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“I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather response to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.” - Jim Elliot

Regression is sicking. I don't know if one can truly immature in their faith, but I feel like I have. This year has been one of ups and downs and way too much to do. I feel like it's been a constant struggle of control, still and always, over who's in control. It's so easy to get on a pattern of scheduling and doing, but never being thankful and aware of what God is doing in my life. Honestly, I have accomplished nothing, save maybe realizing over and over that I can't do. Only God can.
May I just say that it's funny that I got more excited over the fact that class schedules were up than I have about anything God's done in quite a while? Dang.
Anyway, enough of that. Time for new beginnings, once again.
And maybe a short recap of what happened since I got too busy to complete my blog last summer:
-Houston changed me a lot. Or God did, of course, through the people he placed in my life as my sweet brothers and sisters, and through the experiences and challenges I faced there.
-School. Same old, same old. New friends, new challenges, same habitual overcommitment needing to be overcome, and many, many adventures.
-I found out I'll be going back to Houston in... 9 weeks! I'm super excited. That doesn't even begin to express it, actually.
-God gave me the awesome opportunity to serve for a week in Brazil-I never cease to be amazed by how he works.
Eh, enough of that. Anywho.
So here starts me focusing again. I'm hoping keeping up with a blog will help with that...
We'll hope so.
And a little encouragement from my dear Spurgeon...

"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord."—Lamentations 3:40.
The spouse who fondly loves her absent husband longs for his return; a long protracted separation from her lord is a semi-death to her spirit: and so with souls who love the Saviour much, they must see His face, they cannot bear that He should be away upon the mountains of Bether, and no more hold communion with them. A reproaching glance, an uplifted finger will be grievous to loving children, who fear to offend their tender father, and are only happy in his smile. Beloved, it was so once with you. A text of Scripture, a threatening, a touch of the rod of affliction, and you went to your Father's feet, crying, "Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me?" Is it so now? Are you content to follow Jesus afar off? Can you contemplate suspended communion with Christ without alarm? Can you bear to have your Beloved walking contrary to you, because you walk contrary to Him? Have your sins separated between you and your God, and is your heart at rest? O let me affectionately warn you, for it is a grievous thing when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Saviour's face. Let us labour to feel what an evil thing this is—little love to our own dying Saviour, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! Hold a true Lent in your souls, while you sorrow over your hardness of heart. Do not stop at sorrow! Remember where you first received salvation. Go at once to the cross. There, and there only, can you get your spirit quickened. No matter how hard, how insensible, how dead we may have become, let us go again in all the rags and poverty, and defilement of our natural condition. Let us clasp that cross, let us look into those languid eyes, let us bathe in that fountain filled with blood—this will bring back to us our first love; this will restore the simplicity of our faith, and the tenderness of our heart.

So I don't know where you are, but I'm in need of going back to Christ's feet in the rags and poverty my flesh has brought me to be clothed in. This is not just my heart that is suffering, but the hearts of those who I have been called to minister to- for "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Cor 13:3). I have nothing without God's love in my heart-so as George Matheson said, "O Love, that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee; I give Thee back the life I owe, That in Thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be."
Back to the only love that sustains me I go.
grace and peace.