My Heart Is Bursting.

(sorry it's another long one!)
My heart is so full of emotions right now. It's incredible! It's exciting! Most of them are wonderful. There is so much God is doing to my heart, I don't know how I'll ever be able to put it all into words! But I'll try.

Today has been a good day. Really good. And it shouldn't have been, because yesterday I was awake for 21 hours! Mondays are long days beginning at 5:50am, including 4 classes, a long run for practice, and meetings from 10-11:30pm. That's just the expected stuff. There's always unexpected things, like a wonderful, deep conversation with your fiancé. Or accidentally reading the wrong homework assignment so having to read twice as much. Or the girl on your XC team who needs someone to talk to and encourage her. You get the picture. I was up until 2am. But it was great. And today has been great.

I'm really excited about the things I learned today in classes. In World Thought we're studying the rise of Buddhism and Christianity. Our textbook is secular, so it's very intriguing to see my "religion" presented from the ears of the critical world. I could go into lots of detail about this. I hope I have time later to post something about it, but we'll see. Also it's just interesting to look at other religions in depth...

In my Bible Study Methods class we talked about "Bible transmission," basically meaning we answered the skeptic question held by many - how can we trust the Bible? I've been asked that before, and I know in my head why I trust the Bible but never had sufficient information to even try to present a solid argument. Now I do! Again, I could spend a whole post breaking this down, and I hope to...sometime!

Even Psychology, which normally is overwhelming and just drowns you in so much information that you can't process or understand any of it, was not that way today! I absorbed a lot of the information presented about motivation and emotion and it made sense! That excites me and makes me happy!!

I've decided that God is definitely calling me to be a small group leader at Morning Star. This is where a bit of the "negative" emotion comes in, because I'm still a bit scared/intimidated and worried about giving up my control of time. But I'm beginning to get really excited and passionate about it! I'm actually looking forward to Wednesday night! And it's been really cool to see God working in all of this. It all started a couple Sundays ago when I went to Morning Star's Sunday service with two other sophomore girls from my hall, Rian and Hannah. In the bulletin were cards you could fill out indicating that you were interesting in helping with youth group. We all filled one out without realizing the other ones were filling them out. That was great, because I don't have a car and Hannah does. Plus it's helpful to have people you know accompany you in new situations. After our first experience with Wednesday's youth group, we all kinda felt the way I described earlier -- intimidated, really wanting to help, but not thinking we'd have time. But God worked it all of our hearts to bring us to the point where we realized that helping was what He had for us! It's crazy. And it gets rid of my excuse of not having a car!

And then there's my boy, my soon-to-be husband, my best friend, who God uses to blow me away every single day. He's decided that Africa is definitely on his heart, but not for this summer, because this summer he wants to spend by my side planning our wedding, going to dance lessons and marriage counseling and falling more in love. I definitely love love love that idea! He wants me to "get used to the idea of him always opening/closing my door for me." Jason wants to put  me second in everything (second to God). He loves me so selflessly and takes such good care of me. He called my roommate a couple weeks ago and asked her to deliver flowers to me, because he wants to be romantic and do special things for me even though he isn't here. Every morning he asks how he can pray for me, and we usually pray together at least once every day. We talk about deep theological things. We talk about being married. We talk about our weaknesses and encourage each other to grow. We support each other's dreams and desires. He makes me smile and laugh every day. Oh, and you should call him sometime just to hear is voicemail thing. Makes.my.heart.flip. My heart is bursting with love for and from him! God is so good! I'm so blessed!

Another one of the "negative" emotions on my bursting heart, is just knowing the painful stories of some of the girls in my life right now, girls from youth-group, my dorm, and my XC team. Life can be brutal. It breaks my heart sometimes. But on the positive side, I feel an overwhelming compassion for them and desire to embrace them and show Jesus to them.

My heart is bursting at the seams! It's overflowing with passion for God and for pursuing this life He has set out for me.