Oh Wow, Another Year to Review!

Over the past month or so I've been thinking about 2009, and what happened during that year.  As I kept thinking, I realized that God did so much in my life!  I feel like I could write a book about 2009 if I tried, because that's how eventful it was.  I'll start at the very beginning, since Julie Andrews says that's the best place to start.  The first few months of 2009 were not that eventful.  I just went through my last semester of high school.  In that process, I worked at letting go of a friendship that I thought God had finished in my life.  This friendship never really ended on sour terms, but rather simply phased out.  Eventually graduation came around, providing me with one of the sweetest nights of my life. 

A week after graduation I moved out of my parent's house and started working full time.  God gave me this awesome opportunity to work at Messiah College for a few months before I started school.  It was the best decision of my life to get a taste of campus life before classes started in September.  Even though sometimes I mourn the fact that all I did during the summer was work, it doesn't change the fact that I will never regret summer work. 

In addition to working during the summer, I also found myself pulling out of a "spiritual crisis" that I happened to be in for the past two years.  As I finished high school, and moved into this community of believers, I noticed changes in my spiritual life, but still struggled with rebuilding that connection and relationship with God.  In late July, however, I received an email from that friend that I let go of earlier in the year.  Basically, in our conversation he said something about God putting my name on his heart for someone to contact.  Just knowing that God was still using me in the lives of others was enough to fully pull me out of that spiritual crisis.  I wrote a song about it, and you may contact me if you would like to see the lyrics to that song.

After a long summer of work, I officially started college!  This past semester was definitely an eye opening experience.  I also started doing a radio show again!  It reminded me of how much I love radio, and it's definitely what God called me to do with my life.  I can't wait to continue my radio show next semester!

Along with this whole theme of change, in case you didn't pick that up for this year's events, I changed churches twice this year.  During the summer I attended the church just outside of campus.  I can walk to it from my dorm, which helped since I do not own a car.  Then I helped the friend that contacted me during the summer with finding his new church home.  Once he found his new church, I felt God calling me to continue to go with him.  And even though at times through September and October I felt like I should bail out of this whole thing, God kept nudging me to go. 

The previous two months could probably have a blog post of their own.  But I'll try to summarize the best I can.  Basically, I conducted my first DTR (or Pulling a Ruth, if you want to call it that) ever with this guy who had been taking me to church.  It was seriously the hardest thing I ever did in my life.  Needless to say at first I did not receive the response I desired.  From this first response, I spent the next week figuring out what to do with myself now.  I knew that first and foremost I needed to switch churches yet again.  That was a rough week, but I got through it with God's help.  I learned a lot about leaning on God, and relying on His strength.  With the twists and turns of life came a change of heart from David.  Thankfully this change was for the better. 

So from this experience, I went from being single to starting a relationship.  We waited until I finished the semester so that I wasn't juggling too many things at once.  This explains why I mentioned the countdown twice in my previous post, and why I didn't blog much in trying to keep this a semi-secret. After going back and reading the blog post from my birthday, it's funny to see how God works everything out.  I had talked about not going on date yet in my life, but two and a half months after that it actually happened.  In this I also realized that I had been waiting for roughly seven years for David to ask me out.  That's pretty crazy.

Overall, 2009 was a great year.  So many cool things happened, and I learned a lot, and changed a lot.  Even though having these constant changes took their toll on my emotions, I'm thankful for the continuous opportunity to learn to cope with change.  Just because 2009 is coming to a close does not mean the changes will stop, and I'm okay with that.  While I have an idea of what 2010 will bring, I'm okay with not knowing the full picture.  It gives me more chances to trust the one who leads me through life.