My False Truth

              

Over the past few days my wonderful sister Michal has been writing in her blog about the false truths we are programmed into believing by simply living life in a world consumed by sin. Tonight I would like to share my view on the subject, and a false truth I seem to have bought into that has lead to a battle with depression over the past few months. It starts something like this… what do you want to be when you grow up? I am almost certain that every person in America over the age of 5 has been asked this question at least once in their life. Its part of society; when you grow up you get a job. People go to school for years to get education for their desired career, they work their lives away to achieve “success”, they prioritize time based on work schedules and many even find their identity in what they do. But to be completely honest at the age of 22 I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and that’s where this battle begins. My false truth tells me that there is something wrong with me because I don’t know what I want my career to be, but that’s all it is, a false truth. The purpose of life is not to grow up and get a job, in Matthew 16 Jesus tells us that he who finds his life will lose it and he who loses his life for My sake will find it, it’s a verse I keep going back to over and over again, its where I find my true purpose. The life Jesus is first referring to is the one made up of the false truths the world tells us, when we are able to lose that life to Him, He can then open our eyes to the truth of our real life in Him. Because life is not about success, gaining things or having the right job, life is about walking in relationship with God; the Creator of the world, His Son Jesus Christ and His Spirit; the Spirit of truth. When we turn our eyes from seeking the truths of the world and begin to seek the true truth of God, when we lose our life to His purposes, we can then find our life, our identity in Him and not what we have or what we do, and that is a truth I wouldn’t mind believing.

That’s How I Feel Sometimes

I’m a terrible, horrible, really bad person, or at least that’s how I feel sometimes. I really don’t like people… okay that not completely true; but people in general annoy me, and the ones that I do like I get jealous of for stupid reasons, like I said terrible, horrible really bad person, or maybe I’m just mopey. So where do I start, in all honesty I don’t want this blog to just be a whole lot of me complaining about my life, and maybe that’s part of the problem; I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense so I’ll try and explain. I’ve been feeling depressed lately, but I don’t want a blog full of my mopeyness, so instead I haven’t been writing anything at all which leads me to not processing any of my thoughts and then feeling more depressed because I don’t know what I’m thinking. So tonight might be a lot of rambling, or me being a terrible person, I’m not quite sure but that’s why I need to write.

 

The last time I wrote from my heart with no real direction in mind was about a month ago; I talked about the wall I’ve been building between me and the rest of the world. There are times now when it’s better, I can still feel the wall and I know its there but it’s almost as if there’s a window and I can see through it or even reach through it and get past the wall, but more often than not, I feel as if I’m just shutting down, that rather than reach through or try to climb the wall I would just like be alone and not have to deal with the people on the other side, and I know that’s a horrible way to feel, but that’s why I’m processing. You see I messed up somewhere. What comes to mind is the part in Prince Caspian when Lucy sees Aslan on the ridge, she tries to tell everyone that they need to follow him, but when they all agree to go the other way she gives up and goes with them, then later after they had to turn around and go back and Lucy sees him again and talks to him he says she now needs to go and wake everyone up and follow him and even if no one else comes she still needs to. Her task is harder now because she didn’t listen the first time, she could have gone without the others when she first saw Aslan and when she realizes this she starts to ask what would have happened and Aslans response is that no one is ever told what would, have happened. That’s kind of how I feel right now; I saw God standing somewhere in front of me and walked in the wrong direction anyway. A month ago I saw a wall starting to be built and I knew God wanted me to walk past it and follow Him to the other side, but instead I just let it grow bigger, made a blueprint with windows so if I really wanted to I could still touch the outside world, but now I’m not happy with the windows. And now instead of walking over a wall just beginning to be built I need to break it down completely. Then once its broken down I’m back to square one with living with people, only now there is that distance left over from the wall which makes everything that much harder, and I’ll never know just how different things might have been if I had listened the first time. So, with all that being said, thank you for dealing with my mopeyness and if you would, please pray for me, processing my thoughts really helped but now I need to break down a wall and possibly mend a few relationships, and I know God is with me, but I still feel like a terrible, horrible, really bad person sometimes and I’m not sure where exactly I need to start this next task

So Maybe

So maybe I'm indecisive, or to influenced by what other people think; for I did take the comments of others into consideration, but as you can tell I've decided to once again change the title on this page we call a blog. The new title I believe to be better than both the first and second attempts, it is in reality as I'm sure you've guessed a combination of the two, spotlighting the light I wish to shine as a writer and, bringing life back into the moments I long to experience and not just simply live through. I do believe this one will stick and even though I may have changed my mind because of another opinion I stand by this title, I truly love the outcome, thank you Michal.      

The Gospel

Last week Tuesday I gave a message at youth group, part of said message was my simple telling of the gospel story, while I was going over things before service with Shelly she told me I needed to record it somewhere so tonight I’m adding it to my blog, I hope you like it.

 

We were talking about evangelism all last month, so I decided to look up evangelism in the dictionary; the definition of evangelism is “a preaching of, or zealous effort to spread the gospel.” You don’t need to be trained to spread the gospel; it is something that all of us can and should do everyday, but in order to spread the gospel you need to know what the gospel is.

 

The gospel starts out something like this. There is a God, and He created the world, and man (He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the loveliest place you could ever imagine and gave them authority over everything, the only rule He had was that they could not eat from the tree in the centre of the Garden) But man disobeyed God and fell into sin (they listened to the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit) and separated themselves from God. Many, many generations later God had compassion on His creation, and sent His Son to earth in the form of man. (Baby Jesus born in a manger, you know how that story goes) while on earth Jesus lived a perfect sinless life (He was the best man a man could be.) Then came the day that God and Jesus both knew had to come, Jesus sacrificed Himself to be killed like sinner on a cross and the Son of God died. But it dose not end there because three days later He rose from the grave. On the cross Jesus took all the sins of the world for all time onto Himself and off of those who committed them. Through His death Jesus restored the bridge that Adam and Eve had destroyed, and if you accept Jesus as the savior that He is, your sins are forgiven and you are no longer separated form God. That is the gospel a simple story of what one man did for the world to bring all who desire back into a relationship with His loving Father.

Frozen Moments

            

Its been a few weeks since I’ve written anything just for the sake of writing, and that’s what I’m trying to do right now, but as usual I don’t know what it is that I want to write about because my desire is to write just for the sake of writing. So with that first sentence coming full circle where shall I go from here? I’ve decided to change the name of this blog, its original name “Starrlight” doesn’t really mean anything, and although this blog was started as a way to share my story and its title was a cute play on my name, I don’t wish for my book to be called Starr so a name change seemed to be in order. Through the process of attempting to write said story what seems to have come together is a series of events, miscellaneous thoughts and decisions about how to live this life I’ve been given, the purpose of sharing this story has turned from shining a light on who I am and what I see to, leaning how to live this life and appreciate the beauty in every moment. So with that in mind the new title for this blog is taken from a phrase I saw while flipping through magazines at Amy’s last week, it seems to hold slightly more meaning than a play on my name so tonight it takes its place on this blog.

Something About Grace



I’ve been feeling really distant from people lately, even my closest friends, I feel like there is a wall being built between me and the rest of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault, that I’m the one closing myself off from everyone, but I don’t know what it is that is causing me to build this wall. I want to love people, to share my thoughts with them, thoughts about life and everything I believe in , thoughts about God and how I long to be with Him, thoughts about love and what that really means, even thoughts that seem completely meaningless but somehow show how I see the world. The trouble is, lately I feel empty, lost and confused like part of my mind just feels blank, like what once lived there has now moved out and hasn’t been replaced yet. I want to open up and share my life with people but I don’t know how to describe my life anymore, I’m not even sure what it is that is my life anymore. I’ve been trying to convince myself that that’s okay that this is my process of letting go of my dreams so that I can walk out God’s plan, but I feel like I’m missing something important, like I skipped a step somewhere and now God is saying “your really close to where I want you but you need to back up and look at where you are.” When I do this He is showing me something about humility and grace. He asked me to give my life to Him; all my hopes and dreams, everything I ever wanted to do be or have, I tried my best to do this and now I’m left feeling empty. But tonight He is telling me that this emptiness in not from Him but from myself, that in my effort to let go, my pride held back the desire to plan for myself and didn’t fully accept His grace to fill the void… Wow that’s just what I needed to hear, thank you Father.              

Lost but at Peace

I started reading a book this week, Sunday afternoon I believe I’m about half way through it right now and it is wonderful. However, when I was in school I despised reading, I’ve thought about this before and I have come up with a few theories as to why this was the case. Theory number one, I’ve always thought myself to be a rather slow reader and to be honest I was very lazy and just didn’t want to take the time to do it. Theory number two, I have discovered since finishing school that I am an auditory learner that I remember what I hear more than most other things and since reading is most often done silently and I didn’t know better I was never fully engaged in what I was reading. Theory number three, along with my lacking interest in books I had put up a wall against anything “English” related and did not like to write either; so the only time that I read was to do a book report and since I didn’t like to read and I didn’t like to write the whole book report process turned into a mild form of educational torture. So with all that being said, I am pleasantly amazed at how much my life has changed since the time I was in school; I now love to read and write along with many changes in other aspects of my interests and personality to numerous to really list or describe, but largely make me who I am today.

 

I stopped attending high school nearly seven years ago, finished out my junior and senior years in a home school program and graduated in 2007. in the process of living these past seven years I grew into a completely different person than I was in high school, well sort of; to be honest the girl I was seven years ago is not as different as I make her out to be. I am still on occasion quite insecure, but what I face in my life today dose not compare to the insecurity that I lived in back then. This past week for instance I struggled deeply with feelings of inadequacy and loneliness, with thoughts of emptiness and confusion as if I’m lost and broken because honestly I don’t know where I’m going anymore. But rather than let it get me down the odd and wonderful thing about this week is that deep down I’m perfectly at peace with not knowing where I’m headed and my desire is not to know all the details of my future, but to let go of the desire to know the details and learn to fully rely on God. In Matthew 10:39 Jesus say “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” this is what I’m going for, this is the struggle that I’m dealing with. My spirit wants me to let go, to rest in God’s peace and walk in His grace. My pride on the other hand wants to know the details so I can tell people I have dreams and goals, that I’m not a nobody loser who’s gonna spend the rest of her life at a factory job she doesn’t exactly love because she was to insecure in high school to graduate like a normal person and go away to college, because that’s what the devil would like me to believe. I know it’s not true, that my life has purpose and where I am today is exactly where I am suppose to be, that this is only a season and God is planning wonderful adventures for my future, but when I’m tired of routine and feel alone wherever I go that lie becomes harder to fight than I want it to be, and I make this truth harder to accept than it really is. But this truth stands deep inside of me and God is faithful, so even though I’m broken, insecure, lost and confused about life, if you ask me how I am the honest answer is good, because I know God has begun a good work in me He just hasn’t quite completed it yet.