WOW!

So, I have been an oober fail at blogging! I apologize tremendously for the long silence if there is anyone still out there following this. If there isn't, well, God is definitely enough of an audience.

Wow, so where do I begin?! The amount of adventures this summer have definitely stacked higher and higher than any three months in my life. It was definitely through the power of God that I made it through this past summer. I traveled abroad to New Zealand in May, took Genetics in June, and worked full time July through moving back to school, and took the PCAT the Saturday before moving back. I have learned so much and grown up some (I believe =P).

I think one reason I have done so horribly with this blog is because I want this to be the Lord's blog, and I admittedly grew apart from Him a little this summer. It is a difficult thing admitting, but I wish to declare it to myself, God, and everyone else out there to make a change. All summer, I could feel myself descending the Lord's mountain and a little while ago reached the bottom of the spiritual valley I am wondering. Going through these valleys is never fun, but as the Lord spots me while I start to ascend again, I am reminded that for everything there is an opposite:

For Life there is Death
For Light there is Dark
For Satiated there is Ravenous
For Joyfulness there is Depression
For a Spiritual High there is a Spiritual Low
For the Whispers of God there are the Billows of the Devil

One side of this list is God and the other is the World, the Devil, and we are the knot on the rope between these two forces. The good thing is that instead of a real tug-of-war knot that is at the mercy of the two forces, we have some power to dictate whose side we end up on: freewill.

We still have to contend with the war of these two sides, though. The World is such a persuasive side. It first throws dirt onto God's proposition. It points out all of the things that the strict Lord asks us not to do, how we become His servants, His slaves. Being a Christian is constant work, and we can be put in some pretty tough situations when our faith is tested. Next the World smears all of our shortcomings in our faces. When we fail God, when we give in to the World, the Devil throws his finger in our face and berates us with, "Look at what you did! How could you possibly be worth forgiveness? You failed again. You always fail. How could God possibly do anything with you because of your stubbornness and weakness? You are not a Christian; you are a fake, a hypocrite! And you know how much God detests hypocrites. You should just stop trying."

It is so tough at times, but we must realize that these thoughts are nothing but poison. The crazy thing about God is that we can go to Him for the 5,000th time, aching and bawling on our hands and knees declaring our shame from the failure, and He will get down on the ground, help our sniveling selves up with His scarred hands, and while embracing us in His loving arms, declare, "what failure, my beloved child?"

No matter where we've gone over the summer, I hope we can start afresh together.