May 15, 2018
Hi guys. It’s been a minute. Life has been a little crazy these last 5 five weeks. I told myself as encouragement that whenever I got to a time of rest, I would sit down and write this blog about how I have gotten through the last insane weeks. Now, that time has come as I finished my AP exams for this year that I have been studying non-stop for (I know I am a nerd), and now the season of rest that I have daydreamed of has finally gotten here. I am not writing this to just say how hard I have worked or how glad I am it is almost summer… I am writing to you as a someone who has endured the same daily struggle to stay motivated and push through as anyone else. To preface, I am a busy bee/hardcore student 50% of my life. I love to be with friends and have fun, but you can find me studying about as equally as you can find me with friends or just chilling. I thrive off of staying busy and being productive. However, that need to perform well that comes with my strive for productivity has overcome me many, many times in the past. Particularly with exam weeks, I have been a total wreck in the past with worry over what grades I am going to get. Said plainly, it isn’t healthy for me to find my value in my grades, but honestly, my mind goes there more often than I would like to admit. All to say, exam week and its stress has been a dreaded activity repeatedly in my past. However, this year was different; it really was. What changed for me this year (and I really believe this) is the fact that I prayed continually before and during my duration of preparation for my exams for extra rest from God. I don’t mean like sleep-rest; I mean like the peace-of-mind that comes with God’s presence. In the past, I put all of the stress on myself to study hard and hope that it pays off in my grades by my work alone. This year, I wasn’t going to put up with my anxiousness and stress over exams. I felt God calling me continually to His rest. Every time I prayed over the weeks, I prayed for the rest and strength that I knew only He could give me. The result wasn’t some big transformation to me at the time because I knew it was God giving me my peace-of-mind, but now that the burden of exams is past, I can fully understand and weigh how valuable that rest and strength was to me. He provided it in the little things, like small slots of time for yoga or sweet memories with friends on the weekends. It is amazing to me how such small things could give me the strength to push through, but they really did. Guys, this peace and satisfying recognition of God’s presence is something the Lord offers at such a great price to Him and at no price to us, completely free. That peace comes with being rooted in a close relationship with the Lord, a bond He sent His son to die for. I invite all of you into that peace. Whether you spend weeks preparing for a game, a test, a speech, a simple converstion, or anything, the Lord is ready to bear that yoke with you. He wants to share that gentle peace with you in the simple, quite moments. It probably won’t be some big transformation that you immediately are affected by, but one day, you will look back and realize how much those seemingly unimportant moments affected you. And if you are anything like me, the feeling of liberation that comes from Christ’s rest and peace is far better than anything you would have been able to strive for on your own. “Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses” (New Living Translation, 1 Timothy 6:12).
With love,
C