Category: Old Posts

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My youth group started doing a new series this year and, believe it or not, it’s about how to do hard things. When my youth pastor told us we were studying this I thought to myself, “Really?” I have spent the last five years of my life having to make hard choices back to back.

Year one was my dog bite. That was the first time I really dealt with hardship, and I absorbed every little thing I could learn. It took my about three years to fight through it, and with each year came it’s own branch of new things to learn (at the time I really didn’t see it that way). Throughout those three years I learned the value of hardship. I learned how God can make us stronger through all of it. And, I learned some great ways to deal with hardship when it comes my way.

Last year I discovered I had a nervous stomach. At first I thought it would go away as soon as I learned how to control it, but that didn’t come until NINE MONTHS LATER. Being an extrovert, it was rare that I didn’t want to go out and do something with people. I turned into a hermit, and really wanted to stay home every Sunday from church, and most Wednesdays from youth group. I shut down. I wanted to give up. And, honestly, I gave up hope that I would ever feel normal again. On top of that, I really struggled with depression and anxiety during those nine months. There has never been a point in my life when I felt worse.

Things are a lot better than they have been, but I’m still struggling with those same things. Still trying to learn from them, but also trying to move on, and leave them behinde me. So, when my youth pastor comes over and tells us we need to go out and make hard choices, I wanted to laugh. It was like I had just run a marathon and someone was telling me I had to go and do another one.

I learned a lot from those nine months of struggle, and the last five years of my life that were hard. But, right now, I have two pretty big struggles.

1. I’m struggling with feeling bad for myself, and thinking I deserve a break because, “I went through five years of hard things”
2. I’m struggling with the fear that things will get as bad as they were before; I am honestly terrified that I’ll have to go through those nine months again

I could get on my soap box and preach, and preach, and preach about how important it is to face your hardships. The reason for that is because, even though I had no hope, I still had faith. I knew that eventually something good would come out of my struggles, so I was determined not to give up. I only remember a few Sundays that I stayed home from church because I felt nauseous, and that was because I made the hard choice. I knew that if I gave in, and stayed home, I would be giving in to Satan for throwing all of these struggles at me. And I was determined not to give in. Now, after nine months, I’m seeing the good.

I talked to one of my youth leaders about what’s been going on the last couple months. A week prior to learning about the study, she asked me if I’d ever be willing to share what I’ve learned. It looks like I’ll have the opportunity to share quite a lot this year, and maybe help a lot of people out.

Last week I actually considered telling her I didn’t want to share, because I didn’t want to spend too much time dwelling on it. I’m really afraid things will get bad again if I dwell on it to much. So, instead of giving in to fear, I decided to make the hard choice and share. Trust me, as someone who has had to make hard decisions left and right for the last five years, the last thing I want to do is make another one. But I know I have too.

There are so many things that come with our struggles, both good and bad. The hard part is not getting absorbed in how bad you feel, trudging on, and  doing the best you can with what you have. You won’t be perfect, and some days you will feel like crap. But, you always have God with you, you don’t have to face anything alone, and not everything lasts forever.

Pretty soon I wanna try and write a blog post about one way I keep going when I feel like crap. It’s something that has helped me multiple times, and I really hope it’ll help you all as well.

I’ve recently started watching Bob Ross (3 episodes in so far) and I’ve learned quite a lot. I decided instead of spending a ton of money on art classes I’d try teaching myself, and it’s totally played off.

A couple weeks ago I was at F.Y.E. with my cousin, and we saw this picture of the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter. I looked at my cousin, and I said, “I could do that.” Thus I departed on a mission to paint what I had seen.

After a couple weeks, and having a vague idea of what I was painting, the painting obviously didn’t look the same as the one at F.Y.E. (also because they used a different medium to create the picture). But, I say it looks pretty cool otherwise. I also got the chance to use some things I learned from my three episodes of Bob Ross.

I tried two new techniques with this painting.

I used sort of a dry brush technique to get the smokey look on the edges, then I added a little white to give it some depth, and smoothed it all out with a brush to get ride of the brush strokes.

Another technique I used was some water colors I got recently. I wanted to try the tube water colors, as opposed to the pallet, just to see if there was a difference. I looked it up online, and the site I went to said the tube colors are brighter because the color is more concentrated.  I forgot that, so when I went to get a cool, light, smokey look with my watercolors it was SUPER vibrant. But, with the help of some other colors, using a brush and some water to water down the preexisting colors, it turned out great. Almost exactly how I imagined it. And, as Bob Ross has helped me learn, mistakes are only happy accidents. It may not be perfect, but it’s exactly the way it was supposed to be.

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I am a task master (my mom came up with the name), meaning I have the capability to learn how to do basically anything I want to and be pretty good at it. I always thought that was such a cool gift. But, I’m also quite an ambitious person, and I tend to run blindly into my “great ideas”. I usually think things through, so my ideas are actually mostly good ones. Just, maybe not for me.

A little a year and a half ago I decided to make a social site for my youth group. I thought it was going to fix everyone’s problems, and it would make everything easier for everyone. Well, that was only partly true. I put hours, and hours, and hours of time into that social site. It was increadibly draining (both emotionally and mentally), and after a couple months I really started to hate doing it.

I could do it, and I could do it well, but that doesn’t mean I should keep doing it.

A week or so ago I decided to take a break from it. I haven’t touched it, I haven’t had any meetings, I haven’t made any little adjustments here and there. And, most importantly, I haven’t felt like I had to do anything on it. It’s Saturday. I woke up, and I thought, “Do I have anything I need to do today? Nope. Video games it is!” I haven’t done that in a really long time because I felt obligated to make this thing that no one actually asked me to make.

This is my senior year in high school, and I really want to make sure I don’t lose it. I want to have fun. I want to learn how to do what I’m good at, and what I enjoy doing.

But, I did learn some interesting things from my stint as a web developer. I learned how to make a social site, and what one may need to do so. I learned a lot about how to improve my own blog. And, I even improved my skills as a public speaker (which I actually want to do more of). I learned a lot more than I thought I would, and (don’t tell my mom I’m saying this) I didn’t waste all that work like I thought I did.

I wanna bring this back around because I think it’s really important. Just because you can do something, and you might do it well, does not mean you should keep doing it.

Something I’ve always loved about music is that feeling you get when you hear something really good. You know, that feeling that gives you goose bumps? Or inspires you so much all you can do to let it all out is dance? Well, I’ve always wanted to be able to do that. To inspire people. To help them feel that amazing feeling. I thought the only way to do that was through music, but I was wrong.

I decided to read through my first blog post (the one about finding a hyacinth among that April snow storm we had last year), and I felt that. I felt that inspiration that came with music. I decided to read through a few others, and that feeling kept coming.

A friend of mine once told me she really liked my writing, and I couldn’t really figure out why. To me, it’s just writing. It’s the way I think. It’s what I see. But, after reading what I’ve written before, I understood.

I don’t know if I just felt really tired and emotional when I read my old posts (because that is quite a high possibility), and I don’t know if I make anyone else feel the way I did, but I really hope I do. I love writing, and I really hope I can use all this to help someone. Even if it’s just to brighten their day a little.

I am a Christian, but I’m not a “christiany” person. I believe in prayer, but it’s definitely something I’ve struggled with. For a long time I could never understand how talking to someone that seemed like nothingness when I was little could mean anything to anyone. But, over the last couple years, I really have learned why prayer is significant. What it means to me, God, and others.

My understanding of prayer really hit me in the last couple months. I went through a phase of life where I was depressed, and anxious, and despite my enormous want to help people with all of their problems, I simply couldn’t. Trying to help only made things worse on my end, and I didn’t quite know what to do. When someone came to me with a problem, how could I say to them, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about this right now,”?

After talking to my mom, and a friend of mine, I started to pray. And I mean really pray. Not just, “God, thank you for this day, please help tomorrow go well, and please give me everything I want.” I was saying,

“God, I can’t help these people in any way, shape, or form, but I know you can. Even though I don’t want to, I’m going to trust that you’ll take care of them, and I’m going to back off.”

And, guess what? It worked. I wasn’t as anxious and depressed as I was before, and I wasn’t interfering with the plan God already had by butting into these peoples lives. Praying to God, and trusting him, gave me this peace that I had never experienced before. And, until I had written this post, I didn’t really start to see it as peace. This is that magical sense of peace I’ve heard about my entire life, and never trusted, nor experienced.

As my last sentence may have let on, I’m still learning a lot. I’m still processing the last couple months and looking for what I can learn. Trying to see the good, as it where. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that.

I have a lot I want to say, and want to share, but I’m not sure I’m ready to dive into that yet. We’ll see. But, I do know that I have my mojo back, so I should be writing a lot more.