The Girl Behind The Blog: Show & Tell

Happy Halloween, friends! I’m super pumped to be linking up with Ashley & Erin for another Girl Behind the Blog vlog. I Was bummed when I missed last month’s so here’s mine this month.

So I realize I didn’t introduce myself…whoops. and I mumble a little. And the lighting is weird. But enjoy :)

A Quick Encouragement

This verse was on my heart today:

“And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”

-1 Peter 5:10

Have a wonderful Saturday! I hope today you can rest in His glory and allow Him to restore you.

Rest

As I contemplated what to write about in this post, I became overwhelmed with the possible ideas. My heart is so full and I have so much good stuff to share, but somehow I don’t think writing a novel of a blog post is ideal. So I’m starting here. I’m starting with rest. The concept of rest has been strong on my heart recently. Why? Because I don’t do it. I was asked about two weeks ago what I do to rest. My answer: I go be by myself. As soon as the words left my mouth, it hit me. I don’t rest. In fact, since the beginning of the semester, I hadn’t spent any time alone besides when I slept at night or the occasional time I studied alone (study parties have become a habit this semester). Even my quiet times have been a quick morning routine in my bedroom while my roommate is still asleep. I felt convicted by this realization. but also very conflicted. I’m a major extrovert! I hate being alone. I feed off of people’s energy. I feel a strong pull to community. And honestly, I suffer from major FOMO (fear of missing out). But as I pondered the thought, I realized how truly exhausted I was. I felt mentally and physically drained, and frankly…spiritually discouraged. Talking it out with my friend, I realized my feelings of inadequacy in leadership or inability to fruitfully pour into my friends intentionally all comes back to how empty I’ve made myself. I hadn’t allowed myself to be filled. That night, after that conversation, I rested. I apologized to a friend who I promised to hang out with, telling her I needed to just have some time for myself. I went to my room, laid down, prayed, and cleared my head. The result was overwhelming, I felt refreshed.

This past weekend, I went to InterVarsity’s Expedition Conference (more on that later!). I was so excited for the intentional time I would have to with people in my fellowship. We stayed up late each night playing games…resulting in about 9 hours of sleep for me total for the weekend. Don’t get me wrong I LOVED the time I spent with my friends, but I totally threw this rest thing out the window. The irony is that I even told friends who felt bad about going to bed early that it was ok if they were tired, that they needed rest. Silly Sarah, why didn’t you take your own advice?! God challenged me immensely this past weekend, He really identified areas of my life that I needed to give up to Him. But the real kicker came in our last session before we left. The speaker prepared a lesson to help send us back to our campus, full of God’s power and strength. The topic: rest. Woah. It was like the message was written right to me. Jon spoke about the importance of rest in our lives. How God gives sleep to those He loves (Psalm 127:2). He talked about how we need to be restored. That we need to intentionally make time to fill ourselves up in a stress free way. Why? Because God can’t use us if we are to weak to see where He is calling us. There is no shame in needed to be alone and rest, it’s required. We can’t pour into others until we, ourselves, are filled.

This morning, I woke up knowing I needed to rest today. I needed to overcome the stress of homework & midterms…through God’s peace. As I returned from my morning class, preparing for a quick nap, I received this text from my friend Amy: I couldn’t have gotten this text at a better time. I love how God used her to remind me of this truth. (Also, check out her post on rest)

Dear friends, where are you right now with God? With life in general? Are you overwhelmed with stress from school, work, or relationships? Are you feeling stretched too thin by a need to always be active? God does not call us to more than we can handle. He calls us to rest, in Him and His power. My hope is that you can be encouraged today to say no to the clutter in your life and truly humble yourself to His grace. It is okay to be tired, just embrace it :)

Rest well today!

Pray Big and Pray Bold

Right now, my bed is covered in laundry and my duffle bag is sitting out on my floor. Tomorrow is road trip time! This weekend, I am heading up to Syracuse with my Intervarsity brothers and sisters from all around upstate New York. Why, you ask? For Expedition! It’s our annual fall conference, and to say I’m excited is an understatement. I’m especially excited for the track I chose: Prayer Summit. I knew when signing up for the conference that God was really putting prayer on my heart.  I look forward to building relationships with the people in my IV chapter, and I cannot wait to fellowship with other college believers. But most of all, I am excited to be challenged with my prayer life.

As I talked about here in this post, God has been challenging me to grow in boldness with my prayer life. I have been learning so much about the importance of daily time with my Father, but I still find myself struggling to pray. To pray like I mean it. To pray like God will provide. To pray boldly.

I was on Facebook today and my friend posted this video about prayer. (Isn’t it funny how God works?) As I watched the message, I felt God beginning to prepare my heart and mind for His work this weekend. God is so good people!

Enjoy…this is some pretty sweet stuff!

I am entering this weekend full of joy and readiness to see how God is going to meet me, and every other student there, in big ways. I’m hyped :)

Oh Hey There…

Hello friends, just stopping by to let you know that I do still exist. I realize that my last post was from almost 3 weeks ago. Yikes! I’ve just been so busy with school, friends, and all-around awesome stuff that I just haven’t had the time to sit down and flush out some good thoughtful posts. That being said, God has been doing major work in and with me these past few weeks (He’s pretty awesome like that) So stay tuned, I'm in the process of getting my thoughts down so I can let you lovely people know what I’ve been learning and growing through! Anywho, I’m off to go immerse myself in my orgo textbook and contemplate acid-catalyzed hydration and electrophilic additions you jealous? Stay tuned for some pretty sweet posts coming up!

Have a wonderful Monday!

“For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the LORD.”

                               -Ephesians 5:8