easy fo rme especially when i have an entire week spent mostly alone in the library to get caught up in. i have too much time inside myself and i begin to focus on me and then i begin to struggle. i attach to hopeless thoughts and they beging to chase themselves around my mind and they have no where to go so they remain. all the while god is pleading with me just to look beyond myself and my work to gaze upon reality. there is a world out there so much bigger than the one contained by the walls of the library and class buildings. and he cares for me to know it.
well needless to say i finally woke up and this weekend i began to live....
the first thing i did was sleep. i didnt really mean to but upon plopping down on the couch alone with my computer my body just shut off. i was out. hands still on the keyboard, my coat still on. and i awoke just as suddenly as i fell asleep, but i wasnt tired anymore! its an amazing feeling after going straight for about 2 weeks. a good sleep is as good as an activity the way i see it and makes living more enjoyable, and so i counted it as the best first step to a weekend of life. when i woke up i checked away messages, as is my usual habit, to find that isabel was working at american eagle for 7 hours on a friday and still had a few more to go to complete the stretch. i decided to go visit her because first of all i wanted to and second of all i had noticed that ever since camp i have closed my mind to opportunities to serve people. i loved doing little things for people when i could at camp, but here at school i dont even think to do it. here was a chance to love someone other than myself and so i jumped in the car and was on my way. we talked for a while and it was really good and the perfect medicine for self-centeredness. i want to do more for my friends from now on. after visiting for a while i made my way to barnes and noble for some pleasure reading and good browsing. i grabbed some starbucks and headed to the back where they keep the good chairs and there i stayed for a good while. i read an aritcle about the situation in Gaza and how that issue has taken the backseat to the more novel conflict between israel and lebanon. all the politics i didnt understand but one off comment got my attention: it is the most densely populated area in the world and nearly all of them rely on charity for food and there are so few humanitarian workers there because of the danger. the reality of this situation became elucidated all in a mere moment and i actually looked up from the magazine to see my world fade away as the image of a world beyond even the united states took center stage in my mind. i want to go there. i want to see and feel and help the suffering. and the funny thing is, i dont care if i die. i realized that sitting there in my world of lattes, homework, adventures, and luxury that none of this mattered and that i will always be discontent with my life if i continue to fill it with only these things. i have always wanted to go overseas and work for some part of my life, and now right before i go to urbana to hopefully get connected with an organization, god illuminates that desire and rekindles the passion. after the life-altering experience at barnes and noble, i was driving back home content to spend the rest of the night without doing anything terribly exciting when i got a phone call the second after i had finished thinking that thought. it was madelyn and melissa and erin saying that they wanted to just drive somewhere. oh man, thats one of my favorite things to do. so i got home, ran to get my bathingsuit, and we were on our way. rascal flatts playing in the background and a hot tub waiting for us in ashland, nothing was going through my mind except for calm bliss. we ran outside in the 20 degree weather in our bathingsuits to the hot tub, met a cat named steve, visited randolph macon, pit stopped at sheetz, and made it home at about 2am. the night couldnt have been anymore perfect. it was exactly what i needed and it refocused me and gave me perspective. we didnt talk about assignments, workloads, tests, grades, careers, or internships. we talked about life, sex, music, husbands, god.
that whole time i didnt open my bible, but god spoke so loudly and clearly, like i hadnt heard him in so long. and i was surprised to hear that when i finally opened my ears to listen, he wasnt talking really about me or what he is going to for me or to help me. he was asking me to look beyond what is right in front of me. he first showed me what i can do here while i am at uva and he then showed me what i can do in the world. maybe it is all ideal thinking to believe that i am here to serve the world and that change is going to come from my simple obedience, but i say that we can experience gods abundance while we are here and i believe that we do that when we stop thinking about ourselves all the time. i want to get out there and serve now; i think that that is where a lot of gods abundant life is waiting for us | | |
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