running away when you should be running to God

Mount Pleasant, MI.

It has been my home for the past four years. I have meet some many friends and grown so much as a person. Why am I so ready to leave and never come back? What is pushing me away from here?

I have been ready to leave Mount Pleasant for the last few months. I tell myself that my life will be so much easier and better once I'm in grad school away from everything here. Why do I do that? I mean, is that really true? Probably not. Am I running away from something that happened here? Bridges that I've burned? What is it that I am actually trying to get away from?

Well, it's honesty hour. I'm running away from who I was during college. My faith was tested and I neglected over and over again that something was wrong. The relationships that I truly cherished I let break because I was "too busy". I'm running away from people who have hurt my confidence, and who, I claim, have brought me down. But really, I let them bring me down. I let people here influence me more than I thought could happen.

Leaving Mount Pleasant, I thought, was a way to run away from all of my mistakes and start over completely new. New friends, new place, no one knows my past. I can be whomever I want to be. Unfortunately, that is slightly immature for me to think about. Yes, I have gone through some not happy things while here at CMU but I have also grown to be a whole new woman. I need to accept who I have become and continue to grow. Yes, there are things about me that I would like to change—like my faith. I thought in college my faith was supposed to grow stronger and I would leave knowing exactly what I believed and whom I believed in. Yup, that didn't happen. I'm still learning and growing. My faith is tested daily and I fail in it daily. But I'm trying and growing. I'm a human doing the best that I can.

Running away from Mount Pleasant isn't going to make my past go away. It just means that I'm going to leave things unresolved and move to a new place where I could quite possibly make the exact same mistakes. Because that is oh so helpful.

After this realization, I have three months to turn my life around. I will fix things that I believe are important to fix, I will try to confront situations that I am running away from, and I will try to be the mature adult that I know is scared, hiding underneath all of my insecurities.

Insecurities? What? Yes, I am insecure. I have confidence issues. Not just in how my body looks, but in how people perceive me, how I treat others, and in how I think about myself as a whole. Weird, right?

In the next three months, I want to become someone that people look up to again. I want to be a positive role model for those that know me. I want to be happy in myself and not let others define who I am or how I fell.

This can happen, and I encourage you to really take a look at yourself and if you're running away from something. Believe me, you can only run for so long. Your past will always catch up with you if you don't learn to let go and give it to God.


My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all day long. Psalm 71: 15

Putting All the Trust in Him

If any of you have followed me on Facebook, you know that I am currently trying to figure out what to do after I graduate in May. You would think I would be completely FREAKING OUT for this but the truth is, I'm not. I am definitely a "what if" person but for some reason, I just am not worried. There is only one explanation for this.

I'm letting God take control.

Yup, I said it. God is in control. Have you ever considered that? Giving every single thing over to the big man upstairs? Any soon to be college graduate should be scared of what is going to happen. Am I going to get a job? Where will I live? Do I have to move back in with my parents? What if I don't like what I majored in? Where do I go?

All questions normal people would ask. But for me, it's God's thing. I know that wherever I end up and whatever I am going to do after graduation, it will all be for God. And, by His will.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm sitting here doing nothing wait for the greatest opportunity ever to just land in my lap. No, I am doing the work to look into different places where I want to work and I am thinking really hard about what I want to do after graduation. When something feels right, I pursue it. I pray every night about which schools to look in to and which to respond to.

—it really helps a lot. Believe me.

It is hard to consider giving every worry up to God. What do we have left to control if we give everything to God? Now, think about this: If you were to give every worry to God and let things pan out like He intends them to, how much stress from your life would go away?

Honestly, think about that. My stress level has gone down so much because I know that He will take care of me. I will succeed after graduation because I have a God that loves me and knows me better than I know myself.

I encourage you to really think about this. What worries and fears can you give to God today? Is it the stress of paying your car payment? Or, if you can't find a job, what happens? Or, maybe someone in your family is having surgery? All of those worries, God can handle.

Think about it.

Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life greater than food, and the body than clothing? Matthew 6:25

my first post!

Good morning!

Obviously, this is my first post so I might as well introduce myself. I'm Stephani, a 21 year old college senior, ready to graduate!

The reason I am writing this blog is to get my ideas out on "paper" so that I am able to look back and see how I grow through my last semester of college.

—well, might as well jump right in!

God, has always been a huge part of my life but for the past few years I have been having major problems actually feeling a connection with him. Don't get me wrong, I know that God is always there for me and He is my savior and I am saved because I believe but for me, it's not as easy as that.

Lately, there has been some kind of disconnect between the two of us. It's like, when I pray no one can hear me and I don't feel anything there. It also happens when I worship. Everyone around me can be so into the music and what we are singing, and believe me it is really great music with incredible lyrics but something just doesn't resonate with me. For years I have been trying to figure out why this is but one thing was missing—I never actually took the step to try harder and to ask God to be a part of my life again.

Obviously, that is slightly an issue. I can't just sit around wondering why I don't feel anything when I'm not taking the initiative to have a relationship with God. Yes, I pray every day and my prayers are conversations, just talking my life out with the big man upstairs but that isn't me reading His word or truly attempting a relationship. So, this year my goal is to make that relationship, I want to open my heart up to him and have the most incredible relationship with God ever possible. This passion that I want to feel all started when I read the book "Redeeming Love" if you haven't read it, go check it out from a library and do so. Seriously, GO DO IT. I related with that book more than I thought was possible. This book struck a chord in me that I wasn't aware I had. I want a passion for God again, I want to feel that He is my rock and He is the one that I want a loving full relationship from. So, I am going to make that happen. I bought a 365 devotional book called "The Confident Woman" by Joyce Meyer. Also incredible, I highly recommend it. My goal is make time every morning to do a devotion and have time with me and God. One more step that I am taking is reading the book "Crazy Love", READ IT.

With all of this I am hoping that my relationship with God will strengthen and I will feel the love that I know that He has for me.

I know this post is very unresolved but I am sure I will post again soon.